Japan should not turn its eyes from reason for bombings

US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, with Washington Monument in the background April 27, 2015. Abe is on a week-long visit to the US. [Photo/Agencies]

Though US President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima on Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has no plans to pay a reciprocal visit to Pearl Harbor.

The sneak attack Japan launched on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor dragged the United States into World War II. And for many people in Japan, that military operation heralded the beginning of the war's Asiatic-Pacific theatre.

Pearl Harbor is as sensitive a place for Japan's leaders to set foot as Hiroshima and Nagasaki are for US presidents.

Many people in the US took their president's presence in Hiroshima as an apology in itself.

Although Obama did not utter the word "apology" for the Little Boy and Fat Man, the benign-sounding names given to the atomic bombs his country dropped on the two Japanese cities in 1945, his carefully worded speech did all that Japan wants.

While mourning the dead and talking about wars in general, Obama missed an opportunity to go straight to the core of "that terrible war" Japan started.

The attention went to Obama's agenda of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament that helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

He said the bombing on Aug 6, 1945 "demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself". He said "how easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause". And he said Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be known as "the start of our own moral awakening".

The Abe administration did not ask for US contrition, as it might put the onus on Japan to atone for attacking Pearl Harbor and invading a large part of Asia.

The Asahi Shimbun said under the Japan-US Security Treaty, Tokyo has not really attempted to make Washington understand the meaning of the atomic bombings.

"If we Japanese want to accuse the US military of inhumanity, we simply cannot turn our eyes from the inhumanity of our own wartime armed forces," the newspaper said pointedly.

Obama and Abe then highlighted the Japan-US alliance and friendship.

While the Obama administration deepens its diplomatic and military investment in East and Southeast Asia, it needs the help of allies. And Japan can't wait to serve as the vanguard in the US' rebalancing to Asia. On Saturday, Abe offered Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena two patrol vessels as part of the two countries' maritime security cooperation.

Many A-bomb survivors, who are now of advanced years, say they forgive but not forget.

This is exactly what China's war victims want to tell Japan.

In Hiroshima, Obama said the memory of the morning of Aug 6, 1945 must never fade.

The memories of the eight years when China experienced the obscenities of Japan's invasion will last forever, not for hatred but as a warning that the war should not be repeated.

In an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review, Naoyuki Agawa, a scholar with the Kyoto-based Doshisha University, recommended that the Japanese prime minister quietly visit Pearl Harbor and bow. He also hoped that there will be trust between the leaders of Japan, China and the Republic of Korea, so that someday a Japanese leader can visit places like Nanjing.