President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden needed some guidance from Japanese Prime Minister Kishida and his wife Yuko Kishida on Friday morning as the foursome posed for their first photo-op at the G7 in Hiroshima.
The Bidens joined other G7 leaders on Friday morning for a tour of Hiroshima’s Peace Park and Memorial Museum.
They arrived last and walked down a red carpet with four marks on the floor. The foursome shuffled around each other as they tried to figure out the lineup.
“We’ll figure it out,” Jill Biden said with a laugh, as the prime minister helped them to their markings on the floor.
The leaders toured the museum at the Memorial, which is dedicated to the thousands who died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II.
Biden and the other G7 leaders will lay a wreath at the memorial and then plant a tree in honor of the victims.
WHERE DO WE STAND? President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden (center) try to figure out which marker on the floor to stand on as they pose for a photo with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left) and his wife, Yuko Kishida (right) )
During the visit, Biden will not apologize for the use of the nuclear bomb by the US on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki finish WWII.
“No,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday when asked if Biden wanted to apologize.
It is estimated that about 135,000 civilians were killed by the atomic bombs used in 1945 and another 69,000 were injured.
Kishida, who is hosting the meeting of world leaders, is from Hiroshima. He entered Japanese politics as a member of the Japanese 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.’
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden (left) arrive Friday at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park and are greeted by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his wife Yuko Kishida (right)
Survivors of the 1945 Hiroshima nuclear blast; It is estimated that about 135,000 civilians were killed by the atomic bombs and another 69,000 were injured
President Barack Obama hugs Mori Shigeaki, an atomic bomb survivor, during his May 2016 visit to Hiroshima (left); Obama lays a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima during his visit in May 2016
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.
The only building in Hiroshima to survive the 1945 bombing is now the iconic Peace Memorial
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.