Skip to main content

I'm no big fan of the President, but I believe in giving everyone a fair shake and not relying on political pundits for facts. 

So, our challenge for today is to provide a quote from the transcript of Obama's Hiroshima speech in which he apologizes for the U.S. using the atomic bombs.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in Hiroshima on Friday, as transcribed by The Japan Times:

Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

Why do we come to this place? To Hiroshima?

We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children; thousands of Koreans; a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.

It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors, having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting, but against their own kind. On every continent the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal, empires have risen and fallen, peoples have been subjugated and liberated, and at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.

The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art, their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet, the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes. An old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints. In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women and children, no different than us, shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death.

There are many sites around the war that chronicle this war, memorials that tell of stories of courage and heroism, graves in empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction, how the very spark that marks us as a species — our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.

How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.

Every great religion promises us a pathway to love and peace and righteousness and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed that their faith is a license to kill. Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats, but those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.

Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever-more efficient killing machines.

The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth.

Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.

That is why we come to this place. We stand here, in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry.

We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow. Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering, but we have a shared responsibility to look into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.

Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness, but the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change. And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope.

The United States and Japan forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war. The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed peoples and nations won liberation. And an international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and inspire to constrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.

Still, every act of aggression between nations — every act of terror and corruption, and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world — shows our work is never done. We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances we have formed must possess the means to defend ourselves.

But among the nations, like my own, that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them. We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.

We can chart a course that leads to getting rid of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.

And yet that is not enough. For we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mindset about war itself to prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition, to define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build.

And perhaps above all we must re-imagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.

For this too is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.

We see these stories in the hibakusha. The woman who forgave the pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. The man who sought out families of Americans killed here because he believed that their loss was equal to his own.

My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents and across oceans, the irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family. That is the story that we all must tell.

That is why we come to Hiroshima, so that we might think of people we love, the first smile from our children in the morning, the gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table, the comforting embrace of a parent.

We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here 71 years ago.

Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it.

When the choice is made by nations, when the choice is made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.

The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child.

That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.

Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Mr. Hooberbloob posted:

The crux of his speech was we were wrong for dropping the bomb.  The fact that he states we had a "moral awakening" after the bomb dropped supports that staetment.  I'm pretty sure we've been in a moral decline since that moment.

Sometimes the word "sorry" doesn't have to be said to say "I'm sorry". 

 

I don't agree with your interpretation of his speech.  In my opinion, when he said, "That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening." he was not talking of only the United States, but the entire world - the entire human race. 

But, I may be wrong.

OldSalt posted:
Mr. Hooberbloob posted:

The crux of his speech was we were wrong for dropping the bomb.  The fact that he states we had a "moral awakening" after the bomb dropped supports that staetment.  I'm pretty sure we've been in a moral decline since that moment.

Sometimes the word "sorry" doesn't have to be said to say "I'm sorry". 

 

I don't agree with your interpretation of his speech.  In my opinion, when he said, "That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening." he was not talking of only the United States, but the entire world - the entire human race. 

But, I may be wrong.

I want to thank you, Hoob, for forcing me to reevaluate my thinking on this matter.  I still don't think he apologized, but he was flat wrong about any "moral awakening" within humanity or the United States, whichever interpretation you agree with.  Just look at the world around us as we can see there has been no moral awakening.  We (humanity) are still driven by the same greed, the quest for power, and nationalistic fervor.

OldSalt posted:
Mr. Hooberbloob posted:

The crux of his speech was we were wrong for dropping the bomb.  The fact that he states we had a "moral awakening" after the bomb dropped supports that staetment.  I'm pretty sure we've been in a moral decline since that moment.

Sometimes the word "sorry" doesn't have to be said to say "I'm sorry". 

 

I don't agree with your interpretation of his speech.  In my opinion, when he said, "That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening." he was not talking of only the United States, but the entire world - the entire human race. 

But, I may be wrong.

Pretty sure we are the only ones to have actually used atomic warfare.

Mr. Hooberbloob posted:
OldSalt posted:
Mr. Hooberbloob posted:

The crux of his speech was we were wrong for dropping the bomb.  The fact that he states we had a "moral awakening" after the bomb dropped supports that staetment.  I'm pretty sure we've been in a moral decline since that moment.

Sometimes the word "sorry" doesn't have to be said to say "I'm sorry". 

 

I don't agree with your interpretation of his speech.  In my opinion, when he said, "That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening." he was not talking of only the United States, but the entire world - the entire human race. 

But, I may be wrong.

Pretty sure we are the only ones to have actually used atomic warfare.

Duh.

OldSalt posted:
Mr. Hooberbloob posted:
OldSalt posted:
Mr. Hooberbloob posted:

The crux of his speech was we were wrong for dropping the bomb.  The fact that he states we had a "moral awakening" after the bomb dropped supports that staetment.  I'm pretty sure we've been in a moral decline since that moment.

Sometimes the word "sorry" doesn't have to be said to say "I'm sorry". 

 

I don't agree with your interpretation of his speech.  In my opinion, when he said, "That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening." he was not talking of only the United States, but the entire world - the entire human race. 

But, I may be wrong.

Pretty sure we are the only ones to have actually used atomic warfare.

Duh.

Kinda blows up the whole world theory, duh.  Pun intended.

Last edited by Mr. Hooberbloob

Some ask why we didn't demonstrate the power of the A bomb to the Japanese to convince them to surrender.  We did -- at Hiroshima!   No apology is needed for that!  For Nagasaki, perhaps, an apology is necessary -- from the Russians.  When the US bombed Hiroshima, the Japanese approached the Soviet embassy about negotiating a surrender.  Stalin sat on that plea.  He desired to not only recover the southern half of the island of Sakhalin lost in the Russo-Japanese war, but much more Japanese territory, as they did in Europe.  Plus, he desired to seized the munitions and arms of the Japanese army in China to give to Mao. 

After Nagasaki, Japan sent an en clair message to the US pleading for surrender negotiations.  Some modern historians claim the US could have easily starved Japan out -- which was true,  However, how could we know that.  Unlike Germany, where the allies had spies all over Germany, to include their General Staff, plus German Abwehr (intelligence) had major persons who informed the allies).  Only the Soviets had spies in Japan, and they only reported to Stalin.

 

OldSalt posted:
Mr. Hooberbloob posted:

Kinda blows up the whole world theory, duh.  Pun intended.

Not really.  Consider this:  Is Obama a Globalist or a Nationalist?  How would a Globalist use the word 'we'?  How would a Nationalist?

BO is a chameleon,  it doesn't matter what pronoun he used.  The speech is clearly stating America was wrong for dropping the bombs.  It's nothing more than an apology guised as a statement of regret.

Add Reply

Post

Untitled Document
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×