| 2016 | Obama's Hiroshima trip parachutes him into history disputes |
- This article from the Hindustan Times, describes how, by visiting Hiroshima, Barack Obama parachutes himself into a seemingly endless dispute among key US allies and trading partners over World War II. In Tokyo’s decades-long tug-of-war over history with its neighbors China and South Korea, it’s the American president who could end up losing.
Many in China and South Korea feel that Japan got what it deserved when a US atomic bombs detonated in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and in Nagasaki three days later. They resent what they see as Japan’s focus on the bomb’s victims instead of the millions of civilians killed, raped and enslaved by Japanese troops. They worry that the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to Hiroshima will allow Japanese conservatives, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to further distance the country from its wartime sins.
