Kerry makes gut-wrenching visit to Hiroshima site of A-bomb
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, walked past A-Bomb Dome after visiting the site in Hiroshima, western Japan, on Monday. Kerry visited the revered memorial to Hiroshima’s atomic bombing, delivering a message of peace and hope for a nuclear-free world seven decades after United States used the weapon for the first time in history and killed 140,000 Japanese. (Shingo Nishizume/Kyodo News via AP)
HIROSHIMA, Japan » An emotional John Kerry said Hiroshima’s horrible history should teach humanity to avoid conflict and strive to eradicate nuclear weapons as he became the first U.S. secretary of state to tread upon the ground of the world’s first atomic bombing.
Kerry’s visit Monday to the Japanese city included him touring its peace museum with other foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and laying a wreath at the adjoining park’s stone-arched monument, with the exposed steel beams of Hiroshima’s iconic A-Bomb Dome in the distance.
The U.S. attack on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II killed 140,000 people and scarred a generation of Japanese, while thrusting the world into the dangerous Atomic Age. But Kerry hoped his trip would underscore how Washington and Tokyo have forged a deep alliance over the last 71 years and how everyone must ensure that nuclear arms are never used again.
“While we will revisit the past and honor those who perished, this trip is not about the past,” he told Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, a Hiroshima native. “It’s about the present and the future particularly, and the strength of the relationship that we have built, the friendship that we share, the strength of our alliance and the strong reminder of the imperative we all have to work for peace for peoples everywhere.”
Kerry’s appearance, just footsteps away from Ground Zero, completed an evolution for the United States, whose leaders avoided the city for many years because of political sensitivities.
No serving U.S. president has visited the site, and it took 65 years for a U.S. ambassador to attend Hiroshima’s annual memorial service. Many Americans believe the dropping of atomic bombs here on Aug. 6, 1945, and on the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later were justified and hastened the end of the war.
Kerry didn’t speak publicly at the ceremony, though he could be seen with his arm around Kishida and whispering in his ear.
The otherwise somber occasion was lifted by the presence of about 800 Japanese schoolchildren waving flags of the G7 nations, including that of the United States. They cheered as the ministers departed with origami cranes in their national colors around their necks. Kerry was draped in red, white and blue.
Hours afterward, the top American diplomat still seemed to be absorbing all that he saw.
“It is a stunning display, it is a gut-wrenching display,” he told reporters of the museum tour, recounting exhibits that showed the bomb, the explosion, the “incredible inferno” and mushroom cloud that enveloped Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. “It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices of war and what war does to people, to communities, countries, the world.”
Kerry urged all world leaders to visit, saying: “I don’t see how anyone could forget the images, the evidence, the recreations of what happened.”
Japanese survivors’ groups have campaigned for decades to bring leaders from the U.S. and other nuclear powers to see Hiroshima’s scars as part of a grassroots movement to abolish nuclear weapons.
As Kerry expressed interest, neither Japanese government officials nor survivor groups pressed for the U.S. to apologize. And Kerry didn’t say sorry.
“I don’t think it is something absolutely necessary when we think of the future of the world and peace for our next generation,” Masahiro Arimai, a 71-year-old Hiroshima restaurant owner, said of an apology.
Yoshifumi Sasaki, a 68-year-old, longtime resident, agreed: “We all want understanding.”
Both wished for Obama to follow in Kerry’s footsteps next month.
The president still hasn’t made a decision about visiting Hiroshima and its memorial when he attends a Group of Seven meeting of leaders in central Japan in late May, and Kerry made no promises. During his first year in office, Obama said he would be “honored” to make such a trip.
“Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial,” Kerry wrote in the museum’s guest book. “It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.”
“War must be the last resort — never the first choice,” he added.
Wading into U.S. politics, both Kerry and his Japanese counterpart rejected Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that Japan consider developing its own nuclear weapons to defend itself against nuclear-armed North Korea.
Kishida said, “For us to attain nuclear weapons is completely inconceivable.”
Kerry called such notions “absurd on their face,” contradicting the efforts of every Democratic and Republican president since World War II to prevent wider nuclear proliferation.
Kerry acknowledged that some governments want all nuclear weapons, including those in the U.S. arsenal, destroyed immediately. He described such calls as unrealistic, potentially making the world more dangerous in the short-term by ridding nations of their deterrence against bad actors such as North Korea. Instead, he urged an ordered, methodical process toward the final goal of denuclearization.
“We all know it’s not going to happen overnight,” Kerry said.
But he said, “We have to get there.”
Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.
60 responses to “Kerry makes gut-wrenching visit to Hiroshima site of A-bomb”
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Says the guy who is helping Iran get the bomb.
I’ve been there twice and the wreckage. It was horrible. Try to google
Sadako Sasaki and read about her tragic story.
Japan owed US an apology for attacking without first declaring war.
Our use of the only two experimental nuclear devices we had to that date built was an act of mercy: Truman gambled that Hirohito would not know we had shot our wad, so when Truman went on the radio (and I recall hearing him) to say “We will continue to use these terrible weapons until we have destroyed Japan’s ability to conduct war”, the Emperor bought it and ordered his government to accept Allied demands for unconditional surrender.
Truman thereby saved not only hundreds of thousands of American lives (that would have been lost in the monumental invasions planned for November 1945 and March 1946), but literally millions of JAPANESE lives – – the lives of men, women, and children who had sworn to fight to the death to save their divine Emperor.
Footnote: Curtis LeMay night time B26 firebombing raids against Japan’s urban areas before that first week in August caused far more damage and lives than did the two experimental nuclear devices.
erratum: B29 raids (launched from Tinian)
Kekelaward, fully agree with your post. Mahalo.
25,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium removed from Iran, heavy water reactor disabled by filling it with concrete and it will be rebuilt so that it is impossible to produce weapons grade materials, 2/3 of centrifuges dismantled leaving only the oldest, Fordow facility turned into a research facility in cooperation with international scientists, and a rigorous international inspection regimen in place. Please explain how that is “helping Iran get the bomb.”
You’re referring to the rantings of someone who never knows anything about anything. That explains it!
Well, let’s hope you’re right. The world depends on it.
Since there is – – at the demand of Iranians – – little or nothing in the way of inspection and verification protocols, how can you be so sure?
The current occupant of the White House was so hot for a “legacy” deal, he bargained from a position of groveling weakness, a fact not overlooked by the Iranians who were determined not to let an opportunity to skin this rookie light weight pass them by.
Self reported BS by Iranian propaganda artists. About as reliable and accurate information that ‘curveball’ provided there were ‘mobile chemical weapons’ factories in Iraq. The deal Obama made with Iran does NOT require or allow independent, unannounced inspections. As believable and accurate as Oahu rail information provided by Wiliki and Nannyblue
Among the many civilians vaporized during the nuclear bombing were some American P.O.W.s; sad and tragic indeed atomic war.
Your point is? It’s also true that allied pows died during conventional bombing and torpedo attacks on Japanese shipping. Does that imply that those attacks should not have taken place?
Considerably more civilians were ‘vaporized’ by the unrelenting night time incendiary bombing of Japan’s urban areas carried out by Curtis LeMay’s fleet of B-29’s launching from Tinian.
And yet for some reason the only crocodile tears shed in this modern politically correct era are for casualties of the expenditure of our entire nuclear arsenal (to wit: two devices, Little Boy and Fat Man) on two targets left untouched by LeMay for that very purpose.
Dead is dead. Why mourn some and not others?
Today we are outraged by the killing of civilians. Yet, in the past, the U.S. carpet bombed, fire bombed, and used nuclear weapons against entire cities where there were likely only civilians (the elderly, women, and children). Hopefully, everyone has learned from the past.
Let’s try not to exaggerate. In the one and only nuclear war that has been fought, a grand total of TWO experimental devices were activated.
As for conventional warfare in WWII, the Brits conducted night time carpet bombing of urban centers, while the Yanks worked to perfect high altitude, precision bombing of military targets.
As for today, we are certainly NOT “outraged by the killing of civilians.” Doubt that? Just look at how the eyes of white folks glaze over as thousands upon thousands of black youth are murdered by other black youth in all our major metropolitan areas – – thereby giving the lie to the silly notion that black lives matter. Truth be told young black lives don’t mean [scatological term redacted].
“[scatological term redacted].”
Considering the source, this statement doubtless bespeaks a titanic, daily struggle.
And, are you seriously attempting to make a comparison between the use of a WMD used during a time of war and the murder rate in the United States? Oh look, there’s a gratuitous racial dig in there as well.
I will not argue the the point of whether use of the two A bombs was justified, but the rest of your angry little manifesti must have been written in a prison cell by someone who spent decades worrying a small ball of dirt until it filled his cell.
Then three days later they did it again to Nagasaki. Then when other nations were sending in aide workers the US sent in monitors to record the extent of the deaths and damage. Still these do not come close to the fire bombing of Tokyo, Kobe, etc., The purpose was to kill civilians and demoralize the country. Revenge for Pearl Harbor? That attack had no civilian targets. The US “friendly fire” caused the civilian casualties but the military blamed the Japanese bombs.
I think of the Bataan Death march and the atrocities the Japanese did to their captives. Leaflets were dropped prior to the attacks warning people to evacuate and at the same time the Emperor wanted peace but the militants in political power overrode him. I was a kid at the time but remember the numerous Gold Stars in the windows put up by the grieving mothers. That’s one reason the military draft should be reconsidered. If you had a son or daughter or grandchild draft eligible you’d take a more active position in our foreign policy decisions.
The U.S. chose to kill innocent people with a super weapon it did not have to use.
Millions more on both sides would have died if we invaded.
If you thought those films of mothers holding their children as they threw themselves off the Okinawan cliffs were sickening, it would have been thousands of time worse if we invaded the home islands.
Truman saw a chance to end the war abruptly and save millions of Allied and Axis lives and he took it.
Those were the two most humane and cost effective weapons in the history of warfare.
..”He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”.. “People who live in a glass house have to answer the door.”
Aid workers? Seriously? Total BS. Given the butchery of the Japanese Imperial army the idea of compassion flowing toward Japan is ludicrous. If anything, countries like China would have wished for an opportunity to finish off the survivors.
The purpose was to kill civilians? More disinformation. Hiroshima was a major military target. Were civilians targeted as well? Yes. However, to allow the emperor and military to hold their own populace as willing hostages to prevent defeat would have been insane. Had we done so, the core of aggressive Japanese militarism could have survived into the nuclear age. The death of many civilians was the price of preventing this unacceptable outcome. (This is aside from the correct argument that more would have died in a conventional invasion than from the A bombs.)
Just a question, don’t you think your statements are contradictory? That is, “The purpose was to kill civilians? More disinformation.” Then, “Were civilians targeted as well? Yes”
Again, not agreeing or disagreeing, but maybe you could clarify.
Sure. The purpose was to end the war and permanently disable Japanese militant imperialism. The ability of any nation to make war depends on its civilian population as much as its actual military. Civilians sustain the national economy, man the arms factories, and sustain political support for the ruling government. The Japanese civilian population was one of he legs of the stool supporting Japanese military activities. To win the war, achieve the objective above, the civilian populace became a logical military objective.
The question then becomes one of morality. Is it moral to attack the helpless/aged/children. No, but you then have to judge the result of a conventional invasion of the home island—millions dead, a million or more US casualties, Japan in absolute ruins, far beyond what the strategic bombing campaign had done.
Seems like we had no choice, moral or otherwise, but to use the bombs or otherwise forego the invasion which would have left the Japanese militants in charge. The idea of an Imperial Japan (of the WWII era mentality) in the age of nuclear weapons seems totally unacceptable to me.
Thank you. While my beliefs are pretty close to yours in this instance, and given what you wrote to explain, how is saying the “purpose was to kill civilians” disinformation? When it was, at least in part, the purpose.
“The purpose was to kill civilians” implies that was the end objective of the bombing. It was not. The end objective was to cripple the Japanese will and ability to continue the war and to remove whatever support civilians provided to the war effort. Killing civilians just for bloodlust was never the case.
“Tanuki”
“The Japanese name for the raccoon-dog, Nyctereuctes procyonoides. In folklore the animal is credited with supernatural powers, including shapeshifting, money counterfeiting, and most notably of expanding its already very large scrotum to use as a drum or a weapon. Tanuki statues are a popular part of Japanese kitsch, portraying a jolly, plump little anthropomorphization of the creature, usually with a straw hat, a bottle of sake, a purse of bills for his carousing, and of course his big wrinkly testicles dragging on the ground between his feet.”
There was an organization, Atom Bomb Casualty Commission sent there by the US after the cessation of hostilities to evaluate/study the effects of the nuclear radiation damage/sickness of the victims. The study is still being continued by the Japanese government. There aaraesome victims of radiation sickness residing in Hawaii that are receiving nominal amounts as stipend and are still being monitored medically by doctors. My older brother was head of the Civil Censorship Group in Hiroshima. They confiscated all printed matter/photographs relating to the radiation effects. Myself was a noncom with the Military Government Region that monitored the Chugoku Regional Prefectures. Visited Hiroshima often during my second tour in the Army.
Tanuki says: “Revenge for Pearl Harbor? That attack had no civilian targets.”
From 1942 to 1945 Nimitz and MacArthur methodically closed the pincers on the home islands of Japan after the back of their navy had been broken at the Midway ambush, but not out of any desire for revenge. The aim was to compel the Emperor to accept unconditional surrender and thereby end the fighting.
As for the less than brilliant execution of Isoroku Yamamoto’s brilliantly audacious carrier attack plan, thousands of American perished, just as those who planned and executed this attack intended. Are you saying that the lives of these American servicemen – – who individually had done NOTHING to harm Japan – – were somehow less valuable than civilians?
“for example, one suggests that the U.S. used the weapon in part to justify the extraordinary costs of the Manhattan Project to develop it. ”
This is gratuitous drivel.
I have visited and spent a lot of time at the memorial, and it presents a fairly balanced view of the event, including the precipitating role of Japanese militarism at the beginning of and before the second world war.
Up with Trump. Down with Politicians.
Sure. Let’s elect someone who knows absolutely nothing about world affairs; nothing about the Korean peninsula; nothing about how treaties work and are enforced. “I love the poorly educated!” Go Trump!
Trump?
I thought you were speaking of the current occupant of the White House.
Thosser isn’t joking: he actually thinks that Trump knows more about world affairs than Obama.
Obama doesn’t even know what classified inforpmation is.
“classified information”
“Kishida said, “For us to attain nuclear weapons is completely inconceivable.””
Yep. Until the first North Korean nuke sputters across the Sea of Japan and falls on Niigata (no one will care that it missed it’s actual target, Tokyo). Then, they’ll be like Saudi Arabia, buying weapons under the table from Pakistan.
I don’t agree with our killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, although that can happen with non-nuclear weapons too. However, it was inevitable that SOMEONE would make an atomic weapon and use it on an enemy, we just happened to be the first. And it’s been a deterrent against others using nuclear weapons since then (including us). So if some country had to be the first one, it might as well have been us.
We did NOT “just happen to be first”.
German scientists Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were the first to discover that when the U235 isotope is fissioned (by neutron bombardment) a tremendous amount of so called ‘binding’ energy (that keeps the positively charged protons in the nucleus from flying apart) is released.
Albert Einstein was so alarmed he made a personal representation to FDR which resulted in the unlikely team of Army Gen. Leslie Groves and Communist-flirtationer Robert Oppenheimer launching the Manhattan Engineering District Project which – – running scared the whole time – – finally produced enough fissionable U238 and Pu239 for a total of THREE experimental devices.
Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler wrote off what he called “Jewish science” and instead put all his R&D marbles in the experimental site at Peenemunde. Otherwise, had Hitler obtained a nuclear capability we would no all be hailing victory (‘seig heil’) with outstretched arm to the nearest swastika.
Reason is the first casualty of war.
What a perfect example of “YELLOW JOURNALISM” and other nomer’s for Murder; distracting the readers from the present-day ongoing mass-destruction of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, et al, by Israel, Saudi Arabia, USA, Russia, Great Britain, Australia; and watching Drug Cartels and Corrupt “World Leaders”–supported by the United Nations–DAILY, OPENLY murder women, children, men in the streets. Did you also say a prayer for them TODAY? Sorry “Tanuki”, et al to steal your day of Sadness and pity–without your honest remorse. But, really, put it in perspective. One more thought for this day for you: What about TEPCO, Hitachi, et al still killing those in Fukushima and surrounding areas–ALSO DAILY? (..and, also killing THE PACIFIC OCEAN and LIFE AS WE KNEW IT?)
Add thermite bombing of the major cities in Japan that had homes that were easily burned to the ground. Visited many cities in Japan completely devoid of residential home with only concrete structures remaining, such as post-offices, telephone exchanges and corporate buildings to name a few. What about carpet bombing of Germany where wholesale destruction of cities were the objectives to end the war. War is hell visited on Earth whatever type of weaponry is used. It is to kill the enemy and destroy its infra-structure from time immemorial.
At the risk of repeating: the Brits (led by “Bomber” Harris) specialized in night raids that carpet bombed civilian pop centers.
The Yanks – – at some considerable initial risk – – drilled down on the challenges of DAYLIGHT precision bombing of MILITARY targets from high altitude. It was in this context that probably the greatest weapon of war – – greater even then the atom bomb and certainly guarded as an equally sensitive bit of information – – was developed and employed: the Norden bomb sight. In those early years before we had air superiority, the Luftwaffe (esp Messerschmitt Bf 109, commonly called the Me 109 ) fighter pilots had a field day taking apart our bombing raids in the daylight.
The ‘cadillac of the sky’ the Mustang P51 changed the playing field: “The Mustang was originally designed to use the Allison V-1710 engine, which, in its earlier variants, had limited high-altitude performance. It was first flown operationally by the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a tactical-reconnaissance aircraft and fighter-bomber (Mustang Mk I). The addition of the Rolls-Royce Merlin to the P-51B/C model transformed the Mustang’s performance *** at altitudes above 15,000 ft,*** matching or bettering that of the Luftwaffe’s fighters. The definitive version, the P-51D, was powered by the Packard V-1650-7, a license-built version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 66 two-stage two-speed supercharged engine, and was armed with six .50 caliber (12.7 mm) M2/AN Browning machine guns. From late 1943, P-51Bs (supplemented by P-51Ds from mid-1944) were used by the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force to escort bombers in raids over Germany”
One often overlooked unintended consequence of the dropping of the A bomb and Japan’s subsequent surrender is that it saved the popylation of Japanese occupied territory from genocide.
In Pohnpei and Chu’uck there are documents and statements showing the plans of Japanese authorities to murder all of the local populace ( and Korean workers that had been enslaved and brought in) to ensure all supplies of food etc went only to extending the time that japanese forces could hold out.
These were not just theatrical plans. In pohnpei trenches had been dug to serve as mass graves. In Chu’uck caves had been prepared with explosives so as to entrap and entomb local populace who were to be herded into them.
So as ugly an episode in mans inhumanity to man as the bomb was it also helped prevent the genocide of other local populations who were by and large innocent victims of a war they were not part of.
Yeah it’s also gut-wrenching every time you set foot on Pearl Harbor or near Kole Kole pass.
It is also gut wrenching that a bunch of spoiled brat whiners made such a stink that the large white metal cross that used to be at the summit of that pass – – with military (not civilian) property on BOTH sides – – had to be removed, lest some sensitive soul might be “offended”.
Human being thrive on violence, it’s a miracle that we made it this far.
No kidding.
War is Hell. But let’s not confuse an attack on a military target with the indiscriminate slaughter of 10s of thousands of civilians, to include women and children. It’s better that we just remember – War is Hell.
..and, “HILLBILLARY” intends to return us all to that “HELL”, in her ongoing attempts to create WWIII…
While there may be some method to your madness, you’ve conveniently left out that all the Republican candidates would “carpet bomb the hell out of” the Middle East.
Nothing wrong with that.
Of course you think that way, sarge – because there’s something wrong with you.
The battle of Okinawa from April to June 1945 was the most brutal of World War II in the Pacific. More than 12,000 Americans were killed and more than 50,000 were wounded. The Japanese suffered more than 150,000 killed including many civilians. Since Okinawa was a Japanese home island, it was a prelude to what would happen when the United States and its allies invaded the main Japanese Islands of Kyushu and Honshu as planned. The decision makers instead decided to drop the A-bombs to force Japan to surrender and shorten the war, and it worked. Yes, more than 225,000 Japanese were killed or wounded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not a single US live was lost. Given the ferocity of the Japanese defense of the tiny Okinawan Islands, there can be no doubt that thousands of Americans and several hundred thousand Japanese would have been killed or wounded if the invasions of heavily populated Kyushu and Honshu had taken place. The decision to drop the A-bombs was the right decision.
Kerry did not apologize for the US A-bombings. He saved that for Obama when he visits Hiroshima next month.
Bingo
No need to apologize, it’s over and past events. I only adds to his presidential legacy as the peace seeker for this century. He is earning his Nobel Peace Prize recognition??
Kerry should apologize for his actions during the Vietnam War. “Swift Boat John”
What baffles me most about this is why Japan would attack Pearl Harbor; were they totally oblivious of any repercussions?