Major Apology Tour Attractions
Not on the itinerary. Obama won’t be going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A-bomb blast sites … under the Apology Tour bus! Which is frankly more of a surprise than you’d know from reading this AP story:
The two cities’ mayors formally invited Obama on Tuesday to visit sometime before next May, but U.S. officials say it is highly unlikely he will travel to either city during his Nov. 12-13 visit to Tokyo.
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A visit could be politically fraught for any American president, and experts don’t expect one soon. Still, Japanese newspapers have published editorials, community groups have circulated petitions and students have written letters urging Obama to visit.
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Analysts note that Obama has his hands full with the war in Afghanistan and health care reform. A visit to Hiroshima or Nagasaki could expose him to a new line of attack from opposition Republicans, who might accuse him of second-guessing the decision to drop the bombs.
Signs of sympathy toward Japanese suffering could be seen as criticism of the decision, which many Americans view as a pragmatic one that hastened the end of the war that America entered after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
“He can’t be seen as denigrating the good fight,” said James Orr, chairman of the East Asian Studies Department at Bucknell University. “He would have to be very careful that he recognize on the U.S. side the value of service to country as well as express sensitivity to the human suffering involved.”
Apparently these people missed out on the extended ObamApology Tour ‘09. It’s not like the Nobel Peace Prize really has a lot of shaping to do when it comes to O’s foreign policy … it makes a great centerpiece on a stable that’s already been set.
About the “human suffering” part, might want to take that up with some of the 25 million Asians who were killed under Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Most of them were Chinese, and though AP misses this fine point, I suspect Obama may be more concerned about ticking off the PRC than the GOP, which at last check Obama has shown no reluctance to offend. Very sensitive about Japan and WWII, the Chinese are, and Obama’s shown he is very sensitive to Chinese sensitivities. Next thing, the Chinese would want him to go to Nanking, and in the end nobody’s happy.
AP is big enough to note that the Japanese actually started the war, something many Japanese are not fully up to speed on, but fails to note that the decision to drop the bomb was made by a Democratic president (Obama generally prefers to apologize for Republican war crimes) who wanted to avoid an invasion of the Japanese home islands at an estimated cost of up to one million American lives and 10 million Japanese ones.
A Japanese defense minister got into hot water a couple of years ago for saying the Americans did Japan a big favor. The 220,000 lives lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only spared Japan from being invaded by the Americans, but a Soviet invasion that would have split the nation, like Germany and Korea, for decades. As it was, Japan lost Sakhalin Island to the Russkies, and have been dickering with them about it for decades. The death toll in Japan’s nakedly imperialistic and racist war of expansion was running about 200,000 a month. Japanese prison commandants had orders to kill tens of thousands of Allied POWs as the Americans drew near. The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa signalled that the taking of Japan would pale even the taking of Germany in the ferocity and fanaticism of resistance. The Japanese high command had clearly signalled they had no interest in surrender, and the war-battered American military and public, top to bottom, was dreading the looming invasion.
The modern vanity is that Truman’s decision to end this all as abruptly as possible was racist, and an unnecessary pre-Cold War end run around the Ivans. Was your dad or grandad in the United States military in the closing days of World War II? Are you Japanese? You may well owe your life, and in the latter case your quality of life, to the atom bomb.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:05 pm on Tuesday, October 27, 2009
4 Responses to “Major Apology Tour Attractions”
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October 27th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
“Obama’s shown he is very sensitive to Chinese sensitivities.”
He better be. They can ruin the party by taking away the punch bowl.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:12 am
[...] Jules Crittenden wrote: “The 220,000 lives lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only spared Japan from being invaded by the Americans, but a Soviet invasion that would have split the nation, like Germany and Korea, for decades. As it was, Japan lost Sakhalin Island to the Russkies, and have been dickering with them about it for decades. The Asian war’s death toll was running about 200,000 a month, and Japanese prison commandants had orders to kill tens of thousands of Allied POWs as the Americans drew near.” [...]
October 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
That was well put. My dad turned 17 in March 1945. Although the local draft board defered him then so he could help his dad on the farm (as an only son), I’m not sure he would have missed a call up in later ‘45 or early ‘46 to replace early Japanese Invasion casualties, had the invasion been necessary.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
My father and two of my uncles served in Europe circa 1942-1945. Two more went to the Pacific. One stayed home, the oldest son of the family, and a farmer. The ones who were in Europe would most certainly have ended up in the Pacific if the war had dragged on there.
Anyway, what’s a visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki going to prove, thriving modern cities that they are today?