John Kerry will not offer an apology for the United States’ use of the atomic bomb against Japan when he becomes the first US secretary of state to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum today, a senior US official said.
Kerry is visiting the city, which was obliterated by a US atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, to attend gathering of foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies that Japan opened yesterday with a call to end nuclear weapons.
The US diplomat is to join his counterparts from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan today to tour the city’s atomic bomb museum and to lay flowers at a cenotaph for its victims, becoming the first in his post to do so.
“If you are asking whether the secretary of state came to Hiroshima to apologise, the answer is no,” a senior US official told reporters late yesterday.
“If you are asking whether the secretary and I think all Americans and all Japanese are filled with sorrow at the tragedies that befell so many of our countrymen, the answer is yes,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added.
Kerry’s trip could pave the way for an unprecedented visit to Hiroshima by a sitting US president when Barack Obama attends the annual G7 summit to be held in Japan next month.
While saying the White House has yet to make a decision, the senior US official said Obama has shown he is willing to do controversial things such as visiting Havana last month.
The official suggested there was no “great or insurmountable angst about the optics or the politics of a visit to Hiroshima”.
He also said there was no Japanese effort to seek a US apology, “nor is there any interest in reopening the question of blame for the sequence of events that culminated in the use of the atomic bomb.”
Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida, who presides over the two-day meeting, yesterday said ministers will discuss anti-terrorism steps, maritime security and issues related to North Korea, Ukraine and the Middle East.
Some of the topics discussed yesterday included countering violent extremism, the battle against Islamic State militants and the effort to end the five-year Syrian civil war, a second US official told reporters.
Maritime security is on the cards after China rattled nerves in the region with its controversial reclamation work in the South China Sea. Some talk of nuclear nonproliferation is inevitable given North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January.
During World War II, a US warplane dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, reducing the city to ashes and killing 140,000 people by the end of that year.
Hiroshima’s suffering is vividly displayed at the museum the ministers will tour, including their charred and torn clothes, a tricycle ridden by a three-year old boy who died from the blast and statues of the victims, their flesh melting from their arms.
Three days after dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the United States dropped one on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days later.
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Saturday called for the participating ministers not to “hype up” the South China Sea issue.
Wang’s comment was followed by a scathing article by China’s official Xinhua News Agency on the prospects of the G7 meeting discussing the South China Sea matter.
“(Kishida) has purportedly coordinated to outline a joint communique regarding the sovereignty disputes over the South China Sea, despite the fact that neither Japan nor any G7 member is a relevant party to the disputes,” the article said.
“Long uncomfortable with China’s rising influence in the region, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his administration have never passed up an opportunity to trip up and contain China,” it said.
Kishida is scheduled to hold a final news conference as chair of the G7 meeting of foreign ministers today afternoon, and will announce several G7 statements on issues including nuclear disarmament and maritime security.