Is Barack Obama going to apologise for Hiroshima?

There was an interesting moment during Barack Obama’s visit to Japan when a reporter from Fuji Television asked him whether he would visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, something no American president has done. Obama responded:

We share, I think, a vision of a world without nuclear weapons. We recognize, though, that this is a distant goal that will not be reached probably even in our own lifetimes. Obviously Japan has unique perspective on the issue of nuclear weapons as a consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that, I’m sure, helps to motivate the prime minister’s deep interest in this issue. I certainly would be honored, it would be meaningful for me to visit those two cities in the future. I don’t have immediate travel plans but it’s something that would be meaningful to me.

Watch video of his answer here.



While Obama dodged the part of the question about whether he thought it was right or not to drop the bombs, he made it pretty clear that he is inclined to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his presidency. Note the formulation, used twice, that it “would be meaningful for me” – not meaningful for America or in the country’s or even the world’s interests but “meaningful for me”.

In his Prague speech in April, Obama referred to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by stating that “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act” to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

By linking the current nuclear issue with the events of 1945, Obama is treading on very dangerous political territory. The Left, of course, would love him to apologise or express regret for President Harry Truman’s decision. He would be lauded around the world for doing so. Maybe he’d be given another Nobel Peace Prize.

But any such sentiments would cause enormous resentment amongst those whose relatives were killed at Pearl Harbor or in the Pacific – and potentially anyone of the Second World War generation who felt that their lives were saved by Truman’s actions. As Don Surber points out, it would be seen as a “slap in the face” to the Greatest Generation.

It would be hard to see how Obama could go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki without offering something that would be construed as an apology for dropping the atom bomb. And even if he – in classic Obama style – tried to “balance” this by stating that Pearl Harbor was an atrocious act and the Japanese were guilty of war crimes in the Pacific etc etc then that would make very little difference to the net effect domestically.

As HotAir’s Madison Conservative puts it, this would be seen as the “cherry on a weakness sundae”.