Spotlight: Japan's hidden agenda in seeking Obama's visit to Hiroshima

With U.S. President Barack Obama's planned trip to Japan in May for the Group of Seven (G7) summit approaching, speculations swirled that he will visit Hiroshima as the first sitting U.S. president to tour a city leveled by an atomic bomb.

Japan's Nikkei financial newspaper, cited unidentified U.S. officials as stating on Friday that Obama will visit Hiroshima and make a speech on nuclear disarmament there.

"The U.S. and Japanese governments are working to arrange Obama's visit on the final day of the G7 summit on May 27," said the report.

However, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, when questioned later about the report, said Tokyo and Washington were not jointly discussing any plan for Obama to visit Hiroshima.

"I will refrain from commenting," the top government spokesperson said.

The United States, for its part, has not yet given a definite answer. "No decision has been made," said a recent report citing a White House official.

Political observers here believe that it is Japan's earnest wish to take Obama to Hiroshima, and Tokyo has been pushing for it, including temporarily holding off on the request for an apology.

This, despite the fact that most of the people in the United States and the Asian countries that were victimized by Japan's atrocities during WWII would disagree with Japan on the legitimacy of such a request.

"I'm of the view that the survivors would rather have him (Obama) come here and move things toward abolishing nuclear weapons than have his visit be shelved because we insist on an apology," said Hiroshima governor Hidehiko Yuzaki on Tuesday.

Japan said the reason for such a visit is to call for a nuclear-free world. However, the claim is doubtful with Japan's huge stockpile of weapons-grade nuclear materials and the Japanese government's recent statement that using nuclear weapons is not against its constitution.

By highlighting the tragedy of Hiroshima while ignoring the sufferings of countries that were brutalized by Japan before and during WWII, Japan, observers have said, is trying to downplay its role as an aggressor and attempting to pose itself as a victim.

"Every summer Japan holds memorial services for the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And every year the mayors of those cities make peace declarations while noting the deaths, the suffering and the need to abolish nuclear weapons. Yet I never see or hear mention of what brought about all this misery," John Boyd said in an article carried by the Forbes magazine.

Boyd called on the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to visit Pearl Harbor and Nanjing.

"Visit the USS Arizona Memorial above the resting place of the 1,102 dead young sailors and marines and pray for their souls and the souls of the other 1,301 sailors who were also killed during your country's sneak attack on Dec. 7, 1941," he wrote.

The infamous raid ignited the Pacific War that led to an estimated 36 million deaths, and eventually resulted in the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the war.

"From Hawaii, please fly to Nanjing in China, and bow before the Nanjing Memorial Hall and pray for the thousands of people estimated killed, some of them at the very least by the Japanese Imperial Army," Boyd wrote.

But the Japanese prime minister has shown no such intention or inclination. Just one day before the Nikkei report on Obama's alleged visit, Abe made an offering to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine where 14 Class-A Japanese war criminals, convicted by an international tribunal after WWII, are enshrined and honored.

For the U.S. president, while he yearns for his political legacy to be one that paved the way toward a nuclear-free world, it's also important for him to pay heed to the voices of people who are on guard against Japan using Hiroshima to whitewash its wartime crimes, instead of truly reflecting on its past wrongdoings. Enditem