Hiroshima victims want Obama apology
A group of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan want an apology from President Obama when he visits Hiroshima next week.
Leaders of survivors’ organizations say the president should revisit the U.S.’s decision to use nuclear weapons at the end of World War II, even though Obama is not expected to issue an apology and the Japanese government has not asked for one.
{mosads}”I urge him to apologize to those who died, bereaved families and parents who lost their children,” Terumi Tanaka, a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing and secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, said Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse.
Others have urged Obama to meet with survivors and called the lack of demand for an apology from Japanese officials disappointing.
“I suspect there was a pressure [not to seek an apology] to create an atmosphere that would make it easier for Obama to visit Hiroshima,” said Hiroshima survivor Toshiki Fujimori, according to The Associated Press.
“But many of the survivors don’t think they can do without an apology at all.”
Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, where the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945. The blast killed around 140,000 people.
The president is expected to visit the site with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and deliver a speech.
But he is not expected to issue an apology or meet with bomb victims or survivors.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last week that if someone interprets Obama’s trip as an apology, “they will be interpreting it wrongly.”
He said the president would focus on sending “a much more forward-looking” anti-nuclear proliferation message.
The visit comes amid Obama’s trip to Vietnam and Japan, where is is attending the Group of Seven summit.
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