President Obama’s decision to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit the ground zero site of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on May 27th as part of a G-7 Summit visit to Japan comes as no surprise. Advancing the cause of nuclear nonproliferation has been a hallmark of the Obama presidency and is cited as one of the main reasons that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Making remarks in Hiroshima will also provide a platform to re-emphasize his vision of a nuclear free world first enunciated in a speech in Prague in 2009.
But Hiroshima is not Prague. The Czech capital is remembered in Twentieth Century history as the site of the famous “Prague Spring,” when the aspirations of the Czech people to be free of communist domination flickered briefly before an invasion of Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops. Hiroshima, however, is chiefly remembered for the twisted dome of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Hall, burned and melted like much of the city of 350,000, when the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy”, the first atomic bomb used in warfare, on the morning of August 6, 1945. So the historic symbolism of Prague and Hiroshima stand in stark contrast – Prague, a symbol of Cold War resistance and democratic values; Hiroshima, a symbol of atomic devastation brought about by a U.S. B-29 bomber.
And historic symbolism is vitally important. It is said that the victors write history but Americans know from the Civil War narrative of the “Noble Lost Cause” of the Confederacy that this is not always the case. This is no more true that in the former Pacific theater of the Second World War, where continued vigorous debate and heated denials of such war crimes as the Nanjing Massacre and the sexual enslavement of Comfort Women continue over seventy years after the end of the Second World War. Recent reports from a POW-affiliated organization that an elderly POW from the long-ago conflict with Japan would accompany President Obama to the Hiroshima bombing site, meanwhile, have been officially denied by the White House.
Professor Richard Samuels of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Japan expert, told the New York Times on May 10th that “In Japan, I don’t think there has been much real evolution, at least among the right wing and the amnesiacs who deny Japan’s destructive war in Asia and insist they were the victims…For them, Obama’s visit will be a chance to reiterate that they were right.”
There is every indication that some on the Japanese side will seek to make use of the Obama visit to score a historic breakthrough, attempting to stalemate White House efforts to finesse a highly sensitive subject. Agence France-Press reported on May 19th that organizations representing hibakusha (atomic bombing survivors) have indicated that they want an official apology from President Obama when he visits Hiroshima. Leaders of the organizations were quoted as stating that “the president should revisit the U.S.’s decision to use nuclear weapons at the end of World War II.”
And reaction on the other side of the historic divide can be expected to be just as vehement. A Chinese journalist said that young Chinese netizens (Internet activists) will not remain silent. These netizens have become the voices for an increasingly assertive Chinese nationalism based largely on a sense of victimization, including over Imperial Japan’s invasion of China. The journalist anticipated that President Obama, formerly regarded favorably as a symbol of “hope and change” among many of China’s younger generation, will now be demonized on the internet, as a result of the Hiroshima visit, for apparently sanctioning the Japanese right-wing’s historic denials. The reaction among the populace of America’s South Korean ally, victims of a harsh Japanese colonial rule and understandably nervous about a nuclear North Korea which has increased its stockpile under Obama’s watch, can be expected to be equally negative. And while the White House has been adamant that no verbal apology for President Truman’s action will be offered, non-verbal gestures, such as the laying of a wreath, hold equal significance in many Asian cultures. As Woody Allen famously noted, “just showing up” has major significance.
The fact is that no Japanese Prime Minister has made use of past opportunities to visit the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor in a reciprocal gesture of reconciliation of two now close allies. Prime Minister Abe’s visit to the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC last year, after flying over Pearl Harbor en route to the U.S. mainland, is not equivalent. Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor are ground zero; the Washington Mall is not. The significance of President Obama being accompanied by World War II historic denier Abe during his Hiroshima visit will not be lost in those Asian countries victimized by Imperial Japan.
Another important question is what the Hiroshima visit will signify in terms of President Truman’s decision and the strongly held belief of World War II’s “Greatest Generation,” now largely gone, that the atomic bombings saved lives and brought the most horrendous war in history to a swift conclusion. Should the State Department’s Harry S. Truman building, officially so named in 2000 under the Clinton Administration, now be designated with another name due to Truman’s atomic bomb decision just as President Andrew Jackson is being expunged from the front of the twenty dollar bill due to his authorization of the “Trail of Tears” expulsion of Native Americans?
The fact remains that every American president as Commander in Chief engaged in armed hostilities, going back to George Washington, has overseen the deaths of innocent civilians in the execution of a war. President Obama himself, seeking as President Truman did to prevent “boots on the ground” and to minimize American military casualties, has ordered drone strikes as a chief method of conducting the war against international terrorists. The Washington Times reported on October 15, 2015 that “Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a 5-month-long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.” And during the same month, Doctors Without Borders//Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) issued a statement condemning “in the strongest possible terms the horrific aerial bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Twelve staff members and at least 10 patients, including three children, were killed; 37 people were injured including 19 staff members. This attack constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law. All indications currently point to the bombing being carried out by international Coalition forces.” President Obama’s hands are hardly “clean” in this regard.
A key unintended consequence of President Obama’s Hiroshima visit is that the nationalist deniers of Imperial Japan’s historic crimes will use the visit to attempt to seize control of the historic narrative of the War in the Pacific, still a subject of ongoing debate. Even if studiously avoiding any overt action which could be interpreted as second-guessing the war-time decisions of another Commander in Chief, President Obama’s visit will likely increase the calls of those who seek to define President Harry Truman as the true war criminal of the Pacific War, not those condemned by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo. And one can only wonder if, decades from now, when the September 11th, Boston Marathon, and San Bernardino attacks are but distant memories, there will be other revisionist voices in the Middle East, South Asia, and elsewhere who will seek equally to condemn President Barack Obama and his legacy due to his authorization of drone strikes that included significant civilian casualties.
Dennis P. Halpin, a former adviser on Asian issues to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute (SAIS) and an adviser to the Poblete Analysis Group.
