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Obama To Become First US President To Visit Hiroshima Since 1945 Nuclear Attack (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The White House announced U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima, becoming the first sitting American President to do so since the city was destroyed in 1945 by a U.S. nuclear bomb. President Obama and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit the city on May 27th "to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement. Obama said he hoped to visit both Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he first visited Japan in November 2009. "The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency," President Obama said at the time. At least 140,000 people died from the nuclear attack on Hiroshima on August 9, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic weapon on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered to Allied forces within a week after that second attack.
Bush's time in office has no intrinsic bearing on judgments of Obama's time in office.
"Obama has been the worst President ever."
"What about Bush?" - fair question
"Obama has been a terrible President."
"What about Bush?" - poor attempt at deflection
I'm always a bit baffled by how the world keeps looking at Germany and Japan's WWII histories. Germany's is 'What we did was horrible, never forget when we did' and Japan's is always 'What was done to us was horrible, never forget what happened to us.'
Anytime I see any sort of WWII memorial sort of thing here and there, it's almost always about either the Holocaust or the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings. Well, those are two very different things. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, the so-called 'comfort women' (or to call that what it actually was, sexual slavery)...I mean, without even considering Pearl Harbor, let's not pretend that there wasn't one hell of a lead up to the bombings.
It just seems wrong that we spend so much more time talking about the thing that ended the war than the actions, and victims, that made those means necessary.
The lifetimes of those involved.
Time to get over it.
It's time to stop cursing Alexander the Great. But some cultures pass down this hatred as part of their oral tradition to keep the hate alive.