Jennifer Lind: Can the U.S. and Japan Finally Reconcile Over Hiroshima?
[Jennifer Lind is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. She has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense; lived and worked in Japan; and written previously for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.]
Ever since this past August when Ambassador to Japan John Roos became the first U.S. diplomat to attend Hiroshima's annual memorial ceremony, there have been high hopes in both countries that Barack Obama would follow as the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bombing. A gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates on Nov. 12 to 14, in the midst of Obama's ongoing Asia trip, provided the perfect opportunity. But a White House announcement that the President would not visit Hiroshima during his stay in Japan has disappointed observers hoping for a reconciliation with the past, and suggests that the awkward politics of Hiroshima will not be resolved anytime soon.
Now would be a propitious time for reconciliatory gestures in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Crisis erupted between the two allies last year after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama rebuked a carefully negotiated military agreement, pledging to move U.S. Marines off of Okinawa. These strains come at a time when both sides need the alliance more than ever. China's sharp-elbowed diplomacy - its handling of the crisis over disputed islands in the East China Sea and its embargo of rare earth exports - belie Beijing's promise of a "peaceful rise."
To strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance, Japanese journalist Fumio Matsuo encouraged the two allies to "bring closure to the long-festering issue of history." He has urged that the American president lay a wreath at Hiroshima and the Japanese Prime Minister lay a wreath at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Others say a visit would further Obama's global antinuclear agenda. American analysts John Feffer and Alexis Dudden wrote in Yes Magazine that a visit "would give [Obama] and the United States credibility to move forward in setting the tone for discussions of nuclear nonproliferation, weapons reduction, and ultimately, their abolition."...
Read entire article at The Atlantic
Ever since this past August when Ambassador to Japan John Roos became the first U.S. diplomat to attend Hiroshima's annual memorial ceremony, there have been high hopes in both countries that Barack Obama would follow as the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bombing. A gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates on Nov. 12 to 14, in the midst of Obama's ongoing Asia trip, provided the perfect opportunity. But a White House announcement that the President would not visit Hiroshima during his stay in Japan has disappointed observers hoping for a reconciliation with the past, and suggests that the awkward politics of Hiroshima will not be resolved anytime soon.
Now would be a propitious time for reconciliatory gestures in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Crisis erupted between the two allies last year after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama rebuked a carefully negotiated military agreement, pledging to move U.S. Marines off of Okinawa. These strains come at a time when both sides need the alliance more than ever. China's sharp-elbowed diplomacy - its handling of the crisis over disputed islands in the East China Sea and its embargo of rare earth exports - belie Beijing's promise of a "peaceful rise."
To strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance, Japanese journalist Fumio Matsuo encouraged the two allies to "bring closure to the long-festering issue of history." He has urged that the American president lay a wreath at Hiroshima and the Japanese Prime Minister lay a wreath at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Others say a visit would further Obama's global antinuclear agenda. American analysts John Feffer and Alexis Dudden wrote in Yes Magazine that a visit "would give [Obama] and the United States credibility to move forward in setting the tone for discussions of nuclear nonproliferation, weapons reduction, and ultimately, their abolition."...