Obama Will Not Attend No-Nukes Meeting in Hiroshima

Barack Obama will soon be in Japan for the APEC Summit. The city of Hiroshima will be hosting a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates to discuss the need to abolish nuclear weapons, and it seemed that they scheduled it for Nov. 12 to 14 hoping that Obama could attend it. However, the American President, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for delivering speeches about that issue, has turned down the invitation:

Mr Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, in part for his call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and a group of former winners of the prize including the Dalai Lama had urged him to join them in the city in November.

‘We are very disappointed that President Obama cannot come,’ Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba told a regular press conference hours after hearing that Mr Obama’s itinerary in Japan does not include a trip to the city.

Mr Akiba said Hiroshima had asked Obama to attend a meeting of eight Nobel Peace Prize winners to be held there to coincide with a November 13-14 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit of world leaders near Tokyo.

‘We will continue efforts so that he will visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki at the earliest possible time, take a direct look at what it’s like to fall victim to atomic bombs, and share victims’ feelings that no more people should suffer like this,’ Mr Akiba said.

{democracy:473}

—

Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

vonskippy

Yeah, I’m sure he had loads of free time to just squeeze in another meeting.

http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

Exactly my thoughts.

fish taco

If he already won the prize what would he really have to gain from taking this meeting?
Hamachiman

I wish they would stop hoping and praying Obama would attend any meeting in Hiroshima.

As we have seen, this president is all about appeasing all sides.

There’s absolutely no way that he will ever visit Hiroshima in such capacities as long as he is president. There’s now way he wants to possibly ‘offend’ any of his constituents, especially those who find it an affront that any American politician would visit Hiroshima. You know, the usual arguments about Japan trying to make itself the victim sort of deal.

Some politicos have visited Hiroshima and even attended the ceremony but the president himself, any president visiting the site of what ended WW2?

No way.

http://japansoc.com Nick

How about joining for 30 minutes via teleconference?

taco rice

I wouldn’t mind if he joined via teleconference. It’s expensive transporting the president around. But still, he probably already has a golf outing scheduled for that time.

Level3

My dislike of Obama is already noted, I assume.
But I can’t fault him for not going to Hiroshima.
Too busy, and the logistics of such a side trip would be nuts.

But if he is going to visit Hiroshima as President, he’d better book soon, he only has 2 years left.

Is Al Gore going, or is he too busy rolling naked in mounds of “carbon credit” cash?
gaijin

I think that if he’s not going to attend for even a moment of support he should at least return his nobel peace price and the cash that he donated. And while he’s at it why doesn’t he just ‘fess up and admit that he’s not the president of peace as he insinuated in his campaigning. When he campaigned he just told everybody exactly what they wanted to hear to get their vote. Not that every other politician in the world isn’t exactly the same. We just somehow got hoodwinked once again into believing that somehow president Obama was going to be different this time and we elected him president. He never had any real intentions of following through with any of those pledges and promises. Not attending this conference for even a few minutes is just another example of this. He could pop down to Hiroshima ever so easily in an Airforce 1 jet helicopter for even just an hour or two but to completely blow off this honorary invitation is a real slap in the face to other nobel prize peace laureates.
Cryptnotic

Does anyone think that if the Japanese had nuclear weapons in WWII that they wouldn’t have used them against us?

Concerned Filipino

To be honest, if they had both nukes and a delivery system, they probably would have. If they couldn’t reach American cities, they would probably have used it on a Chinese or Southeast Asian city.

I wonder what the apologists have to say to that.
gustaf

“us” being you and hamachiman or just anglo in general?
Stereo

Some people like you really do not listen. They are not demanding an apology. They want to outlaw nuclear weapons.

Ottawa Treaty outlawed anti-personal mines in 1999, when people realized the inhumane nature of the mines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

They want the same for nuclear weapons. They want people to know the inhumane nature of the nuclear weapons.

People will get serious about the nuclear ban only when they see the horrible damages and start to realize the same may fall upon themselves,

Obama Will Not Attend No-Nukes Meeting in Hiroshima

Recent Comments

Further Reading

Bikini Atoll: Lessons For Fukushima?

Complaints From Loony Parents Cancel Event: Okinawan Children Not Allowed to Play With “Radioactive” Aomori Snow

Remembering the International Media’s Post-Fukushima Hysteria: Radiation Scare Stories Ignored Real Victims of 3/11

A Look Inside Osaka Prison

Dead Shark Found in Yoyogi Park

Japanese Fart Battle Scroll

Dinosaurs Wear Traditional Japanese Clothing

Canada Rejects Refugee Application From Japanese Who Feared Radiation

Ishinomaki: Then & Now

Radioactive Seafood? Miyagi Fishing Industry Works to Prove Safety of Their Fish

Categories

Archives

Subscribe

Japan Blogs

Korea Blogs

Linkroll

Other Asia Blogs