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"The president’s visit to city hit by the first US A-bomb helps build bridges, writes Jacob Weisberg." It's for innocent people, the victims - those souls speak to us, whether or not we hear them out - I heard Obama speaks while driving - His tone (making me cry, tears running down on my cheek, fuzzing my vision) of speech hit me so hard that I came to realize Obama, grass-rooted out of the public like ordinary folks, powerless, silent mass, the victims, knows well about struggles of these folks.
I checked it out, seeing the face of Japs PM, a distance that shows his ego different from those his own people; his own people want peace of life. I heard the cry-out back to the US in election, ordinary folks' cry-out for peace vs. some ego-driven figures hype for their ego. so much to burden to freedom for folks, born with limitation.
I was concerned that Obama might do a stupid thing, but he didn't - He refused to make an apology for President Harry Truman’s decision to authorize the bombings ! Well-justified!
Cited below is for pure education only, not for commercial purpose - don't distribute.
Hear Obama's speech: Obama calls for the end of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima http://wapo.st/25pJn4T
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广岛风云 且看奥巴马如何避安倍连环陷阱(图)
一直以来，日本都积极致力于邀请外国政要访问二战核爆地，其中，美国政要访问日本最为看重，奥巴马2009年、2010年和2014年访问日本前，日本都曾呼吁奥巴马访问核爆地。但美国鉴于此事敏感一直没有同意，早在2015年6月，日本就曾考虑在广岛举行G7峰会，美国明确予以拒绝。如今，任期结束临近，无核世界的政治遗产催生奥巴马最后一次访问。日本怎能不抓住这一重要机会？
安倍精心布陷阱
事实证明，日本在幕后做了精心布局。2015年6月日本提出在广岛举办G7峰会遭到美国拒绝后，不得不退而求其次，将G7外长会议安排在广岛，并称有助于建立无核化世界，奥巴马在2009年就提出了“建立一个无核化世界”的目标，此番表态正中奥巴马的下怀。
美国国务卿克里（John Kerry）4月访问广岛前，日本提前多次向美方告知“不要求道歉”，克里访问广岛之行得以促成。克里的访问又给奥巴马访问日本带来了更多的希望，日本媒体开始大肆造势，甚至提前信誓旦旦地发布了奥巴马访问的消息。
克里试过水温，白宫开始放风，美国多家主流媒体也支持奥巴马访问广岛，日本则趁势将主动权交给了美国，尽量弱化希望奥巴马到访的声音，也采取了对待克里访问广岛同样的态度——不要求道歉。至此，奥巴马访问广岛水到渠成。http://www.wenxuecity.com/news/2016/05/26/5236529.html
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Barack Obama makes historic visit to Hiroshima
©Reuters
US President Barack Obama ambraces atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
Barack Obama has become the first sitting US president to confront the consequences of using an atomic bomb as he visited Hiroshima to remember its dead and demand a world free from nuclear weapons.
With the skeleton of Hiroshima’s A-Bomb Dome as a backdrop, Mr Obama laid a wreath in memory of at least 80,000 people who died when the US became the first and only country to launch a nuclear attack, on August 6 1945.
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On this story
- Global Insight Obama nuclear legacy hangs over Hiroshima
- Comment Jacob Weisberg - Obama in Hiroshima
- Korea backlash over Obama Hiroshima visit
- Joji Sakurai Hiroshima’s contradictions
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Mr Obama and Mr Abe laid wreaths in turn. Mr Abe bowed; Mr Obama did not. Then the two men shook hands.
“Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” said Mr Obama, addressing an audience including hibakusha, as survivors of the bombing are known. “A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
“Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them,” Mr Obama added.
The US president made clear he was not apologising. Just ahead of his Hiroshima visit, addressing troops at a US Marine Corps base near Hiroshima — choreography intended to show strength as well as sorrow — he said the visit was an “opportunity to honour the memory of all who were lost in World War Two”.
Mr Obama’s visit is a powerful symbol of reconciliation between the US and Japan, former enemies who have became close allies. Opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese are pleased Mr Obama is visiting now, even without an apology, after US presidents avoided the site for 71 years.
But the visit to Hiroshima did draw some criticism from the right in the US. John Bolton, former ambassador to the UN, said the trip was part of the president’s “shameful apology tour” and was an exercise in demonstrating “moral equivalence” between the decision to drop a nuclear bomb and Pearl Harbor. “Obama’s apologies and gestures prove yet again that he isn’t like those other presidents on our currency,” Mr Bolton wrote in the New York Post.
Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them
- Barack Obama
The visit also symbolises some of the frustrated ambitions of Mr Obama’s presidency. In the seven years since his landmark speech in Prague, where he said the US had a “moral responsibility” to rid the world of atomic weapons, Russia, China and others have modernised their atomic arms.
Mr Obama himself has begun a $1tn upgrade to the US nuclear arsenal. Visiting Hiroshima is a chance to revive that moral mission from 2009 as his presidency draws to a close.
Hans Kristensen, an expert on nuclear issues at the Federation of American Scientists, said that recently disclosed figures show the Obama administration had reduced the stockpile of nuclear weapons at a slower pace than any administration since the end of the Cold War. He said the US had cut its stockpile by 702 warheads to 4,571 — a reduction of 13 per cent — compared to a nearly 50 per cent drop during the George W Bush administration.
“To be fair, it is not all President Obama’s fault,” Mr Kristensen wrote. “An entrenched and almost ideologically opposed Congress has fought his arms reduction vision every step of the way.”
©AP
US President Barack Obama lays a wreath at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the birth of the nuclear age, where a single bomb could bring instant death to millions of civilians.
In the US, Mr Obama’s visit has reignited a long-running debate about whether the atomic bombings were justified, saving lives by helping to end the war, or were an unnecessary attack on a largely civilian target, launched without warning.
©AP
US President Barack Obama delivers remarks next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
In Japan, the atomic conflagration and horrifying loss of civilian life has shaped how the second world war is remembered. To some in South Korea and China, Mr Obama’s visit promotes a version of history in which Japan thinks of itself as a victim and not as an aggressor.
Obama cements his legacy with his trip to Hiroshima
The president’s visit to city hit by the first US A-bomb helps build bridges, writes Jacob Weisberg
The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8.15am local time, detonating 600 metres above the ground with a “white magnesium flash”. The spreading blast and fireball destroyed every building within 2km. Tens of thousands of people died instantly.
Akiko Takakura, who survived just 300m from the hypocentre, spoke of a whirlpool of fire. “The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers,” she told an archive project years later.
“A light grey liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers. I was so shocked to know that fingers and bodies could be burnt and deformed like that. I just couldn’t believe it,” she said.
Horribly burnt, survivors fled the ruins of the city as a black rain of radioactive dust and ash began to fall. Many more died in the following days from burns and radiation; the bombing of Nagasaki took place three days later, on August 9. Japan surrendered on August 15.
Many of the living survivors were children at the time of the bombing. Mr Obama’s visit seven decades later is a memorial to the attack that shaped their lives and raises the hope that such weapons may never be used again.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5f230c8c-23e3-11e6-aa98-db1e01fabc0c.html#ft-article-comments
