ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
June 6, 2016
Obama uses Hiroshima visit as opportunity to urge no nukes
DELICATE DIPLOMACY. U.S. President
Barack Obama, center, accompanied by Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, shakes hands and
talks with Sunao Tsuboi, a survivor of the 1945 atomic
bombing and chairman of the Hiroshima Prefectural
Confederation of A-bomb Sufferers Organization
(HPCASO), at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hi-
roshima. Obama became the first sitting U.S. presi-
dent to visit the site of the world’s first atomic bomb
attack, bringing global attention both to survivors
and to his unfulfilled vision of a world without nuclear
weapons. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
By Nancy Benac and Foster Klug
The Associated Press
IROSHIMA, Japan — With an
unflinching look back at a painful
history, President Barack Obama
stood on the hallowed ground of Hiroshima
and declared it a fitting place to summon
people everywhere to embrace the vision of
a world without nuclear weapons.
As the first American president to visit
the city where the U.S. dropped the first
atomic bomb, Obama came to acknowledge
— but not apologize for — an act many
Americans see as a justified end to a brutal
war that Japan started with a sneak
attack at Pearl Harbor.
Some 140,000 people died after a U.S.
warplane targeted wartime Hiroshima on
August 6, 1945, and 70,000 more perished
in Nagasaki, where a second bomb was
dropped three days later. Japan soon
surrendered.
“Their souls speak to us,” Obama said of
the dead. “They ask us to look inward, to
take stock of who we are and who we might
become.”
With a lofty speech and a warm embrace
for an elderly survivor, Obama renewed
the call for a nuclear-free future that he
had first laid out in a 2009 speech in
Prague.
This time, Obama spoke as a far more
experienced president than the one who
had employed his upbeat “Yes, we can”
campaign slogan on the first go-round.
The president, who has made uneven
progress on his nuclear agenda over the
past seven years, spoke of “the courage to
escape the logic of fear” as he held out hope
for diligent, incremental steps to reduce
nuclear stockpiles.
“We may not realize this goal in my
lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back
the possibility of catastrophe,” he said.
Obama spent less than two hours in
Hiroshima but seemed to accomplish what
he came for. It was a choreographed
performance meant to close old wounds
without inflaming new passions on a
H
subject still fraught after all these years.
In a solemn ceremony on a sunwashed
afternoon, Obama and Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe placed wreaths before
the cenotaph, a simple arched stone monu-
ment at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial
Park. Only the clicking of camera shutters
intruded on the moment as Obama closed
his eyes and briefly bowed his head.
Then, after each leader gave brief
remarks, Obama approached two aging
survivors of the bombing who were seated
in the front row, standing in for the
thousands still seared by memories of that
day.
Ninety-one-year-old Sunao Tsuboi, the
head of a survivors group, energetically
engaged the president in conversation,
telling Obama he would be remembered as
someone who listened to the voice of a few
survivors. He urged him to come back and
meet more.
“He was holding my hands until the
end,” Tsuboi said. “I was almost about to
ask him to stop holding my hands, but he
wouldn’t.”
Obama stepped over to meet historian
Shigeaki Mori. Just eight years old when
the bomb hit, Mori had to hold back tears
at the emotion of the moment.
Obama patted him on the back and
wrapped him in a warm embrace. From
there, Obama and Abe walked along a
tree-lined path toward a river that flows by
the iconic A-bomb dome, the skeletal
remains of an exhibition hall that stands
as silent testimony to the awful power of
the bomb blast 71 years ago and as a
symbol for international peace.
Abe welcomed the president’s message
and offered his own determination “to
realize a world free of nuclear weapons, no
matter how long or how difficult the road
will be.”
Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize
early in his presidency for his anti-nuclear
agenda but has seen uneven progress. The
president can point to last year’s Iran
nuclear deal and a weapons treaty with
Russia. But North Korea’s nuclear
program still looms as a threat, and hopes
for a pact for further weapons reductions
with Russia have stalled. Critics also fault
the administration for planning a big and
costly program to upgrade U.S. nuclear
stockpiles.
Just as Obama had delicate sensitivities
to manage in Hiroshima, so too did Abe.
The Japanese leader made a point to
dismiss any suggestion that he pay a
reciprocal visit to Pearl Harbor.
Abe did not rule out coming to Hawai‘i
someday, but clearly wanted to avoid any
notion of moral equivalence. In Japan,
Pearl Harbor is not seen as a parallel for
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but as an attack on a military installation
that did not target civilians.
Bomb survivor Kinuyo Ikegami, 82, paid
her own respects at the cenotaph, before
the politicians arrived.
“I could hear schoolchildren screaming:
‘Help me! Help me!’” she said, tears
running down her face. “It was too pitiful,
too horrible. Even now it fills me with
emotion.”
Obama went out of his way, in speaking
of the dead, to mention that thousands of
Koreans and a dozen American prisoners
were among those who died. It was a nod to
advocates for both groups who had publicly
warned the president not to forget about
them in Hiroshima.
In a brief visit to the museum at the
peace park, Obama viewed a display about
a young girl who survived the bombing but
died several years later of leukemia. She
folded paper cranes in the hospital until
she died and is the inspiration for the story
of Sadako and the thousand cranes.
Endangered Sumatran rhino gives birth in Indonesia
By Stephen Wright
The Associated Press
J
EVEREST DAY. A porter walks with a massive load headed to Ever-
est base camp near Lobuche, Nepal, in this March 28, 2016 file photo.
Nepal celebrated Everest Day by honoring nine Sherpa guides who fixed
ropes and dug the route to the summit so hundreds of climbers could
scale the world’s highest mountain this season, following two years of
disasters. (AP Photo/Tashi Sherpa, File)
Nepal honors nine Sherpas who
paved way for Everest climbers
By Binaj Gurubacharya
The Associated Pres
ATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal celebrated Everest
Day by honoring nine Sherpa guides who fixed
ropes and dug the route to the summit so
hundreds of climbers could scale the world’s highest
mountain this season, following two years of disasters.
Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli praised the men at
the ceremony in Kathmandu, where they were presented
with bouquets and given checks for 50,000 rupees ($460).
“The secret behind the more than 400 climbers
ascending Mount Everest is the successful rope fixing and
successful route fixing,” Oli said. “There was no confusion
because the route fixing and the rope fixing made it
possible for climbers to reach the summit.”
Everest Day honors the first successful climb in 1953 by
Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and his Sherpa guide,
Tenzing Norgay. Since then, thousands of climbers have
scaled the peak and some 280 people have died on Ever-
Continued on page 13
K
AKARTA, Indonesia — A Su-
matran rhinoceros has given
birth at an Indonesian sanctu-
ary in a success for efforts to save the
critically endangered species.
The International Rhino Founda-
tion (IRF) said the female calf was
born in May, weighs about 45 pounds,
and looks healthy and active.
“We haven’t stopped smiling since
the moment we were sure she was
alive and healthy,” IRF’s executive
director Susie Ellis said in a state-
ment. “While one birth does not save
the species, it’s one more Sumatran
rhino on earth.”
Only an estimated 100 Sumatran
rhinos remain, mostly on the island of
Sumatra, and several are in captiv-
ity. They are threatened by the
destruction of tropical forest habitat
and poachers who kill the animals for
their horns, which are prized for
making ornaments and for use in
traditional medicine in China and
other parts of Asia.
The species was rediscovered in the
Indonesian part of Borneo through
trails and footprints in 2013.
But one member of the small popu-
SANCTUARY SUCCESS. Ratu, a 14-year-old Sumatran rhino, left, lies next to her newborn
calf at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia. The International
Rhino Foundation said the female calf was born in May, weighs about 45 pounds, and looks healthy
and active. (Stephen Belcher/Canon/IRF/YABI via AP)
lation on Borneo died in April after a ary in the Way Kambas National
wound from a poacher’s trap became Park on Sumatra in 1997. It praised
infected.
the sanctuary’s staff as “top-notch
The calf is the second to its mother, experts” and said the second birth
Ratu, who gave birth to a male named shows that the expertise exists in
Andatu in 2012, which was the first Indonesia to increase the rhino
rhino birth in captivity in Indonesia population.
in 124 years. The father, Andalas,
The foundation said Ratu was
was born at the Cincinnati Zoo in given a hormone supplement daily
2001.
during her pregnancy to help ensure
IRF established the rhino sanctu- it went to full-term.
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