News

by Michio Shimotaka, Staff Writer

On April 5, 2009, Hiroshima survivors of the atomic bombing took a strong interest in the words of then-U.S. President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama, who had assumed the presidency in January that year, delivered a speech in Prague, Czechoslovakia in which he said, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. Yes, we can.” Furthermore, he declared, “As a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”

Change in U.S. attitude

Sunao Tsuboi, 83 at the time, who was serving as chair of the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-bomb Sufferers Organizations (Hiroshima Hidankyo), welcomed the president’s remarks. “Complete elimination of nuclear weapons might just be achieved in my lifetime,” said Mr. Tsuboi. Kazushi Kaneko, chair of the other Hiroshima Hidankyo organization, also responded to the speech, saying, “The conventional attitude of the United States regarding nuclear deterrence has changed.”

Three months prior to the speech, seven local A-bomb survivors’ groups in Hiroshima, including the two Hiroshima Hidankyo organizations, the Committee Seeking Measures for the Korean A-bomb Victims, and the Council of Atomic Bombed Koreans in Hiroshima, had sent a joint letter to Mr. Obama, asking him to visit the A-bombed city. Because he had expressed his desire to work on the abolition of nuclear weapons from the time before he assumed the presidency, the groups sent the letter to express their support for Mr. Obama.

At the time of drafting the letter, Mr. Tsuboi spoke of his high expectations of Mr. Obama as someone who could understand the wishes of the A-bomb survivors and requested that Mr. Obama also speak with survivors. The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) also wrote a letter to Mr. Obama, calling on him to meet face-to-face with A-bomb survivors in the hopes of communicating the reality of the devastation from the atomic bombing to him. In the Peace Declaration he read out on August 6, then-Hiroshima City Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba made an appeal, saying, “We support President Obama and have our own moral responsibility to act to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Twenty years had passed since the end of the Cold War. At that time, the total number of nuclear weapons across the world was estimated to have reached more than 20,000 warheads in the possession of eight countries, with the United States and Russia accounting for more than 90 percent of that number. In May 2009, North Korea pressed ahead with its second nuclear test, following its first in 2006.

In July of that year, Mr. Obama met with Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev, which resulted in their agreement to reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads possessed by two nations. In his Prague speech, Mr. Obama also indicated his intention to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the U.S. national security strategy. In acknowledgement of his “vision and work” in that area, Mr. Obama was awarded that year’s Nobel Peace Prize. However, there appeared to be no clear path to achieve Mr. Tsuboi’s hope of “complete elimination of nuclear weapons in my lifetime.”

One reason for the lack of progress was the dark shadow cast by the confrontation between the United States and Russia. In 2012, Vladimir Putin returned to his post as president of Russia, which went ahead with the annexation of Crimea in the southern region of Ukraine in 2014. Seven of the Group of Eight (G8) industrial nations voted to expel Russia from the G8 group of nations. The nuclear disarmament negotiations between Russia and the United States ground to a halt, with the U.S. Obama administration continuing to conduct testing to maintain the performance of its nuclear forces and modernize its nuclear weapons.

Interest grew in decision about visit to Hiroshima

Mr. Obama’s visit to the A-bombed Hiroshima as the first sitting U.S. president to do so did not come to pass immediately. When he had paid a visit to Japan in 2009, he mentioned it would be an honor if a trip to Hiroshima for him were possible, but he did not make it at that time nor during his next visits to Japan in 2010 and 2014. However, in 2010, the U.S. ambassador to Japan attended Hiroshima City’s Peace Memorial Ceremony for the first time. In August 2015, in another first, the U.S. assistant secretary of state participated in the peace memorial ceremonies in both cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As interest grew in Mr. Obama’s decision about the possible visit, Hiroshima City Mayor Kazumi Matsui, who had taken office in 2011, expressed his view that he “would not insist” on receiving an apology from the U.S. president for the atomic bombing, a point he had advocated for some time. On the other hand, Haruko Moritaki, 86, a resident of Hiroshima’s Saeki Ward and the second daughter of Ichiro Moritaki, who had long stood at the lead of A-bomb survivors’ movement, said, “I thought that recognizing the atomic bombings to have been a mistake would serve as the fundamental premise for speaking about ‘a world without nuclear weapons.’”

On April 11, 2016, then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima City to attend a meeting of foreign ministers ahead of the Group of Seven (G7) Ise-Shima Summit. Mr. Kerry laid an offering of flowers at the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims and toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. At a press conference, he stated he would inform President Obama about how important his visit was to the A-bombed Hiroshima. Most U.S. newspapers reported on the situation in a positive way. On May 10, both the U.S. and Japanese governments announced that Mr. Obama would travel to Hiroshima on May 27 in conjunction with his visit to Japan for the G7 Summit.

The Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (HANWA), a group for which Haruko Moritaki served as co-chair, sent a letter dated May 17 to the White House in the United States, in which was written the request of Mr. Obama to offer apologies to the dead victims of the atomic bombings and to the survivors who had endured such hardship.

(Originally published on May 26, 2025)