Hiroshima: Why Japan Would Rather Obama Did Not Apologize

It is field trip season in Japan. On Thursday, the day before Barack Obama’s historic visit, which makes him the first American president to visit the suffering city while still in office, thousands of students from elementary and high schools visited Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum to try to comprehend the tragedy.

They saw the life-size wax statues of children burned alive in the three seconds following the explosion of the atomic bomb known as “Little Boy” above the city on August 6, 1945. Further ahead lay the remains of skin and nails taken from the corpse of a young boy by his mother, and terrible black and white images of irradiated bodies. At the end of the exhibition, they signed a little book that calls upon the international community to renounce nuclear weapons. They finally left, stunned by the violence and inhumanity of the tragedy their country experienced 71 years ago. At no point were they shown the reasons behind this tragedy.

The museum marks a kind of “year zero” for Japan. In August 1945, the country’s status quickly changed from that of Asia’s brutal aggressor to that of a victim. Not far from the museum, in the memorial built by the government at the beginning of the 2000s for the victims of the atomic bomb, a few lines vaguely explain “that at one time during the 20th century, Japan chose the path to war” and that “on the 8th of December 1941, it initiated hostilities against the United States, Great Britain and others.”

No Apologies, No Introspection

There is no indication of the brutal colonization of the region by Japanese troops at the beginning of the 1930s. There is nothing about the massacre of civilians or the mass rapes committed in Nanking, China. There is not a single line about the fate of thousands of young Asian women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese soldiers in the region. There is no perspective offered that might allow Japanese visitors to attempt a process of remembrance similar to that which Germany achieved after the war ended. Japanese children do not have an equivalent to Dachau to visit.

Many once hoped Barack Obama would turn this interpretation upside down. It has been reinforced by years of teaching and a popular culture that claims the country and its emperor, Hirohito, were dragged along unwillingly by a group of brutal military leaders. By way of a speech focusing on the truth of the matter, the leader could force Japan to really take a look in the mirror. But the American president has already announced he will not offer the symbolic apologies at Hiroshima that could have forced the Japanese elite to begin to reflect on their biased vision of history. Obama will mainly focus on the appeal for a world without nuclear weapons, to the great relief of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who feels his country has already asked for forgiveness and repented sufficiently.

Throughout the decades, it is true that many Japanese political leaders have offered serious apologies for the acts of violence committed by the Imperial army before and during the Second World War. But during the last few years, an equal number of leaders have put the sincerity of these regrets into question. Several members of the current government have also flirted with an unhealthy kind of revisionism. Ministers close to the nationalist right wing also continue to visit the Shinto Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo several times a year, which Beijing and Seoul consider to be an odious symbol of Japan’s warmongering past. They honor the 2.5 million people who died in Japan in the course of the last main conflicts, but they also honor 14 war criminals who were sentenced for their acts of violence in the region during the Second World War. The Prime Minister has never clarified his position on these controversial visits.

Amnesia and Victimization

Even if they fear the American president’s visit to Hiroshima will only incite Japan to shut itself away behind this amnesia and victimization, those who support a re-examination of Japan’s past still want to believe Barack Obama’s presence alone will ignite a debate around Tokyo’s ability to initiate a similar process with its large Asian neighbors and its American ally. On Wednesday evening, the media had already put Shinzo Abe in an awkward position, questioning him publicly on his eventual visit to the site of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On the December 7, 1941, Japanese air and naval forces launched a surprise attack on this American base. Two thousand four hundred and three Americans were killed in the attack, which is still considered traumatic for the United States.

The South Korean and Chinese media will challenge the Japanese Prime Minister by daring him to visit their countries and to leave flowers at the monuments that represent past Japanese oppression. When will Shinzo Abe visit Nanking, they will ask. Never, will be the conservative government’s response. By unsettling Beijing, whose propaganda feeds off the gaps in Japan’s memory, a symbolic gesture such as this would demonstrate a more pronounced level of maturity in Japan and would give the country a new aura throughout the Asia-Pacific region.