HIROSHIMA, Japan \u2014 The patter of rain had subsided on a gray Friday morning as President Joe Biden and other Group of 7 leaders arrived at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the first of two sites where American planes dropped atomic bombs in August 1945, laying waste to two Japanese cities and bringing an end to World War II.<\/p>\n
Tanaka Satoshi, a 79-year-old \u201chibakusha,\u201d or survivor of the atomic bombings, watched closely on television. Biden, the leader of the country that carried out the world\u2019s first nuclear attack, stood in front of the Cenotaph, a memorial shaped to resemble a Japanese dwelling. The arched monument is designed to metaphorically shelter the estimated 140,000 people who perished in the Hiroshima blast or died from the resulting fires and radiation.<\/p>\n
After Biden and his foreign counterparts placed wreaths of white flowers at the foot of the memorial, Hiroshima Mayor Matsui Kazumi explained the carefully worded inscription: \u201cLet all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil.\u201d The leaders listened, staring in the distance at the skeletal ruins of the Atomic Bomb Dome, the only structure left standing inside the blast zone.<\/p>\n
Satoshi\u2019s fervent hope was for world leaders to see the message inscribed on the concrete memorial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we can now say they have made the promise that they will never repeat the same wrongs,\u201d Satoshi told the Los Angeles Times. \u201cAnd I hope Biden takes this promise with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ceremony opened the G-7 summit, where leaders of some of the world\u2019s most powerful economies planned to discuss pressing global issues, including the war in Ukraine, climate change and the global economy\u2019s dependence on China. But their visit to Hiroshima was a reminder that the threat of nuclear destruction is closer now than perhaps any time since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made overt threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, abandoning the last major nuclear arms control treaty in February. North Korea\u2019s barrage of missile tests prompted Biden to recently reaffirm Washington\u2019s commitment to protect South Korea with nuclear weapons. Iran has continued to pursue nuclear weapons while China is on track to increase its stock of nuclear warheads to around 1,500 by 2035, according to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
Biden, who vowed to make arms control and nonproliferation \u201ca central pillar of U.S. global leadership\u201d during the 2020 campaign, has moved further away from that promise, instead staking his foreign policy on coordinating an international response to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and constraining China\u2019s sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific region.<\/p>\n
Before the leaders left Peace Memorial Park, news broke of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s plans to join the summit Sunday as the group prepares to announce a new round of sanctions against Russia.<\/p>\n
Many of the hibakusha, around 119,000 of whom were still alive as of March 2022, according to a Japanese government estimate, had asked Japanese officials to push for nuclear disarmament ahead of the summit. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a native of Hiroshima, had hoped to do so.<\/p>\n
But Putin\u2019s threat of nuclear retaliation has only bolstered U.S. and other G-7 countries\u2019 policy of deterrence, which hinges on a \u201ccredible\u201d threat of using nuclear weapons. Only India, a nuclear-armed country that is not a member of the G-7 but attended this year\u2019s summit, has adopted a \u201cno first use\u201d nuclear doctrine.<\/p>\n
Kishida\u2019s quest for a world without nuclear weapons stands in conflict with Japan\u2019s dramatic shift from its pacifist foreign policy, forged in the aftermath of World War II, toward a more militarized national security strategy. The Japanese leader vowed to double Tokyo\u2019s defense budget and acquire long-range missile systems to help confront Beijing\u2019s military build-up in the region. Tokyo is also protected under the U.S.\u2019 nuclear umbrella, despite Japan\u2019s longstanding calls for other countries to abandon nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Though he is a \u201ctrue believer in a world without nuclear weapons,\u201d as prime minister, Kishida has had to come to terms with the inherent contradiction between nuclear disarmament and extended deterrence, said Daniel Russel, who served as the top U.S. diplomat for Asia under President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s caught between the ideal of nuclear disarmament and the sad reality of growing proliferation,\u201d Russel said. \u201cBut that\u2019s not going to stop him from pursuing the ideal, and Hiroshima is a really powerful venue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be a human being and go to the Hiroshima Memorial Museum and sort of not be seized with the incredible destructive power of nuclear weapons and the human tragedy that it left in its wake,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Satoshi had hoped the visit would have a similar impact on Biden and other leaders. He was just 1 1\/2 years old when the bomb dropped, living in the Yamaguchi prefecture, where his father served in the military. After news of the attack, Satoshi\u2019s mother rushed to Hiroshima to search for her family, who lived half a mile from the hypocenter, where the A-bomb exploded.<\/p>\n
Carrying Satoshi on her back, she climbed over piles of charred debris, smoke still rising from the ashes, and occasionally stepped on corpses as she searched for the ruins of her family\u2019s house. Satoshi\u2019s mother eventually identified the home by a half-destroyed shrine gate and a small lantern. Six of her family members were trapped beneath the collapsed building. Four were dead when she found them and the other two died later.<\/p>\n
Though he was not in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped, Satoshi is considered an \u201centrant hibakusha,\u201d those who entered the city after the attack. He has survived five different types of cancer that he has attributed to radiation exposure. The Japanese government has provided medical support for survivors of the bombings, many of whom endured lifelong injuries and illnesses attributed to the radiation that pervaded the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cNuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, but at the same time, they continue to kill people forever,\u201d Satoshi said. \u201cWhen we allow nuclear weapons to proliferate and we continue like that, I would say that everyone on Earth will one day become a nuclear victim. Nuclear weapons and humans cannot coexist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obama was the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, in 2016. Kishida, then the Japanese foreign minister, escorted the president on a tour of the Peace Memorial. Obama delivered a rousing speech that explicitly did not include a U.S. apology for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki \u2014 a decision Biden also made when he silently paid tribute at Friday\u2019s opening event.<\/p>\n
Though some in Japan had called for Biden to apologize for the decision to use nuclear weapons, the stop at the Peace Memorial was never intended to be featured as a pivotal moment for the U.S.-Japanese relationship, according to Zachary Cooper, a former National Security Council aide and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Still, Biden\u2019s presence was freighted with symbolism.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the message that we\u2019re hearing from the Japanese is we\u2019re not here to look back but look forward,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cWe need to get past history issues and start thinking about the challenges ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obama, who intentionally addressed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks during his visit to Japan, drafted several versions of his speech, according to Russel, who helped plan the trip. He called for nations to \u201chave the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without (nuclear weapons).\u201d<\/p>\n
Several years later, the U.S. and its allies appear no closer to nonproliferation or disarmament.<\/p>\n
After the Peace Memorial Park visit, the G-7 members released a statement condemning Russia\u2019s nuclear rhetoric and undermining of arms control regimes as \u201cdangerous and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reiterate our position that threats by Russia of nuclear weapon use, let alone any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, in the context of its aggression against Ukraine are inadmissible,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
The group, however, offered no new ideas or actions to reduce the threat of nuclear war.<\/p>\n
Daniel H\u00f6gsta, interim executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, called the G-7 countreis\u2019 statement a \u201cgross failure of global leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSimply pointing fingers at Russia, China and North Korea is insufficient,\u201d he added. \u201cWe need the G-7 countries, which all either possess, host or endorse the use of nuclear weapons, to step up and engage the other nuclear powers in disarmament talks if we are to reach their professed goal of a world without nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
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