Obama's Hiroshima visit
By Kim Mi-kyoung
U.S. President Barack Obama is going to visit the city of Hiroshima on May 27. He will be the first incumbent American President who will visit Hiroshima. President Obama is expected to deliver anti-nuclear speech, a sequel version to his Prague remarks which helped him to land on the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
The city of Hiroshima stands as living testimony to the modern tragedy that science and technology can lead to our own annihilation. The atomic energy can be converted into lethal weapon which can indiscriminately kill and maim. When considering the gap between the city’s anti-nuclear pacifism and Japan’s nuclear reality, it often feels as if Hiroshima is not an integral part of the Japanese nation. This is particular so since the arrival of the second Abe administration which has been forcefully pushing forward with Japan’s rearmament and Constitutional amendment.
The massive death toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a major impetus behind Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945. The two bombs claimed about 700,000 lives, mostly civilians. What the city of Hiroshima witnessed and experienced, often described as “burning hell,” was quickly forgotten in Japanese memory primarily due to the U.S. interim government’s information control and post-war reconstruction boom. A sudden awakening happened with a Japanese fishing boat’s radiation exposure to a hydrogen bomb within U.S. territory in 1954. Since that time, Hiroshima has become the authoritative symbol of anti-nuclear pacifism both in global as well as domestic terrains.
The city of Hiroshima has been wooing President Obama’s visit since his inauguration as a Nobel laureate. “Obamajority” campaign combined U.S. President’s name with visions of a global majority in favor of total abolition of nuclear weapons. This pitch, however, was causing discomfort among the national leaders in Japan, primarily because of the country’s complicated security relations with the U.S.
The Abe administration has made it clear that Japan favors the U.S. nuclear umbrella as protection against its hypothetical enemies of China and North Korea. This stance will continue as the popular support for the current Abe leadership is not likely to dissipate anytime soon.
On other hand, the city of Hiroshima has capitalized on a different aspect of American politics. Obama’s pledge to promote non-nuclear proliferation, enunciated in Prague in April 2009, was well received by the international community, and especially so here in Hiroshima. Indeed, nobody could disagree with the idea that a world free of nuclear stockpiles would be a far better place to live. When the city of Hiroshima seized on the idea, however, the perspective shifted, at least in domestic turf.
For the past 60 years, Japan has been under the U.S. security umbrella. The nuclear facilities housed on U.S. military bases in Japan are a powerful reminder of the binding bilateral security treaty. Interestingly, recent declassified documents indicate that the Japanese administration under Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, Abe’s great uncle, asked U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to use nuclear weapons against China in 1965 if a war breaks out between China and Japan. Sato ironically later won the Nobel Peace Prize for introducing Japan’s three non-nuclear principles in 1974.
This stark contrast between Sato’s public behavior and private desire displays the moral cacophony still rampant in Japan’s politics. Sato’s message revealed a sadistic sense of entitlements forged by its own victimhood with nuclear atrocity - namely, “you have done this to me, and you can do it again to our common enemy.” The true pacifist spirit of “No More Hiroshima, No More War” was virtually absent in Sato’s actions and that continues to pervade Japan’s political paradigm. This persistent double standard is apparent in the “Obamajority” appeal of a nuclear-free world and Japan’s dependence on the U.S. for nuclear protection.
With or without “Obamajority,” Japan has the capacity to become a nuclear power. The amount of enriched plutonium processed at its nuclear power plants can be easily assembled into hundreds of warheads. Additionally, the private sector has an advanced level of nuclear dual technology which became most obvious with Abe’s recent nuclear power plant sales pitch in the Middle East. These examples contradict the anti-nuclear Japan of Peace Constitution.
Hiroshima’s tragedy lies with its divorce from the Japanese nuclear reality. Its anti-nuclear and anti-war advocacy would have a true sense of universal appeal when the city and the Japanese government take more proactive stance towards non-Japanese a-bomb victims including 70,000 Koreans. Without many and belated rectifying measures, piecing together Hiroshima’s spirit, Obama's non-nuclear pledge, and a quasi-nuclear Japan can be a big challenge. The two stories of Japan and Hiroshima are a sure sign that the road to a nuclear-free world is going to be very bumpy. Across the shore, Trump is shouting out loud that Korea and Japan should arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
Obama is coming to the town of Hiroshima. Is he going to be a Santa Clause? Or is he going to be one of those politician preoccupied with leaving unrealizable legacies behind as his time is ending?
Kim Mi-kyoung is associate professor at Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute. She can be reached at mkkim_33@hotmail.com.