JAPAN / View from Osaka

Matsui far from alone in pushing nuclear debate

Thoughts on Hiroshima: U.S. President Barack Obama listens to remarks at the University of Chicago Law School earlier this month. Progress on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, not an apology, is what Hiroshima would want from a visit by Obama to the city hit by an American nuclear attack 71 years ago, survivors and other residents have said. | REUTERS

By Eric Johnston
Staff Writer

Apr 16, 2016

Out from the murky, quivering flames/ Of burning, festering Hiroshima/ You look so monstrous, but could not know/ How far removed you are now from mankind

— Excerpted from Toge Sankichi's "Hibakusha" ("A-Bomb Survivor"), translated by N. Palchikoff

All eyes are now on whether U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima after next month's G-7 Ise-Shima summit of leading industrial nations. If he does, one hopes it would be a journey that would close old wounds in both Japan and the U.S.

To help convince the president to come, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida emphasized to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at last week's G-7 Foreign Ministers' meeting that Japan was serious about getting rid of nuclear weapons. The message from ordinary Japanese, meanwhile, was that no apology was needed. They simply want Obama to come to Hiroshima to see what happened so as to reinforce his belief, which is also Japan's belief, that nuclear weapons should be eliminated.