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

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

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

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

“The president will not be making a statement at Peace Memorial Park,” Sullivan told reporters traveling on Air Force One to the summit. “He will be participating with the other G7 leaders in a wreath laying and a few other events. But this is not, from his point of view, a bilateral moment. It is he, as one of the leaders of the G7, who comes to pay homage.

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

Sullivan said Biden’s visit to the memorial was made out of respect for Kishida, who entered Japanese politics as a member of the Japanese House of Representatives for Hiroshima’s First District.

The Peace Memorial is the only remaining building in Hiroshima to survive the nuclear explosion.

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 made nuclear proliferation and disarmament part of his life’s work. He and President Biden will hold a one-on-one meeting on Thursday evening 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 that he hoped the venue would “send a message to the world that humanity never bring about nuclear weapons catastrophe again.

World leaders are meeting at a time when Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and North Korea is testing nuclear missiles.

“We must send a strong message that we will not tolerate the use of force to unilaterally change the status quo, as evidenced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine…that we will protect the international order based on the state of right,” Kishida said. the Japan Times in April.

“We will not allow Russia’s handling of nuclear weapons.”

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

The United States was careful not to apologize for the use of the weapon while expressing sadness for the destruction it caused.

Barack Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, but did not apologize for the US attacks.

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

“The image of a cloud of mushrooms that has risen in these skies reminds us in the most stark way of the fundamental contradiction of humanity: how the very spark that marks us as a species – our thoughts , our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to depart from nature and bend it to our will – these very things also give us the unparalleled capacity for destruction,” he said.

Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons helped win him 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 United States to issue a formal apology, but many Americans believe that would undermine war efforts.