President Joe Biden won’t apologize for the United States’ use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II during his trip to the G7.
‘No,’ White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters when asked if Biden would offer an apology.
Biden will visit the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima on Friday and meet with survivors of the nuclear blast. It’s estimated that around 135,000 civilians were killed in by the atomic bombs used in 1945 with another 69,000 injured.
‘The President won’t be making a statement at the Peace Memorial Park,’ Sullivan told reporters traveling on Air Force One to the summit. ‘He’ll be participating with the other G7 leaders in a wreath-laying and a few other events. But this is not, from his perspective, a bilateral moment. This is him, as one of the G7 leaders, coming to pay respects.’
President Joe Biden will visit Peace Memorial in Hiroshima on Friday during G7 but will not apologize for the United States using the atomic bomb during World War II
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is hosting the gathering of world leaders, is from Hiroshima.
Sullivan said Biden’s visit to the memorial is being made out of respect for Kishida, who entered Japanese politics as a member of the Japanese House of Representatives for Hiroshima’s First District.
The Peace Memorial is the remains of the only building in Hiroshima to survive the nuclear blast.
The site includes memorials for the dead, the iconic bombed-out Peace Dome, and a museum on the bomb and its aftermath. The Peace Park is dedicated to the pursuit of peace and nuclear disarmament.
Kishida has made nuclear proliferation and disarmament part of his life’s work. He and President Biden will hold a one-on-one meeting on Thursday evening shortly after the U.S. president arrives in Hiroshima.
When Kishida announced the G7 summit – the gathering of leaders from the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy – would take place in his hometown, he said he hoped the location would ‘send a message to the world that mankind will never again cause the catastrophe of nuclear weapons.’
Survivors of the nuclear blast in Hiroshima in 1945; It’s estimated that around 135,000 civilians were killed in by the atomic bombs with another 69,000 injured
President Biden will visit the peace memorial out of respect for Japanese prime minister
The world leaders are gathering at a time Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and North Korea has been conducting tests of nuclear missiles.
‘We need to send out a strong message that we will note tolerate the use of force to change the status quo unilaterally as witnessed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … that we will protect the international order based on rule of law,’ Kishida told the Japan Times in April.
‘We won’t allow the treat of nuclear weapons by Russia.’
Since the bombing in 1945, Hiroshima has been rebuilt to become Japan’s 10th latest city.
The United States has been careful not to apologize for the use of the weapon while expressing sorrow over the destruction it caused.
Barack Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, but did not apologize for the U.S. attacks.
Instead he spoke about the costs of war and the need for peace and nuclear disarmament.
‘In the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction: how the very spark that marks us as a species — our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction,’ he said.
Obama vision for a world without nuclear weapons contributed to his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The only building in Hiroshima to survive the 1945 bombing is now the iconic Peace Memorial
On August 6th and August 9th 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.
It remains the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
Some Japanese politicians have called for the U.S. to offer an official apology but many Americans feel to do so would undermine the war efforts.
