Obama’s Idea of Equal Time?

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President Obama is reportedly considering visiting Hiroshima this year.

So… will that be before or after visiting the USS Arizona?

8 Comments

  2. Are we sure we nuked them enough or are they still planning something? It would be pretty sneaky of us to send our POTUS over and then Nuke the place! That would be almost as awesome as nuking the moon!

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  3. It’s not that big of a step to take in the USS Pueblo on the same tour. As I understand it, Jimmy Carter was the only President to tour that attraction. And that was not while he was a sitting President. He was acting as an agent of Bill Clinton and got a Peace Prize for it.

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  4. Unctions speak louder than words.

    Little Boy and Fat Man saved the lives of tens of millions of Japanese citizens. I’ll leave it to wiser military minds than mine to estimate the millions of American lives that would have been lost trying to invade and defeat the highly-motivated kamikaze-mindset Japanese homeland.

    Obama Nixes Plans For Hiroshima Apology Tour (Afraid of US Electorate): My Translation from Japan

    Sankei Shimbun News, Tokyo, Japan (Original in Japanese) | 19 September 2010 | Rui Sasaki, Reporter

    Posted on FreeRepublic ‎9‎/‎18‎/‎2010‎ by AmericanInTokyo:
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2591955/posts

    [Japanese newspaper’s text:]

    “Sources within the Obama Administration as well as with the ruling Japan Democratic Party here have leaked and confirmed that Obama (and Japan side) have come to the conclusion to make the decision to cancel any side trip to Hiroshima, Japan in November as part of O’s ongoing worldwide apology tour.”

    [And the poster’s commentary:]

    This trip has been in the background for nearly two years; Obama was not able to make it last fall and has wanted to go there and express remorse for American Military Action in 広島 and 長崎 in the closing days of World War II. His Ambassador to Japan has already done this–or so it was locally interpreted.
    Now the Japanese language Conservative Sankei News, large circulation daily in Japan is breaking with news from both D.C. and in Tokyo among knowledgeable US-Japan sources that Obama has definitely told Japan to not expect him to make the visit to Hiroshima when he is next in Japan in November.The reasons stated were the touchy US 2010 mid-term elections, the sentiment this act may generate with the American People, overall US-Japan relations factors, and others.

    …

    Wikileaks Cable Hints That Obama Wanted To Issue Apology for Hiroshima

    Hotair | 10/12/2011 | Ed Morrissey

    Don’t worry too much about this story. I’m sure Barack Obama would have waited for Japan’s apology for Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the treatment of American POWs …

    The cable indicates the Japanese government was then discouraging Obama from visiting Hiroshima despite growing expectations over it following his call for a world free from nuclear weapons in a speech in Prague in April 2009.

    The cable, dated Sept. 3, 2009, and sent to U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton,

    [—on an unsecured email server—]

    reported Japan’s then Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling Ambassador John Roos on Aug. 28 that antinuclear groups would speculate over whether the president would visit Hiroshima in light of his Prague speech on nuclear nonproliferation.

    “He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public’s expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a ‘non-starter’,” said the cable.

    The most fascinating part of this was the discouragement given by the Japanese Vice Foreign Minister.

    Presumably, a Japanese government that got an American President to bow to their national sense of victimhood from the consequences of launching a brutal war of conquest in the 1930s — bowing in the rhetorical sense, of course — would have acquired a huge amount of political goodwill. The government in Tokyo at that time certainly needed a political boost.

    Why not let Obama apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then? For one thing, Japan understands better than most that they rely on the American nuclear umbrella for their safety — and not so much from China but from North Korea.

    So maybe Obama is trying to get Japan destroyed, as well as America and Israel?]

    At some point, Japan has to decide whether to adopt its own nuclear deterrent to push Kim Jong-il into real negotiations. The last thing they need is an American President using Hiroshima as a platform for unilateral disarmament while China bristles with nukes and the DPRK keeps testing more of its home-grown nuclear devices, which they are apparently preparing to do again.

    Obama wisely took Yabunaka’s advice and decided not to address the issue at all. The fact that the Japanese had to tell Obama to curtail his 2009 apology tour is both ironic and, well, appalling.

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  6. I’m sorry we nuked you instead of fire bombing you like we did in Germany…….
    I’m sorry we nuked you instead of invading your country and killing you one by one…..
    I’m sorry that after we nuked you, we rebuilt your entire country and made you the filthy rich people you are today…

    I’m sure all the people who survived getting nuked will be glad to hear it…..oh that’s right, it was 71 years ago.

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  7. PEARL HARBOR REMEMBERED; Japanese Think They Owe Apology and Are Owed One on War, Poll Shows
    By STEVEN R. WEISMAN,
    Published: December 8, >>>1991<<<
    ………………………..
    Despite these feelings, Japanese disagree — 38 percent somewhat and 20 percent strongly — that the atom bombs were a racist act, dropped because Japanese are not white.

    The poll findings were from a random sample of 1,106 Americans surveyed by telephone Nov. 18-22, and 1,446 Japanese throughout Japan surveyed in person Nov. 7-13. The American survey was conducted throughout the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

    So…I guess by the same “logic”, they must have asked if they bombed US because THEY are raaaaaacist..right? For some reason, it’s not in the story.

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  8. Why did we nuke Japan: Pearl Harbor, Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanjing, treatment of the people of Guam, China, Thailand, Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, and all the other countries unfortunate enough to be occupied by Japan during the war, bad treatment of US and allied POW’s, bad treatment of US and allied civilian internees, gruesome execution of American prisoners on Wake Island, Medical experiments on Chinese and allied POW’s held captive in China, Kamikaze warfare, 100,000 civilians massacred in the battle of Manila, The Sook Ching massacre, The Kalagong massacre, etc, etc. Mainly we nuked Japan because they deserved it. Don’t get me wrong…that was the Japan of the early to mid 20th century…not the Japan of today. However they absolutely, positively do not deserve an apology from us. Which, of course, tells me that’s exactly what Obama will do.

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