Biden won’t apologize for Hiroshima atomic bomb during Japan visit

President Joe Biden will not apologize during his trip to the G7 for the use of the atomic bomb by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

“No,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters when asked if Biden wanted to apologize.

Biden will visit the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima on Friday and meet survivors of the nuclear explosion. It is estimated that about 135,000 civilians were killed by the atomic bombs used in 1945 and another 69,000 were injured.

“The president will not make a statement at Peace Memorial Park,” Sullivan told reporters traveling on Air Force One to the summit. He will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony and a few other events along with the other G7 leaders. But this, from his perspective, is not a bilateral moment. This is him, as one of the G7 leaders, coming to pay tribute.’

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is hosting the meeting of world leaders, is from Hiroshima.

Sullivan said Biden’s visit to the memorial is made out of respect for Kishida, who entered Japanese politics as a member of Japan’s House of Representatives for Hiroshima’s 1st district.

The Peace Memorial is the remains of the only building in Hiroshima to survive the nuclear blast.

The site includes memorials to the dead, the iconic bombed-out Peace Dome, and a museum about 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 Thursday night, shortly after the US president arrives in Hiroshima.

When Kishida announced that 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 venue would “send a message to the world that humanity never again cause the catastrophe of nuclear weapons.’

World leaders are meeting at a time when Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and North Korea has tested nuclear missiles.

“We must send a strong message that we will tolerate the use of force to unilaterally change the status quo, as evidenced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine…that we will protect international order based on the rule of law,” Kishida said . the Japan Times in April.

“We will not allow Russia to deal with nuclear weapons.”

Since the 1945 bombing, Hiroshima has been rebuilt as Japan’s 10th newest city.

The United States has been careful not to apologize for the use of the weapon, while expressing its sorrow for the destruction it caused.

Barack Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, but made no apology for the US attacks.

Instead, he spoke of the cost of war and the need for peace and nuclear disarmament.

“In the image of a mushroom cloud rising into this sky, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction: how the spark that marks us as a species – our thoughts, our imaginations, our language, our tools to make, our ability to differentiate ourselves from nature and bend it to our will — those same things also give us the capacity for unparalleled destruction,” he said.

Obama’s vision for a world without nuclear weapons helped win the Nobel Peace Prize.

On August 6 and 9, 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 on the US to make an official apology, but many Americans believe doing so would undermine the war effort.