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 The first U.S. secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, Kerry said
President Barack Obama also wanted to travel to the city in southern
Japan but he did not know whether the leader's complex schedule
would allow him to do so when he visits the country for a Group of
Seven (G7) summit in May.
Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, whose haunting
displays include photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered
and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh
melting from their limbs.
"It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display," he said.
"It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation everyone of us in
public life carries ... to create and pursue a world free from
nuclear weapons," he told a news conference.
After the tour by Kerry and his fellow G7 foreign ministers, the
group issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to building a
world without nuclear arms but said the push had been made more
complex by North Korea's repeated "provocations" and by worsening
security in Syria and Ukraine.
The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan
and the United States laid white wreaths at a cenotaph to the
victims of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing, which reduced the city to
ashes and killed some 140,000 people by the end of that year.
While he is not the highest-ranking U.S. official to have toured the
museum and memorial park, a distinction that belongs to then-U.S.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in 2008, Kerry
is the most senior executive branch official to visit.
"Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this
memorial. It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our
obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate
all our effort to avoid war itself," the chief U.S. diplomat wrote
in a guest book.
Asked later if this meant Obama should come, Kerry said: "everyone
means everyone. So I hope one day the president of the United States
will be among the everyone who is able to come here. Whether or not
he can come as president, I don’t know."
'FIRST STEP'
At Kerry's suggestion, the ministers also made an impromptu visit to
the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal remains of the only structure
left standing near the hypocenter of the bomb explosion and now a
UNESCO World Heritage site.
Three days after a U.S. warplane dropped a nuclear bomb on
Hiroshima, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, on Aug. 9,
1945. Japan surrendered six days later.
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A visit by Obama could be controversial in America if it were viewed
as an apology. A majority of Americans view the bombings as
justified to end the war and save U.S. lives, while the vast
majority of Japanese believe it was not justified.
Hopes for Obama's visit to Hiroshima were raised after an April 2009
speech in Prague when he called for a world without nuclear weapons.
He later said that he would be honored to visit the two
nuclear-attacked cities.
The G7 foreign ministers' trip to the museum and memorial is part of
Japan's effort to send a strong nuclear disarmament message from
Hiroshima, the world's first city to suffer atomic bombing.
"I think this first-ever visit by G7 foreign ministers to the peace
memorial park is a historic first step towards reviving momentum
toward a world without nuclear weapons," Japanese Foreign Minister
Fumio Kishida said in a statement.
He later told a news conference that it was "inconceivable" that
Japan would ever decide to have nuclear weapons. Last month, U.S.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Japan and South
Korea should build such weapons to deter enemies.
In a separate, detailed statement, the G7 ministers singled out
North Korea for sharp criticism, condemning its recent nuclear test
and launches using ballistic missile technology.
And in a statement on maritime security, they voiced their strong
opposition to provocative attempts to change the status quo in the
East and South China Seas, an apparent reference to China, which is
locked in territorial disputes with other nations including the
Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.
(Additional writing by Linda Sieg and additional reporting by Tim
Kelly and Elaine Lies in Tokyo; Editing by Michael Perry and Nick
Macfie)
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