As for this topic, please see my yesterday's posting (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20160511).(Lily)
Japan Times（http://www.japantimes.co.jp/）
(1) Japan, America welcome Obama Hiroshima plans; Pearl Harbor visit mooted
by Eric Johnston and Reiji Yoshida
Staff Writers
11 May 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will visit Hiroshima on May 27 following the Group of Seven Ise-Shima summit was welcomed by a variety of people in Japan and the United States on Wednesday.
Attention has turned to what he will say and do at the site of the world’s first atomic bombing, and whether the visit by the first ever sitting U.S. president will be viewed as a de facto apology.
A diplomatic source said Obama may lay flowers, visit the Peace Memorial Museum and make a short speech or statement in which he calls for nuclear disarmament.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday that there were a lot of opinions about the trip in the U.S., but that Obama would visit Hiroshima’s Peace Park and offer his own reflections to the people of that city.
“The president certainly does understand that the U.S. bears a special responsibility. The U.S. continues to be the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and it means that our country bears a special responsibility to lead the world in an effort to eliminate them. This is a goal that has been sought by Democratic and Republican presidents,” Earnest said.
He said it remains to be seen if Obama will have a chance to meet hibakusha atomic bomb survivors during the visit.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Wednesday welcomed Obama’s decision, but he stopped short of commenting on historical issues related to World War II to avoid a diplomatic row with the United States.
“What hibakusha want is no repeat of the calamity the atomic bombings caused,” Suga told a daily news conference, referring to survivors of the 1945 destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tokyo believes Obama’s visit is intended to “send a strong message toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” he added.
The Obama administration has been weighing a visit ever since U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last month set foot in Hiroshima for a G-7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
“I welcome President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima from the bottom of my heart,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who will accompany Obama to Hiroshima, said Tuesday evening.
Also on Wednesday, the Nikkei financial newspaper reported that Abe may visit Pearl Harbor in November in a symbolic gesture to cement Japan’s alliance with the U.S., quoting an unnamed government source.
Suga said the government is not currently considering such a trip, but he added: “I don’t know about the future.”
The apparent government leak to the Nikkei may be a trial balloon by Abe to test reactions in Japan and the U.S.
Discussing historical issues relating to the U.S. atomic bombings or Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor is a potential minefield for Abe, who has centered most of his diplomatic and military policies on Japan’s ties with the United States.
Abe and Suga have repeatedly dodged questions over whether Tokyo will seek an apology for the bombings, which killed at least 140,000 people in Hiroshima and another 74,000 in Nagasaki.
On Tuesday Abe only said that Obama made a “grave decision” to visit Hiroshima, and on Wednesday Suga went only as far as saying Obama’s plan will be “a historic opportunity to give momentum” to the effort for a world without nuclear weapons.
Asked if Japan expects Obama’s visit will be future-oriented and not focused on historical issues, Suga said he believes Obama will come to Hiroshima harboring such a hope.
Tobias Harris, a Japanese politics specialist at Washington-based risk advisory service Teneo Intelligence, said Obama is likely to focus on the suffering of the victims.
“Surely he can’t go to Hiroshima and discuss the atomic bombing in passive voice, as if it were some kind of natural disaster?” Harris said. “I do expect that he’ll have to discuss the suffering — and therefore the humanity — of America’s victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which certain sections of American political opinion will criticize as an apology, but I don’t think he’ll go so far as to question the necessity of the decision or, for that matter, offer a lengthy defense of the U.S. decision to drop the bomb.”
Richard Samuels, director of the Japan Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the Obama visit will create strong reactions in two constituencies in particular.
“In Japan, it is the Japanese right which has spun up the narrative of ‘Japan as victim.’ They will insist that an Obama visit is vindication of that view. The other is the American right, which will bark about an Obama apology tour, without regard for what he actually says or does in Hiroshima. They will try to agitate the veteran’s community and survivors of the POW camps,” Samuels said.
“Neither is a reason to avoid the visit. Obama has the opportunity to acknowledge the past and to remind the world how important it is to take responsibility for the horrors of war into our respective civic cultures. And in so doing, he will be pointing his metaphorical finger right back at Japan, which has often failed to do this,” Samuels added.
How surviving veterans in the U.S. will view the visit is of special concern to Obama. Jan Thompson, President of American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society, welcomed the visit but said it should not void the full history of Hiroshima.
“This history is first and foremost about the most devastating war in world history where more noncombatants died than combatants. It is about American and Allied soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who fought for peace in Asia,” Thompson said. “It is about a war started by Japan, and for the visit to be solely aspirational and focused on nuclear weapons avoids the hard truths of what it means to fight for freedom and released from tyrannical militarist regime.”
Although there will be no formal apology by Obama for the bombing and the Japanese government has said none is being sought, some Japanese feel such words are necessary.
Organizers of a May 21 meeting in Hiroshima seeking an apology are asking Obama to use his remaining time in office to take responsibility for the bombing, even as they are also calling on the Japanese government to accept Japan’s responsibility for waging war.
“We seek public recognition that Obama will in Hiroshima, as president, clearly recognize the criminality of mass, indiscriminate slaughter using atomic weapons, have the U.S. take responsibility, and apologize to the victims of the atomic bomb,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “At the same time, the Japanese government and the Abe administration should sincerely accept Japan’s war responsibility and apologize, as well as offer a just compensation to victims of Japan’s aggression.”
The city of Hiroshima itself is not seeking an apology. On Wednesday, the city established a task force to prepare for Obama’s visit. Yoshifumi Ishida, head of the task force, said that, fundamentally, it was hoped the U.S. president would do two things.
“We want him to meet with the hibakusha and listen to their personal stories and memories of August 6th, 1945. In addition, we also hope that Obama will build on his speech that he made in Prague in 2009 and work hard to eliminate nuclear weapons,” Ishida said.
Information from Kyodo added
(2)Japanese hail Hiroshima visit, say apology not needed
by Magdalena Osumi and Daisuke Kikuchi
Staff Writers
11 May 2016
On the streets of Tokyo, a majority of people reporters spoke to on Tuesday said U.S. President Barack Obama does not need to say sorry during his May 27 visit to Hiroshima.
And an online poll by The Japan Times, which sampled viewers worldwide, found overwhelming agreement.
“I’m simply surprised that the president of the United States is finally visiting Hiroshima,” said housewife Ayako Nishio, 54. “It’s hard to comment on its political aspects, but I think many Japanese are feeling positive about his visit.”
A 36-year-old man who identified himself as Masuda agreed: “It is more important that the president of the United State wants to understand a big historical event than it being an apology.”
Some young people said the war is so remote it makes an apology unnecessary.
“I don’t really care about Obama apologizing for past events,” said 24-year-old Naoto Adachihara. “It was years ago and Obama has nothing to do with what happened in the war.”
Adachihara said he doubts many young people expect contrition: “And even if he apologized, I would think it was not needed. It wouldn’t make any impression on me.”
Aun Ota, 42, from Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, stressed that Obama did not order the bombings and does not need to take responsibility, even though they were wrong.
“I don’t think Obama should make a personal apology but as a nation, America should admit the bombings were a mistake of the past and think of measures to prevent something similar from occurring,” Ota said.
Kazuki Sasayama, 22, a cake shop employee from Atsugi in Kanagawa Prefecture said he was aware that for Japan’s older generations, including survivors of the war, an apology would be unsatisfying.
“But instead of dredging up memories of the past, Obama could focus on future collaboration with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces or other positive steps for the future,” Sasayama said.
While calling the first visit of a sitting U.S. president to Hiroshima a “big step forward,” a 23-year-old female sales agent who did not give her name said an apology might trigger a negative response in the U.S.
“Some Americans believe Hiroshima bombings were justified so if he came to apologize it would anger them,” she said. “But for someone like me, who hasn’t experienced war, rather than whether Obama should or shouldn’t apologize, the more important thing is what we should do from now on.”
It was not only young people who said they are looking to the future rather than the past.
A 67-year-old man from the city of Shiroi, Chiba Prefecture, said he hopes Obama will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where belongings of the bombing’s victims and other memorabilia from August 1945 are exhibited.
“I just want Obama to use it as an opportunity to see and contemplate what happened and why it shouldn’t happen again,” he said.
Tokyo-based IT salesman Yuichi Aimoto, 46, said Japan knows how it feels to be ordered to apologize, and Obama can be assured that won’t happen.
“Japan, too, hears demands by China or South Korea to apologize for war crimes committed against them, but I think it is not in the nature of Japanese people to seek recompense for past harm endlessly,” Aimoto said.
But for 74-year-old Tokyo resident Norihiko Fujii, Obama’s visit to Hiroshima “comes too late.”
He said that as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama should have made the visit long ago.
“In Americans’ understanding the bombings helped bring the war to an end, and they will never come to apologize. That’s something they just won’t do, culturally,” Fujii said. “They’ve never apologized for any war crimes … so why would they come to say sorry now. Even if Obama apologized during his visit, it would be too late.”
He added, he would not expect an apology from Americans whose perceptions of war crimes differ from those of Japanese. Moreover, he speculated that the decision is viewed unfavorably in the U.S.
“He’s losing popularity and knows he won’t be re-elected as president, so he doesn’t need to fear any consequences of his visit,” Fujii said.
Following Washington’s announcement of the visit Tuesday evening, The Japan Times began an online poll asking Internet users whether Obama should apologize.
More than 600 people responded as of 7 p.m. Wednesday, with about 62 percent saying he should not. About 38 percent of respondents said he should.
Of the total, 41 percent said no apology is needed, but they urged Obama to make a commitment to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.
(3)Abe may call Lower House poll, using tailwind from Obama’s Hiroshima visit
by Ayako Mie
Staff Writer
11 May 2016
For Tokyo, U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima could bring two significant benefits.
It hopes the gesture will rekindle movement toward a world without nuclear weapons.
But in the short-term there could be a significant additional payoff: enough upswing for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to call a Lower House election to coincide with a planned Upper House poll scheduled in July.
Until recently, Abe believed he could secure landslides in both chambers and therefore a free hand in revising the Constitution. But he gave up the idea after the Kumamoto earthquakes last month to forestall criticism of playing political games at a time of national trauma.
Yet, by accompanying Obama to Hiroshima, Abe may be seen as a leader who is strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance. It could also present him as a global leader spearheading a movement for a global peace, enough to offset the damage sustained when he forced security legislation through the Diet late last year. Those laws took effect in April.
“I think the chances are very high that Abe will dissolve the Diet, because this would be the best timing for him to call double elections,” Yuichiro Tamaki, a Lower House member of the opposition Democratic Party told The Japan Times. “The image of Obama and Abe together is likely to help push up the approval rate of Abe’s government.”
A firm Japan-U.S. alliance has been a strong driving force for Abe, who succeeded in renewing the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation for the first time in 18 years. The security laws enacted last month would also allow Japan to come to the aid of U.S. troops under attack if Japan is itself under threat.
When asked about Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Wednesday stressed Abe’s position that the Japan-U.S. relationship is the “cornerstone” of Japanese diplomacy.
Tsutomu Sato, who heads the Liberal Democratic Party’s Lower House Diet matter committee, echoed Suga’s comments by saying Abe’s commitment to the bilateral relationship has paid off.
One unnamed LDP lawmaker said Obama’s visit to Hiroshima would give another boost to Abe’s ruling coalition in the election.
This apparent showcasing of a strong Japan-U.S. alliance comes at a time when presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has questioned its value and China has been flexing its beefed-up muscles in the South China and East China seas.
Xinhua News Agency on Tuesday noted that the U.S. has no intention of apologizing for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. China routinely accuses Japan of failing to reflect on the root cause of the tragedy while emphasizing its victimhood.
Experts say China has been using this historical context to try to drive Washington and Tokyo apart, out of fear that they seek jointly to challenge China.
Yet Tetsuo Kotani said China can no longer try to drive a wedge between Japan and the U.S. by playing the history card.
“Obama’s visit shows that Japan and the U.S. can reconcile without a U.S. apology,” said Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo.
Kotani added, Obama’s vision for a world without nuclear weapons is an ultimate goal but not an immediate one. He said Japan will still need to rely on extended deterrence for now.
Nevertheless, reconciliation between the attacker and victim would send a strong message for nuclear disarmament and regional security.
“If we work together to strengthen the extended deterrence, it could counter provocation by countries like China or North Korea, which could contribute to regional security,” Kotani said.
（End）
