PRESIDENT OBAMA'S VISIT TOHIROSHIMA AND CHEAP SYMBOLISM

オバマ大統領の訪問TOHIROSHIMA AND CHEAP象徴

Obama daitōryō no hōmon TOHIROSHIMA AND CHEAP shōchō

Being the first American President to do so,President Obama has set a precedent, in visiting Hiroshima, one of two cities in Japan, on which the then American government, during the Second World War, decided to try out what would happen if it dropped atomic bombs on them. 

We now know what happened, with the bombs incinerating all in their path, the people, flora and fauna, buildings, and the very atmosphere. Yes, it was a terrible fate to befall the people of Japan. Of course, World War Two was a terrible time, as tends to be the case with wars, when people and their governments put aside their common humanity, and become,as they too often do, mindless and unconscionable objects. ~

The then Japanese government persecuted the war with the same, if not more ruthlessness than the Americans and the Allies, with the lives of their own people and those of the people they came across, being no more than expendables in the interest of what the Japanese state and the elites saw as 'in Japan's best interests.'

There is, I believe, a saying that 'all is fair in war and love', which is not to say it is moral or just.

Countries are extremely reluctant to apologise for the actions of previous governments. Thus Turkey is not going to apologise for what has been described as the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians in the past; neither will Britain, Belgium, France and the United States apologise for their role in the enslavement of people from the African continent.To apologise is to take responsibility for something which was 'wrong', and to do so can have legal implications. 

Similarly, it has taken Japan decades to apologise to the socalled 'comfort women' who were coerced into provide sexual services for her soldiers. All because it is the nature of countries and peoples to, once they have designated who is to be their enemy or enemies, to demonise and dehumanise them so that they become 'deserving' of whatever crimes are perpetrated against them.Of course, you cannot 'demonise' and 'dehumanise' a people without dehumanising yourself.

Thus, there is, in the eyes of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, be they the Nazis of the former German Reich, or, indeed, the Americans, the French and the British, Russian,racists,and religious and bigots of all faiths, the conceited belief that there is never anything for them to apologise or be forgiven for.

This takes me to President Obama's trip to Hiroshima, where he has laid a wreath and made 'moralistic' and peace-seeking comments.If it is one thing national leaders and other politicians are fond of, it is laying wreaths to commemorate the tragic deaths of the victims of their own or others folly.

According to a recent article in a British newspaper, The Guardian, President Obama is reported as having made the following comments on his visit to Japan.

“On a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” he said, adding that humankind had shown that day it had the means to destroy itself.

“Why did we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead,” he said.

“Their souls speak to us, they ask us to look inward, take stock of who we are.”

Yes, all fine words, but words which a 12 year old child might have uttered. Words, as I said, are cheap, what is really important is whether the President intends to do anything remove the causes of such sad, but, when used by the powerful, meaningless word. Does he intend to focus more on making peace between nations, or is he more focused on causing more tensions between the US and China, and between the Russian Federation and the US? Is he intending to fuel the nuclear arms race more, or taking action to reduce it? 

Probably not, because talk is cheap and can also be dangerous, and wars and the preparations for wars - including ensuring that you have 'a designated enemy/ies' to justify it - is a way of the elites making money.

On a more humane level - because leaders are between the ordinary person and the gods, on one extreme, and between them and the proverbial devil, on the other hand - I can understand that that this issue of the atomic bombs having been used, and the risk of nuclear weapons being used in the future, is of immense emotional resonance for millions of people. This is especially so for the victims of the atomic bombs and the surviving prisoners of war and others who have suffered atrocious treatment by the Japanese in the past. 

It is one of those things which you can only fully appreciate if you had experienced either the brutality of the mostly now dead Japanese army, and the previously unexperienced atmospheric conflagration of exploding atomic bombs. 

The Japanese forces showed extreme brutality in waging war, and so did the Americans in dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, without, as the Japanese armed forces had done before them, making any differentiation between the Japanese armed forces and civilians. 

The war in the Pacific was probably what could be called total war, with no or little differentiation being made by both the allies and the Japanese between soldiers and civilians. Wars are never nice and cannot be conducted humanely.

So, let the victims of past Japanese atrocities continue to hold on to their view that it was right for the Americans to drop those bombs and kill Japanese indiscriminately. Similarly, let the people of Japan, and others, who continue to hold to the view that that the Americans were wrong to drop the atomic bombs, hold onto that view. It is their right to do so.

At the same time, let the rest of us who, lucky, were not directly affected by that incredible hell which past leaders - yes, people like the President - talked themselves into and force ordinary people to pay the price - continue to hold the view that, two 'wrongs' do not make something 'right', and that morality is a virtue which will never be found in war.

What is happening by President Obama visiting Hiroshima is no more than gesture politics; whereas what is really needed is not 'symbolism' but real action to bring people of all nations together and remove the obscenity of nuclear arms. 

That, unfortunately, is not something we are getting from our leaders, including the President, because politics and the vested interests of the arms manufacturers and developers will always get in the way.

Beware of politicians; of whatever hue, and never take them at their word, because, too often 'their word' belongs not to them, but to those whose vested interests they are serving, whether or not they try to conceal it under the cloak of'the country's or nation's national interests.'