Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP / Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry did not apologize for America's decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during a historic visit to the memorial in the Japanese city.
He is the highest-ranking U.S. official to ever visit the memorial, which commemorates the 140,000 people who died after the world's first atomic bomb was dropped by an American bomber on the city in August 1945.
Kerry visited the Bomb Dome — over which the A-bomb exploded — with the British foreign secretary Philip Hammond and other Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers ahead of the global finance summit in Japan next month.
He did not speak publicly at the ceremony on Monday, but laid wreaths and spoke to a number of Japanese schoolchildren at the site.
Throughout the service, Kerry was seen whispering to the Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishido — a Hiroshima native — and later penned a message in the visitors' book.
Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP / Getty Images
"Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial," Kerry wrote. "It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself."
"War must be the last resort — never the first choice," he added. "This memorial compels us all to redouble our efforts to change the world, to find peace and build the future so yearned for by citizens everywhere."
Ahead of the ceremony, an anonymous state department official reportedly told the Washington Post: "If you're asking whether the secretary of state came to Hiroshima to apologize, the answer is no. If you're asking whether the secretary and I think all Americans and all Japanese are filled with sorrow at the tragedies that befell so many of our countrymen, the answer is yes."
Kerry is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the memorial, and he later also went to the nearby dedicated museum and engaged with some of the 900 schoolchildren present at the ceremony.
Visiting Hiroshima had previously been studiously avoided by visiting U.S. statesmen.
Speaking prior to the trip, Kerry had stressed his visit was focused on the "present and the future" although he also had said his time in Hiroshima would "revisit the past and honor those who perished".
It comes ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to Japan to attend the G7 summit next month. The White House has refused to comment on whether Obama will take the unprecedented step of visiting the memorial, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to do so, but an official suggested to Reuters there was no "great or insurmountable angst about the optics or the politics of a visit to Hiroshima".
At least 140,000 people died after US B-29 bomber Enola Gray dropped an uranium bomb above the city, shortly after 8 a.m. on 6 August 1945. A second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days afterwards, forced Japan to surrender and initiated the end of World War Two.
Keiko Ogura, who was eight years old when the bomb's blast struck her home 2.4km from the epicenter, recalled the "agonies of death" she witnessed. Now a campaigner for nuclear disarmament, Ogura called on G7 ministers to consider the tragedy of Hiroshima "as an individual".
LINK: Hiroshima, 70 Years On: How The Day Unfolded
LINK: The U.S. Dropped The Atomic Bomb On Hiroshima 70 Years Ago
via BuzzFeed - World http://ift.tt/1Sbfpvh
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment