ShaklesOfBigGov
Restore the Republic
The more important question I would like to hear various views on is this: Should we be apologizing for past Presidents that were left making very difficult decisions they knew they had to live with, and history may deem unpopular? Opon hearing this I wondered, what in the world Obama was thinking in believing Japan was ever seeking an apology over a time of war? Where does this "Apology Tour" stop?
Japanese Government Nixed Idea of Obama Visiting, Apologizing for, Hiroshima
By Jake Tapper
Oct 12, 2011 1:03pm
In September 2009, US Ambassador to Japan John Roos reported to the Obama administration that the Japanese government did not think it was a good idea for President Obama to visit Hiroshima to apologize for the US having dropped an atomic bomb on that city, a secret cable published by Wikileaks revealed.
Roos wrote the cable after his August meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka, reporting to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Japanese government felt “the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a ‘non-starter.’ While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such program in the November visit.”
A senior White House official asserts to ABC News that there was never any plan for the president to apologize for Hiroshima. The cable does not state that the idea was from the U.S. Rather, Roos writes that Yabunaka thought that following President Obama’s call earlier that year for a world free of nuclear weapons, anti-nuclear groups would speculate as to whether he would visit Hiroshima.
Yabunaka recommended that President Obama’s November 2009 visit be focused mostly in Tokyo.
The cable was first reported by the Japanese Times
Obama Hiroshima trip discouraged in '09: Wikileaks cable | The Japan Times Online
On August 6, 1945, the U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” — a 8,900-pound uranium bomb – 31,000 feet above the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing up to 70,000 Japanese citizens immediately, with another 70,000 speculated to have died from injuries including exposure to radiation.
On August 9, the US dropped a similar device on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki.
Truman on that day delivered a radio address in which he said, “I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb. Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first…Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
“We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us…It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.”
Six days later, Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers.
Three years later, President Harry S Truman expressed misgivings about his decision to have dropped those bombs to Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission David Lilienthal, who recorded the conversation in his diaries, which were later published.
Truman Library - Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politic...-of-obama-visiting-apologizing-for-hiroshmia/
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