Hiroshima mayor requests Obama visit city

Monday 05th October, 05:21 AM JST

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threedogs at 05:26 PM JST - 5th October

Not necessarily so. Not even likely.

"Not even likely" that you have even read any history of the events leading up to that event except only some wild revisionist views of past...1st Hiroshima was not a city packed with innocent citizens (yes it did have its share, Asian comfort women, Korean slaves, POWs and children but not as many as say Chunking that the Japanese indiscriminately bombed in 1939) it just so happened to be the staging point for all of Japan's barbaric military campaigns abroad...home of 2nd General Army HQ, which was in charge of the defense of southern Japan, much less the supply point for Manchuria. If you had even been to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum you would know this fact as the whole first part of the museum documents this...

Yabits hind sight is 20/20... unlike Nazi Germany the US did not have any moles in any position of importance in the government of Japan. Almost all of our intelligence was based on cracking their military and official transcripts, which any Japanese historian will tell you was ripe with overly optimistic enthusiasm and propoganda despite what appeared to be horrific defeats in the eyes of military commanders... not much for the US planners to take away that Japan was anywhere near a breaking point that a blockade would have been effective, (especially considering ever since the loss at Luzon in the Philipines they were blocaded) that apologist historians like to conveniently forget. If you had been to the museum in Hiroshima and read all the recently released documents there were many sides to the debate, the decision was not easy and there were many factors to consider... considering all the facts available at the time...I'm not sure a better decision could be made. IT so easy for you to sit in your armchair and second guess leaders who had the fate of 100s of millions of people in their hands....

Let's review After the battle of Okinawa, an area land that is only 3% of the mainland the US suffered over 50,000 causalities 12,000 of those were instant KIA... (Twice the amount as from the 2 previous major land battles at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal combined.) It was the 2nd bloodiest battle of WWII only behind the Battle of the Bulge. However, the most horrifying for the US was the 142,058 civilians (Okinawans actually claim more) forced to fight with sticks or commit suicide in the defense of the island. (Considering the closer the Americans approached the mainland the more suicidal it appeared the Japanese were willing to defend Japan...Military Generals in Japan at the time of the bombing still felt athey could defeat US intentions of invasion if 1 out of every 6 Kamikaze pilots connected with the invasion fleets... in fact a coup d'état was planned and even attempted when Emperor Hirohito did surrender...) Add to the equation the Soviets who hadn't fought a single Japanese force until the declaration of War on July 26, 1945 (not even a full 2 weeks before we dropped the bomb) and didn't even attack Japanese forces until after we had bombed Nagasaki...was proof enough to the US that unless we got Japan to surrender immediately it was going to hell of a lot worse for all involved (especially seeing what the Stalin and the CCCP did to Eastern Europe that they liberated from the Nazi...

Let us not forget that even today the modern existence of the old Soviet state, Russia, STILL holds what has been traditionally Japanese territory since the turn of the 19th century. The US gave back Okinawa, despite the many misgivings of the native Okinawa’s who didn't want to return its previous oppressors.

I'd say as terrible of decision as it was to bomb Japan with atomic bombs...conventional wisdom of any era would have it that it was the best considering the circumstances. If Japan hadn't surrendered before the advancement of the Soviet Army, then all would be worse off, probably still apart of Russia. Especially considering Japan was still seeking a realignment pact with Stalin to defeat the US after the conventional bombing of Tokyo back in April that killed 100,000 not to mention 1 million injured and more than million left homeless (more causalities caused by conventional bombing of Japan than the total loss of life at either Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.) This is not to say the US bombing wasn't innocent or that it was without some sinister sub-plots as they did leave Hiroshima off their conventional target list (but nothing ever is in war... the US record compared to Japan's atrocities pales in the amount of innocent lives lost)... Considering the Hibakusha victims of foreign origin still had to force through a suit against the Japanese government to get the government to recognize their status so they may receive financial assistance for their medical bills as late as this year... I don't think any US president should ever have to come here to apologize...

Maybe to express his plan of how to denuclearize the world, would make Hiroshima a perfect stage.... but he should never visit to apologize for the past in a country that still has a serious problem owning up for its sins...

Unfortunately as resident in Hiroshima the mayor’s request is a clandestine attempt for political points...getting Obama here to pressure an apology out of him to take pressure of Japanese government's own culpability in a systematic neglect of the victims of this tragedy...rather than actually having any real discussion on how to rid this world of these terrible weapons...

I agree it would be nice for any politician, not just a US one, to have the moral courage to stand up and say some of the actions that were taken or done in war were not justified; however this is definitely not one of them... Choose your battles or else you never win the war

A world without Nuclear weapons would be great but since people can't even be honest about the events of the past I don't see how we can have much hope of any brighter future... Honestly the past is the past (would've, could've, should've discussions are pointless), learn from it and move on!
Sarge at 06:31 PM JST - 5th October

"he will not travel to either city ( Hiroshima / Nagasaki ) due partly to a schedule conflict"

Well, he has to visit Obama City in Fukui...
tmarie at 07:45 PM JST - 5th October

Why do they want this? Honestly, they really need to get over their "victimization" and realize that the world has moved on. They should as well.
yabits at 09:28 PM JST - 5th October

So only obscure military targets were selected. Thus the comment is not based on the history.

In plain jargon, "obscure military target" means "not a military target." In fact, the half-dozen or so target cities chosen were not military targets and were not bombed at all prior to the day when THE bomb would be dropped. That way, the scientists could later know that all of the destruction that they observed was indeed caused by THE bomb.

In one respect, the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply the guinea pigs of a scientific experiment. That is another reason a different type of bomb was used on Nagasaki than the one dropped on Hiroshima.

I do hope that someday a sitting U.S. president will visit the sites, and I hope that the mayors of the two cities will extend invitations each and every year.
yabits at 09:50 PM JST - 5th October

I'm not sure a better decision could be made. IT so easy for you to sit in your armchair and second guess leaders who had the fate of 100s of millions of people in their hands....

In August of 1945 Japan was no longer a threat to any country, but a defeated nation.

The process of dehumanizing the Japanese people in the U.S. was already part of the racist process -- aka "yellow peril" -- that my country had imbued for decades. The odds are high that when you dehumanize an entire race of people, it becomes much easier to justify murdering them indiscriminately. And for indiscriminate murder, nothing works quite like a nuclear weapon.

Hiroshima was not bombed in order to defend the United States, but in order to hasten an already foregone conclusion. Only the acceptance of the perspective that the Japanese race was cruel and inhuman to the core, and could not be reasoned with, justifies dropping such a weapon under such conditions. That is the criminality of it all. I would have hoped that, in the face of certain victory, a different kind of U.S. would have emerged than the one that did.

A sitting U.S. president paying a visit to Hiroshima would be a symbolic gesture that, indeed, those days are now past. I am very afraid, however, that the United States carried the wrong lessons away from its actions. This may be a key reason why we are in such a serious decline as a nation.
inkjet at 10:06 PM JST - 5th October

And for indiscriminate murder, nothing works quite like a nuclear weapon.

funny how all that blood lust and hate evaporated after the war. it seems america's treatment of japan after the war provides enough evidence to throw your argument out into the trash heap where it belongs.
seijichuudo9sha at 10:10 PM JST - 5th October

Props to you yabits, my brother. keeping the focus on what Truman did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki takes it off of FDR and the unconstitutional internment of tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese descent.Keep fightin the good fight. Peace.
yabits at 12:59 AM JST - 6th October

funny how all that blood lust and hate evaporated after the war. it seems america's treatment of japan after the war...

Is fairly easy to understand by those with a basic grasp of the guilt complex in human psychology. How can one continue to dehumanize a defeated enemy and still look upon themselves as decent?

It was this need by Americans to see themselves as decent -- after committing two of the most horrendous individual acts in all of history -- that drove much of what you describe. The last great war was replete with examples of people who could be tender and magnanimous in one sphere and cold-hearted butchers in another.

The great peril to an individual or nation comes when people start believing that the act of cold-hearted butchery is actually magnanimous.

A visit to Hiroshima by a sitting U.S. president would likely conjure up these feelings and reflections in many.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are symbols that represent the belief by one nation -- the United States -- that nuclear incineration of the world is preferable to living under an assumption that they don't agree with. (That's all ideologies and systems are, after all -- temporary operational assumptions.)
yabits at 01:04 AM JST - 6th October

certainly a hell of a lot better than if the japanese got the bomb first. does any one doubt they would have used it and used it often?

Well, thanks to the United States for showing nations of the world that they are justified in doing so.

Fortunately, no other nation has risen to that level of criminality w/regards to nuclear weapons.

MacArthur had it right: Either mankind finds a way to put an end to war, or war will certainly put an end to mankind. Conflicts and disagreements will always be part of the human condition.
tigermoth at 02:36 AM JST - 6th October

yabits, you are right. From what I've read over the years, it seems that a sitting President visiting Hiroshima would be equal to the US admitting guilt and would open the door to calls for reparation.

You're kidding, right?? Reparations for being attacked and drug into a war where the aggressors (Japan/Germany) succeeded in killing tens of millions? How about the Japanese paying retribution to the family of my friend who had two uncles killed in the Pacific? They were civilians minding their own business when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and drug us into the war. What about the families of the fifteen hundred or so killed at Pearl? What about all of the American and British mothers who got letters after their sons were drafted stating 'we regret to inform you that...? Is the leader of Japan going to visit them and apologize?

yabits:

I fully understand the deep-seated need by many of my fellow countrymen to rationalize the crime against humanity represented by the action taken against the two cities.

Someday, an American president will have the moral courage necessary to signal to the world that not all actions taken in time of war were and are justified.

You demonstrate the typical ignorance of youth - or at least taking things out of historical context to fit into your judgemental view as you try to play the wise peacenick vs. the evil war-mongers.

I always think to try and understand an historical situation, you have to take yourself out of your modern, single-minded (read biased toward your political leanings) framework and put yourself in the proper shoes - or boots as it were. You're nineteen, called up to serve from Chicago, made aircrew and serving on a B-25 flying bombing raids against mainland Japan. Everytime you go up you have to physically vomit before getting on the aircraft because you're so afraid. Did you ask for the war? No. Did you start the war? No. Your 19, six months ago you were just getting up the courage to ask Mary Jo McKeller to the school dance. You were working as a stock boy. Now your boarding a plane to get shot at with a great chance of being blown out of the sky. Your president has the power to end it. Now. Not six weeks from now, where no matter what you might think inevitably more people would have died - but now. He does it. I would have done it. Sorry folks of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. You're innocent civilians - sure. But so is that 19 year old. Just because he was forced to put on a uniform doesn't make him any less important, or his life any less valuable. What right do you have to say that it does? What actual right does anyone who cries about America's 'injustice and criminality' in dropping the bomb have to say this? Why do you suppose the lives of those Japanese civilians killed were more important than those American boys who were still dying, and would have continued to die?

Having said all that, and to the point of the article, I see nothing wrong with the President visiting Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki to pay respects and say 'yes, this shouldn't happen again'. But to try and lay guilt is folly at best. When you pick up a gun, point it at another person and pull the trigger, you forfeit your right and your life - that's true of nations as well.
yabits at 06:05 AM JST - 6th October

Sorry folks of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. You're innocent civilians - sure. But so is that 19 year old. Just because he was forced to put on a uniform doesn't make him any less important, or his life any less valuable. What right do you have to say that it does? What actual right does anyone who cries about America's 'injustice and criminality' in dropping the bomb have to say this? Why do you suppose the lives of those Japanese civilians killed were more important than those American boys who were still dying, and would have continued to die?

Answers to these questions may form the crux of why a visit to Hiroshima by a sitting U.S. president would be so important.

A person is not "forced" to put on a uniform as long as they have the wherewithal to resist, even if it means going to prison. A nation that engages in criminal behavior such as torture and dropping weapons of mass destruction on innocent women and children can not count on the support of decent people -- not unless they first strip them of their decency through propaganda and other forms of mental deception.

So, once a person puts on a uniform -- from either side -- they are no longer "civilians" and thus fair game for one another, via the machinations played by those in power who have compelled them to put the uniform on and fight for "their country." In my view, by making themselves willing accomplices to indiscriminate mass killing, soldiers have made their own lives less valuable as compared to those who will have nothing to do with fighting and killing each other.

Therefore, I do not accept that your 19-year-old airman's life is as innocent or "valuable" as the children playing on the ground where the bombs he is helping to drop are falling. It is far more moral for a people to protect themselves somehow against the plane that is dropping the bombs. But when the words and concepts are twisted to the point where the claim is made that it is moral to launch nuclear first strikes and wars of "preemption," we start to realize that those who are doing such twisting are satanic. (Why is it that we could so readily recognize its evil if our very own position was mirrored by those we consider our enemies?)

I believe that Hiroshima is a spot where humans can contemplate how wars in the future will almost certainly end, and by so doing start to put an end to wars.
ashika1009 at 09:12 AM JST - 6th October

Dear Seiji and Yabits and LoveUSA:

(A block quote and my response in "chat" form.)

LoveUSA at 01:08 PM JST - 5th October

All Americans should visit Hiroshima once in their lifetime.

[NOT practical or necessary. Then again I have visited Hiroshima twice. And you do appear to omit Nagasaki for some reason from your list. Not very consistent, it would appear.]

bgaudry at 01:12 PM JST - 5th October

Japan needs to learn that losers don't dictate to winners. Harsh, but true. [YES, you speak of reality.]

LoveUSA at 01:21 PM JST - 5th October

Japan needs to learn that losers don't dictate to winners. Harsh, but true.

I do not think that Americans should be requested to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. They should feel this as their moral obligation, a repentance for the war crimes of their country

[WELL, LoveUSA it seems the USA is one place you do NOT love. Nor are you American but of course you are entitled to your opinion. Of course you WOULD not be entitled to your opinion in Japan, IF Japan had won the war. And I dare say your Japanese and German would be excellent. By the way, what war crimes do you refer to?]

Should you respond . . . uh . . . LoveUSA, I can assure you it will be quite an emotional tirade with little facts to back it up. So you may want to reconsider responding.

In my view, more people need to learn more BEFORE posting comments potentially, potentially mind you, reflecting negatively on themselves. This also applies to such blogs as www.politco.com www.moonbattery.com www.hotair.com etc. Also add www.pajamasmedia.com to that list.
inkjet at 12:39 PM JST - 6th October

maybe someone can explain why exactly does the mayor want him to go to hiroshima? to thank him for all the great things america has done for japan?

the invitation leaves a lot to the imagination. one can only speculate he wants to have a teachable moment with obama. if that's it then the school should be open for all. i think we need to understand why the japanese need this visit.

if it's to push for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the mayor should start by pointing fingers at home. japan can't have it both ways. relying on our military and lecturing us at the same time. besides the US has already proven it has great restraint with it's weapons.

personally i think the obsession with the bomb partly can be explained by wounded japanese pride. they never got over the fact the US defeated them. by making the case the bomb was 'cheating' they save face. i think that is part of it anyway.
inkjet at 03:09 PM JST - 6th October

i would also add by defining the war through the bomb japanese people could be deflecting their own guilt. by pointing to this great evil event they can avoid facing their own guilt head on. it dwarfs their own actions in their minds.

in reality the bomb was only a relatively small part of the whole mess. and an action forced on them as a result of their own actions.
tigermoth at 03:53 AM JST - 7th October

>

person is not "forced" to put on a uniform as long as they have the wherewithal to resist, even if it means going to prison. A nation that engages in criminal behavior such as torture and dropping weapons of mass destruction on innocent women and children can not count on the support of decent people -- not unless they first strip them of their decency through propaganda and other forms of mental deception.

True to a degree certainly. But in the case of the Second World War in particular, why would they not want to put on uniform and fight? They were fighting aggressive fascism from both Germany and Japan, maybe aggressive militarism in the case of the latter, but close enough. This wasn't like later wars in Vietnam or Iraq where cause was in question. There was good reason to fight, although some on here would unlikely dispute this because their ultra liberal f-ed up ideals won't let them believe that war can be a necessary evil enforced upon man by the imperfection of mankind itself. It comes down to you not allowing yourself to be put in a position that you deem you could never be in - which is B.S. Like most you can't think situationally and with the times, but rather only in your current world of fixed ideals and how things should be. It's like putting modern morals and axioms on the behaviors of 15th or 14th century man. It's a common and extremely flawed tool of the revisionist. The old saying of 'one life given for the good of the many' isn't true if your that one life. And by your reasoning:

A person is not "forced" to put on a uniform as long as they have the wherewithal to resist, even if it means going to prison. A nation that engages in criminal behavior such as torture and dropping weapons of mass destruction on innocent women and children can not count on the support of decent people -- not unless they first strip them of their decency through propaganda and other forms of mental deception.

A civilian isn't 'forced' to follow their government as long as they have the wherewithal to resist, even if it means going to prison - or execution. These Japanese civilians supported their government, or at least they didn't resist its action - therefore they deserve the fate of that government/leadership and were valid targets. That IS what your saying, although you shall certainly use situational logic to deny it.