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Interviewed by Yumi Kanazaki, Staff Writer

Question: First, let us start by taking you back to the city of Hiroshima on the evening of May 27. What were your feelings about visiting the city and the Peace Memorial Park? You have mentioned a story about a boy who was holding a sign saying, “Welcome to Hiroshima.” Were you surprised to know how so many people were welcoming the President, or was this within your expectations?

Also, did President Obama talk to you about the kind of impressions he had of the city and how he felt after his visit to the Peace Memorial Park?

Answer: What I remember is, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I think we all felt that it would be a very powerful experience to arrive in Hiroshima, that we couldn’t predict the emotions that we would feel, given the history. Working with the President on his remarks also forced us to imagine standing there by the Peace Memorial. So I had to spend several days envisioning being there. But I think what was so powerful was, after we landed, as soon as we got in the President’s motorcade, there were immediately just these wonderful and enormous crowds that were welcoming us. I had actually not anticipated that, mainly because I was thinking about how it would feel as an American to come to a place where the United States had dropped an atomic bomb.

So I think that brought a flood of emotions to all of us because it was such a powerful symbol of wanting to appreciate this recognition of history and the reconciliation that is taking place between the American people and Japanese people. And when you were driving, you came to see all these faces go by but every now and then, you were able to kind of fix your sight on one person and, for me, I just remember being overwhelmed when I saw this young boy just smiling and holding a sign that said, “Welcome to Hiroshima.”

When you think about the atomic bomb, you think about all the people, but especially the children. You think about what would have happened to that boy 71 years ago and then here he is welcoming us. That was an almost overwhelming experience.

Q: Let me ask a question about your impressions of the Peace Memorial Park and the Peace Memorial Museum. President Obama visited the museum as soon as he arrived in the park. What did he see there? Did he tell you about his impressions of the exhibits? If you were in the museum with him, I’d like to know if there were any objects that left a deep impression on you, too.

A: Those of us who were in the official delegation, we were actually seated right away because we were making sure everybody found their seats. I know that the President was able to see a number of objects that survived the bomb blast, as well as some photographs that gave us a sense… Because he wasn’t able to tour the whole museum, these were the objects and photographs that gave a sense of what was in the museum.

Different types of things gave a remembrance and demonstrated the destructive power of the weapon. But I think the President was particularly moved, he said, by the crane display. He remarked how beautiful it was and how inspiring it was that, out of such destruction, there was a symbol of such beauty that has so much meaning to the people of Hiroshima. So that was his main recollection.

I remember being very struck sitting... I was sitting in the front row when he and Prime Minister Abe spoke, you could see the whole Peace Memorial. I was struck by, one, the size of the crowd that was surrounding the Peace Park. Two, there was this kind of silence, anticipation for the moment. You could feel that silence, how important this was. Usually a big crowd is going to be just talking, but it was almost completely silent except the occasional photographs going off. And you could almost sense just how important it was for the people that they were waiting like that. And then the third thing is, I was struck by how beautiful the Memorial was. It is very simple, but very powerful, kind of creating a space that makes you contemplate. It is a very meditative space.

Q: Was a ten-minute visit to the museum and the quick encounter with A-bomb survivors enough for him to fully understand the devastation Hiroshima experienced?

A: It was a short visit. Given that it was the first visit by the American president, we thought a short and simple program would be appropriate. Because just the fact of his going was going to be very powerful, and the fact of him speaking and laying a wreath. You know, I think I would hope that future presidents go. I would expect President Obama may go again when he is not president and has some more time to spend.

But, what we did try to do is to make sure that, even though it’s short, that we encounter the different parts of the story, so that you had the museum to show some of the different objects, and the photographs that capture the experience, but you also had the survivors.

I don’t think that you have to meet with every survivor to fully understand what they’ve been through. And two, they (Sunao Tsuboi and Shigeaki Mori) both made a powerful impression on the President. They both made a point of saying that they felt like they had to speak for all these survivors, so they felt a great deal of responsibility to indicate that they were representing a larger group of people. I think that left a very powerful impression on the President, how emotional they were, how much this meant to them. We reaffirmed their opposition to nuclear weapons, and they told a bit about their personal stories. I think they were very powerful.

Q: I would like to move on to a couple of questions about Mr. Obama’s speech. I was surprised by some of the phrases in the President’s speech, like, for example, “Someday, the voices of Hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness, but the memory of the morning of August 6th must never fade”. This is exactly one of the phrases we say very often in order to urge ourselves to work on conveying Hibakusha experiences to future generations. We also felt that the President’s speech put important emphasis on the civilian victims of the atomic bombing, including the lives of children. When you wrote the draft of the speech, did you learn about the experiences of the A-bomb survivors by reading books or taking in other resources on the Internet?

A: What happened was that the President would give me some of what he wanted to say, then I would go to a research team and ask for certain things. So in this case I did say to the research team, try to collect as many powerful stories of the survivors as you can that are different, so that you can chose different types of experiences. So I did read a significant amount of accounts, which was a very difficult thing to do. I remember telling people that working on the speech was the most emotionally draining speech I think I have written.

You hear just awful stories that all have similarities. It’s almost eerie how everyone describes that day up to a certain point and then there’s a flash of light and they’re describing the day after that.

So we researched the stories of the survivors and we also researched what some of them did with their lives afterward, including the gentleman (Mr. Mori) that we were able to include who has helped identify the Americans. I read a lot of stories about survivors who went on to become activists and they devoted their lives to telling the story of Hiroshima and that’s I think what gave us the idea that, part of the reason the president went, is that we have to recognize that this extraordinary generation will someday pass. And that it is our job, not just the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but everybody, to tell those stories.

Q: At the same time, however, there is the argument that the use of the atomic bombs was an indiscriminate attack on civilians that was already prohibited under international law in 1945, and that the President’s remarks regarding the sacrifice of “children and families” can be an acknowledgment of that fact. When crafting the speech, did you discuss the possibility that his remarks could be interpreted in this way?

A: I mean, yes and no. What I mean by that is, we didn’t review the nature of international law in 1945 and consider that. But what we did think about is the fact that the speech was about both the atomic bomb and the need to try to eliminate nuclear weapons, but also the war and civilians that suffered in the war.

Some people asked me why he had such a kind of broad view on some of the subjects he discussed. The reason why is because he wanted to make the point that it is not simply about the technology that allows us to kill, but about the fact that we entered into these wars. And the fact of the matter is, in that war, you had all kinds of, as he references in the speech, you know, we wanted to make the point that this was the most extreme use of technology to kill civilians, but all the different parties of the war engaged in efforts that killed civilians.

In many different ways he actually listed them in the speech, and that’s why he made this point about saying we need to abide by international law and continue to develop laws and institutions, but also that we need this kind of moral awakening, where we just stop doing this to each other.

Because history shows that the combination of our impulse to engage in war and having this technology is going to lead back to the tragedy we saw in Hiroshima. That’s how he, he rewrote the speech a lot. He rewrote it with his own hand, which he doesn’t usually do, mainly because he was trying to find this balance between making sure that we were speaking to what happened in Hiroshima and putting ourselves in that place, and why it’s so important, and how that teaches us to eliminate nuclear weapons, but also how we have to confront the fact that human beings have this impulse to do great harm to one another, that if we were not addressing that as well. So if we were not essentially pursuing peace as well as disarmament, you are not going to be able to truly learn the lesson.

Q: Let me ask more about the President’s speech. He started with the words, “Seventy one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky…” How did you come up with this beautiful phrase?

A: He wrote that phrase. I gave him a draft and what he did was he took it and he rewrote it and he kept some of the language and ideas, but then he put his own language around it, and that was the first line and that was something he completely wrote himself. I think I had written the much less beautiful line that said, “Seventy-one years ago, the world changed forever,” something like that, and he made it better.

Q: While some people praise highly the words that describe the experience of Hibakusha who were “under the mushroom cloud,” others say that it was the U.S. that “dropped” the A-bomb, not that it “fell,” and that expression obscures the facts about who dropped the bomb.

A: I think that everybody knows who dropped it. So we weren’t trying to be coy. He wanted to reach for some more poetic language and phrases than he might otherwise, because the occasion is so powerful. And another thing we also know is that you can never really describe it. Nobody could put into words what happened. So you never can fully capture it. That’s what I felt when I read all these stories. In those stories, they are all different. Somebody who came home and found the house collapsed and the whole family dead...just awful glimpses of the human experience. So again, I think that he felt like the language he sought was to capture the enormity of the moment. That was the approach that he took.

Q: Many Hibakusha who were moved by President Obama’s speech also expressed a kind of disappointment for not promising to implement any concrete measures for international nuclear disarmament. Also, there are others who criticize his speech over the fact that the Obama administration is spending a huge amount of money to modernize U.S. nuclear warheads, delivery vehicles, nuclear weapons facilities, and so forth. A few media reports even pointed out that the administration was carrying the so-called “nuclear football” to Hiroshima. What are your comments on all these criticisms?

A: First of all, I say I understand it. If I was a Hibakusha, I would insist on the most ambitious, most aggressive action to get rid of nuclear weapons. And I am glad that they do, I am glad that they criticize us. We need pressure from people to move into this direction. On the first point, we didn’t want to use this speech to discuss new policies or implementation. We thought it should be more thematic. The moment was going to be so powerful that we did not want to use it to put out new policy or even discuss implementation of current policy. So, that was just the choice he made.

Q: Was it partly because he wanted to mourn the victims there?

A: He thought that the appropriate thing to do would be to describe the feelings of being there, and to mourn for the people who were lost, and take, not just policy ideas, but kind of a moral mission out of the visit to Hiroshima to continue to pursue disarmament.

He has done a lot to try to reduce our nuclear weapons and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, but he would like to do more. We are still looking in our final months if there are additional steps that we can take. We are not going to eliminate all the nuclear weapons, but we can continue to move down a pathway of reducing nuclear weapons, reducing the role of nuclear weapons, and pursuing disarmament.

On the budget, the difficult thing for us is that as long as other countries have nuclear weapons, we feel like we need to maintain enough to provide the deterrence for ourselves and for our allies. But we realize it is a significant budget and we’ve said that we are going to continue to review that and see if it is appropriate. That is something we are reviewing in an ongoing process.

On the last one, I think that the point is simply that everywhere the president goes, he has the ability to engage in secure communications that deal with any situation that happens. It often kind of gets reduced to the “nuclear football,” but it’s more a matter of…there is a large apparatus for the president that could allow him to respond to any situation. And yes, it includes that, if there was a nuclear launch that we had respond to, and this includes a secure phone link. So he travels with a lot of infrastructure. The fact is that the President has to have someone who can make sure that we can respond to a nuclear scenario with appropriate codes.

Like I said, we don’t mind the criticism, because we haven’t reached the goal yet. And so if people want to say that the fact that the President has the nuclear football shows that we haven’t done enough, I think they are right. But we also have to balance against you know, Russia, China, and the fact that until other countries continue down a certain path, there is only so far we can go.

Q: From your explanation regarding the fact that he chose not to refer to concrete plans about nuclear disarmament measures in his speech, it makes me understand why he didn’t mention things like the nuclear umbrella, the strong alliance between Japan and the U.S., and so on, as well.

A: That’s the same thing. We just didn’t…another thing is that, as a speech writer, if you start to describe policy, you have to say a lot of different things. And again, compared to the Prague speech, which had a lot of policy, we wanted this to be more reflective at a higher level.

Q: I have to ask about the issue of an “apology.” You have written in your blog several times that the Presidential visit would not be to make an apology for the atomic bombing. Is your thought based on your belief that the two atomic bombs were decisive in putting an end to the war between Japan and the U.S.?

A: First of all, I said right at the beginning that I didn’t want there to be a lot of drama about these questions. I think that the honest answer is simply that there are so many views about…to put it this way, we have to describe many other different events. Our approach has been to acknowledge history, we are candid about it, we speak about it. Honestly, we meet with people who have suffered loss even at the hands of the United States, like the survivors. We are not second guessing what our leaders did in those very difficult circumstances, nor did we want to go down the road of having to describe the whole war, so that everybody could see that we weren’t leaving out something. In other words, you know, we have to then describe how the war started, and what happened in this country, and that country, and then suddenly we’re giving a speech about the entirety of the war.

We felt that it was just simpler to say “we are not going to second guess our leaders, nor are we going to take an accounting of all the aspects of this. We are just going to speak about this terrible event here and try to put in words what lessons we should learn from that.

Q: I would like to move on to the question of what the President is going to do in the future. It must be said that the people of Nagasaki were disappointed at not having the opportunity to welcome President Obama in May. Is there any chance he will visit Nagasaki over the next six months? If not, has he expressed a desire to visit Nagasaki after January 2017?

A: He will not be able to visit Nagasaki during his time in office. We have a very limited time left to travel. I can’t speak for his future plans, but I’m sure he will be interested to visit. While visiting Hiroshima, we wanted his remarks to also encompass the experience of the people of Nagasaki. I am sympathetic to the fact that we were not able to visit. I think future presidents should definitely consider visiting Nagasaki.

Q: Will President Obama continue to work toward the goal of a world without nuclear weapons during the remainder of his time in office? And will his efforts toward achieving this goal become his lifework? I also would like to know if you will continue working on this effort as well.

A: We are not finished in terms of the policy we will pursue on nuclear weapons. I would expect that we will try to see what additional steps we can take, again, whether that’s reducing the role of nuclear weapons, trying to envision how to pursue reductions, or taking the pieces of the Prague agenda that are not completed and trying to point a way forward. So we will see if we can get more done, then I think he will continue to be very interested in and active on this after he leaves office. He is relatively young. You have to remember that he was interested in these issues in college and university, he focused on this in his studies, and in the Senate he worked on nuclear issues. So this is something that he has a lifelong interest in.

I think it’s true that you cannot go to Hiroshima and not feel more urgency about working towards a world without nuclear weapons. There’s something about standing in the middle of the place that was completely destroyed, and envisioning what was like to be there, and thinking of the loss of life, that just makes you want to again come back and work harder. That’s why it’s so important. I think it’s impossible for someone to go there and not feel that sense of urgency.

It makes me want to continue to stay engaged in this issue. I also want to say that it is a beautiful city. Our team that was there for several days loved it and they said that the people of Hiroshima rebuilt such a wonderful city.

Q: The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are surely ready to work together with Mr. Obama after January 2017.

A: I think that is certainly something he will be interested in. We are very glad that we could kind of break the ice, as we would say in English. When he came into office, I don’t think even the U.S. ambassador had gone to the commemoration in Hiroshima. Now having the Secretary of State go and then the President of the United States go. Hopefully, we’ve opened up the space for more natural interactions and conversations and future Presidents can go, future American officials can go, and we’ve kind of gotten over a certain hurdle that I think was necessary.

Q: If you evaluate the President’s visit to Hiroshima, do you think it was a success?

A: I think it was a success in that, number one, as I was just saying, that it kind of got us over the barriers. Number two, that it helped close the circle, or heal a wound between the United States and Japan. Like I said, the closer we are as friends and allies. You could sense the closeness between the Japanese people and the American people. The Japanese culture is very unique, very different from certain elements of American culture, and yet you could feel the closeness of this shared experience, this painful experience. I think the visit hopefully brought us closer together.

I also hope that it elevates the profile of Hiroshima in the United States. Americans watched the President closely, saw him going to Hiroshima, and I hope more Americans will go to Hiroshima because of that. I hope, again, more American leaders go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That would ultimately make it a success if we just introduce more Americans to looking hard at that experience, meeting these people who become such inspiring actors. Ultimately, it is only a success if it advances, in the long term, all these efforts to try to keep the world focused on reducing nuclear weapons, pursing peaceful resolutions to conflicts, and keeping our two countries closely linked. That would be the long term measurement of success. The visit to Hiroshima felt like a controversial decision in our country, but from the moment we landed, we just felt like it was the right thing to do.