Posted on 05/26/2016 10:51:25 AM PDT by Starman417
6 years ago, on the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, I wrote:
No sitting Japanese prime minister has ever been to Pearl Harbor; and no sitting American president has ever been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Will President Obama be the first?
6 years later, we have our answer.
Tom Collina at Foreign Policy:
President Barack Obama will soon become the first sitting U.S. president to go to Hiroshima, the White House announced on Tuesday. Obama will go on May 27, just after the G-7 summit, to visit the historic city where the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, the United States dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. All told, more than 200,000 people perished, mostly civilians.One has to take into account the context of the times in which the decision was made.Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima on April 11, the first of his rank to do so, in part to test the waters for Obama. “Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial,” Kerry wrote in a guest book after touring the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
The president’s visit is almost as controversial as the bombing itself. Ten presidents before Obama have avoided a trip that raises uncomfortable questions. Was the U.S. action justified? Were there alternatives? Should the United States apologize?
Yes, the president should go. Not to look back, but to look forward to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again. “This isn’t about questioning America’s responsibility for using nuclear weapons,” Tomihisa Taue, the mayor of Nagasaki, recently said. “It’s important to think about how to rid nuclear weapons from the world.”As Obama’s tenure comes to a close, this may be one of his last opportunities to deliver a major policy speech on nuclear weapons — one of his signature issues.
Reagan also had a desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons; but his approach was much different.
Has President Obama made nuclear war more likely or less likely, thanks to his tenure as PotUS? In light of his Iran Deal?
As Ben Rhodes, the White House’s deputy national security advisor, explained on Medium, the president’s trip “will reaffirm America’s longstanding commitment — and the President’s personal commitment — to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
As Lester Tenney wrote in the WSJ:
What Hiroshima represents is more than the effects of a nuclear weapon. It is the culmination of a war started by Imperial Japan and conducted with gross inhumanity, a war in which more civilians died than combatants.It would be wrong for the president to pivot away from this history and use his visit solely to discuss aspirations for a world without nuclear weapons. Hiroshima highlights mankind’s tragic ability to wreak terrible destruction, and this destruction was not caused exclusively by atomic bombs. Sand-filled bamboo sticks, bayonets, plague-inflected fleas, starvation and rape—methods of warfare used by Japan—are also destructive.
~~~
Mr. Obama wants to use his visit to Hiroshima to highlight the perils of nuclear war. But this is not the only lesson. Our service as veterans of the Pacific War needs to be remembered and not abandoned to some tumid oratory. The president’s visit to Hiroshima will be hollow, a gesture without motion, if the Pacific War’s full history is not maintained. Hiroshima does not and cannot exist outside the context of the Asia-Pacific War and all its dead.
So what should the PotUS say, since he has gone there to speak? WaPo's Adam Taylor seems to think America should apologize for a great many sins and offers up a short list.
Do the Japanese even think that an apology is even owed it? Apparently 80% of Hiroshima survivors are not.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
Nearly 75 years ago, on a quiet Sunday morning at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time, 353 Imperial Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service. You also sank or damaged three of our cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. You destroyed 188 U.S. aircraft, killed 2,403 Americans and wounded 1,178 others. Over the next seven hours there were also coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.
And so, we beat the s- out of you.
-PJ
LOL, yeah I think works!
I took a friend to the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport several years ago. While looking at the Enola Gay a woman near us mentioned to her friend how evil the plane was.
My friend immediately and loudly asked me the monthly casualty figures for the Kuantung Army in China at the time of the bombings. I said 250,000 killed per month. He then asked “so the bombs saved a lot of Japanese lives”? I said “millions of Japanese, millions of Chinese and other Asian, tens of thousands of Russian.” (I deliberately left out mentioning the projected US casualties from Olympic and Coronet since the twits wouldn’t have cared)
They both looked over at us in disgust, turned and stormed off. Three points to the good guys.
“And you should also thank us for blocking the Soviets from occupying Japan as well.”
If you had gotten the bomb first and used it on Los Angeles, would you be apologizing now?
I didn’t think so.
You started it, we finished it. Be glad we treated you as well as we did after you surrendered.
How about, “The future must not belong to leaders who want to build walls. The America I know is about knocking down walls.”
Regards,
My dad was a marine in the South Pacific. He told us that his unit was getting ready to gear up for the Japanese Island invasion. It would have been very bloody, but they would have gotten it done.
He also told us he belonged to one of the units that got caught up in the Bataan Death March. He missed it because of a paper work/administrative reassignment. He could type, and was held from his unit for a couple of weeks. Then they were captured. Yikes.
He told me all of this when I was a skull full of mush and was exploring the idea of “was the bomb dropped on Japan evil?”He definitely convinced me: NO. IT SAVED BOTH ALLIED AND JAPANESE LIVES.
I would add “Sorry for your bad luck”,
And even if they didn’t surrender that many would have died of starvation.
It was really the best of a whole list of bad choices.
Please 0bama, don’t bow down again. Maybe at the shoulders, with your eyes fixed on the PM, but not like you did before. Your mouth was parallel to his zipper.
5.56mm
That might be the post of the day right there!
He should read the names of the 2,400 sailors, soldiers, and civilians killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and then walk away from the podium.
That's probably what he thinks he should say (if he could get away with it).
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