US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday called his visit to a memorial to victims of 1945 US nuclear attack on Hiroshima “gut-wrenching” and said everyone — including US President Barack Obama — should come.
The first US secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, Kerry said Obama also wanted to travel to the city in southern Japan, but he did not know whether the leader’s complex schedule would allow him to do so when he visits the country for a G7 summit next month.
Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, where haunting displays include photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.
Photo: AFP
“It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” he said at a news conference. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation everyone of us in public life carries ... to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.”
After the tour by Kerry and his fellow G7 foreign ministers, the group issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to building a world without nuclear arms, but said the push had been made more complex by North Korea’s repeated “provocations” and by worsening security in Syria and Ukraine.
The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US laid white wreaths at a cenotaph to the victims of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing, which reduced the city to ashes and killed about 140,000 people by the end of that year.
“Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial. 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,” Kerry wrote in a guest book.
Asked if this meant Obama should come, Kerry said: “Everyone means everyone. So I hope one day the president of the United States will be among the everyone who is able to come here. Whether or not he can come as president, I don’t know.”
At Kerry’s suggestion, the ministers also made an impromptu visit to the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal remains of the only structure left standing near the hypocenter of the bomb explosion and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A visit by Obama could be controversial in the US if it were viewed as an apology. A majority of Americans view the bombings as justified to end the war and save US lives, while the vast majority of Japanese believe it was not justified.
“I think this first-ever visit by G7 foreign ministers to the peace memorial park is a historic first step towards reviving momentum toward a world without nuclear weapons,” Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida said in a statement.
In a separate, detailed statement, the G7 ministers singled out North Korea for sharp criticism, condemning its recent nuclear test and launches using ballistic missile technology.
In a statement on maritime security, they voiced their strong opposition to provocative attempts to change the “status quo” in the East and South China Seas, an apparent reference to China, which is locked in territorial disputes with other nations including Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.
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