Obama promises no apology to Japan

It was two years ago this month when I traveled to Japan, South Korea and the U.S. Pacific territories of Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands to explore and write about World War II and Korean War battle sites.

My most compelling and memorable stop on this three-week trip was to Tinian, the tiny island in the Northern Marianas where World War II was won nearly 71 years ago.

It was at Tinian, on Runway Able on North Airfield, where U.S. Army B-29 Flying Fortresses “Enola Gay” and “Bockscar,” on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, respectively, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, killing an estimated 200,000 Japanese and injuring many thousands more.

Fearing further atomic bombs might be dropped, Emperor Hirohito told his countrymen by radio on Aug. 15 that Japan would surrender unconditionally to the U.S. and its allies, and it did so on Sept. 2, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri that was moored in Tokyo Bay.

One week from today, another ceremony directly related to those two atomic bomb explosions will be held in Japan, when President Barack Obama will be the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima.

The White House has announced that Obama will fly to the south-western Japanese city to join Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan, where they will highlight their continuing commitment of pursuing peace and security in the world.

For years, a presidential visit to Hiroshima, home to a peace park and memorial commemorating those killed in the atomic explosions, has been blocked by sensitivities over whether the U.S. should apologize for the bombings. Obama and past presidents have refused to make apologies, and the White House has stated that Obama will not change his mind. Prime Minister Abe has said his meeting with Obama on May 27 will be an opportunity for the pair to cement friendly relations, and that he (Abe) has no plans to press Obama for an apology.

Following his Hiroshima visit, Obama is scheduled to fly to Vietnam, another former enemy of the United States, which, like Japan and several other Asian nations, is worried about North Korea’s growing nuclear threat and China’s militarization campaign in the South China Sea.

Despite Obama’s statements that he will not apologize to Japan, I hope he will not relent and offer even an implied apology to Prime Minister Abe when they meet in Hiroshima next Friday.

Both Obama and Abe certainly must realize that President Harry S. Truman authorized the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in order to quickly end the war in the Pacific, according to an article recently written for the Wall Street Journal by Wilson D. Miscamble, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.

Both cities were major military and industrial targets, and by bombing them, the end of the war was rapidly hastened. If the bombs had not been dropped, the U.S. and our Allies would have been forced to invade mainland Japan, an invasion which Truman said “would have been an Okinawa from one end to the other,” according to Miscamble, the author of “The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Defeat of Japan.”

Miscamble said the battle for Okinawa was one of the “bloodiest, most ferocious engagements of World War II, with Allied forces, most of them American, suffering more than 65,000 casualties, including 14,000 dead. Truman’s intentions and assumptions (in ordering the atomic bombings) were legitimate.” He stated that if the U.S. had attempted a land invasion of the Japanese home islands, countless thousands of Japanese, U.S. and Allied forces would have been killed,in addition to many thousands more Japanese civilians. Thousands of U.S. and Allied prisoners of war who were interred in camps in Japan would have been executed by the Japanese during an invasion, he added.

Meanwhile, as I recall my visit to Runway Able at Tinian’s North Field, I remember my surprise upon learning from local historian Don Farrell that the airstrip is now a U.S. military landing field, and Japanese infantry, artillery and air forces are training there alongside American, Australian and South Korean units.

And, during my trip to the airfield, a massive bus arrived and disgorged nearly 100 Japanese tourists, who took photos of the field and the underground concrete bays that held the two atomic bombs before they were flown to Japan and dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What ironies I found on Tinian island two years ago!

David C. Henley is Publisher Emeritus of the LVN and may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.