But while many Japanese survivors might want President Obama to apologize for the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Japanese government might actually prefer that Obama
not apologize.
Indeed, Japans vice foreign minister, Mitoji Yabunaka, reportedly told US Ambassador John Roos that "President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a non starter," according to a
2009 State Department cable released in 2011 by WikiLeaks.
So why in the world wouldnt the Japanese government want the US to apologize for inflicting such a horrendous tragedy on Japan? It turns out there are two reasons:
1) It would put pressure on Japan to apologize in kind
An apology from President Obama could make Prime Minister Shinzo Abe feel compelled to offer his own apology for Japans wartime atrocities, including the "Rape of Nanking" in China and massacres of ethnic Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore which, according to Yuki Tanaka, a professor at Hiroshima City University I spoke with, were perpetrated in part by soldiers from Hiroshima.
"Obama apologizing would bring up the issue of Japan apologizing, which is something Mr. Abe desperately wants to avoid," Michael Cucek, an adjunct professor at Temple Universitys Japan campus, told me in an interview.
Already, a group of
more than 300 Hiroshima peace activists are calling on the prime minister to join Obama in apologizing for the "grave war crimes [both] nations committed."
Abe has long resisted such mea culpas, saying Japan needs to end its "masochistic" feelings of guilt. In December,
he apologized for Japans use of Korean "comfort women" as sex slaves during the war, but afterward he returned to his "time to move on" refrain, telling reporters, "We should not drag this problem into the next generation."
The same issues are now surfacing in Hiroshima. When the bomb fell there, tens of thousands of Koreans were working on the ground as forced laborers, and
an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 were killed. Last week, a group representing Korean survivors called on both Obama and Abe to apologize and wrote to Obama, "We hope your visit to Hiroshima will not be used to further the Abe governments intention of painting Japan merely as a victim."
Tanaka, the history professor, said Japan could avoid such accusations of whitewashing if it followed Germanys lead and explored its own culpability. That country takes the responsibility so seriously theres even a German word, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, to describe coming to terms with ones past.
"If you go to the Holocaust museum in Berlin, you always see groups of students engaging in discussions," Tanaka said. "You go to Hiroshima and theres no discussion, only victimization."
2) It could inflame a long-simmering domestic debate over nuclear power and nuclear weapons
An apology from Obama for using nuclear weapons on Japan "could open up a can of worms" about Japans own nuclear program, Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, told me when we spoke recently.
Since the disaster at Japan's
Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011, Prime Minister Abe has worked hard to contain a vocal anti-nuclear movement in Japan. On the fifth anniversary of the disaster,
he reaffirmed his commitment, saying Japan "cannot do without" nuclear power.
Japan now has the largest stockpile of separated plutonium of any country that isnt a nuclear power, according to the
Wall Street Journal. And thats emboldened some war hawks: "If Japan wanted to develop nuclear weapons, it could do it almost immediately," former Tokyo governor and military hard-liner Shintaro Ishihara told a group of journalists last week. "And why shouldnt Japan have its own?"
With North Korea testing nuclear weapons just a few hundred miles away, that view might be gaining traction. In April, shortly after Donald Trump mused
in the New York Times about the possibility of abandoning the US nuclear commitment to Japans security and encouraging Japan to develop its own arsenal instead, Abe
issued a statement saying that the Japanese constitution does, in fact, allow for the development and use of nuclear weapons.
"This is a government that is not ruling out owning and using a nuclear weapon, so an apology at Hiroshima is going to make things awkward," said Sophia Universitys Nakano.
Nakano said Abe also sees a political opportunity in Obamas visit, which comes just ahead of Japans summer elections, and doesnt want to spoil that with apologies. There is already an upper house election scheduled, but,
as the Japan Times reports, Abe may get enough of a bump from Obamas visit that he decides to call a lower house poll as well.
If his party gets a majority in both houses, hes pledged to go forward with changes to Japans pacifist constitution.
Tanaka, the survivor who lost five family members, told reporters he thinks thats the wrong direction for the country. "Our constitution calls for the peaceful resolution of conflict. This is important to the survivors, and I think if we can share this idea with the world, it could become the global norm." Its a message he said he hopes to deliver to President Obama, whether or not the president offers an apology.
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