When President Barack Obama first visited Japan in November 2009, he said he hoped someday to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States dropped atomic bombs during World War II

With his fourth and likely final visit to Japan as president scheduled this month for a Group of 7 meeting for leaders of industrialized nations, the White House is deciding whether Mr. Obama will follow through, the New York Times reported.

No sitting American president has ever visited the cities, because of concerns that such a trip would suggest that the United States was apologizing for the attacks.

“The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency,” Mr. Obama said in 2009.

The calculus for a visit is particularly complicated for Mr. Obama. Political opponents have often falsely accused him of undertaking an “apology tour” of world capitals in his first year in office, so anything that even hints at atonement would feed that criticism.

On the other hand, Mr. Obama has made curbing the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons and lowering the risks of nuclear attack a signature issue of his presidency, an important reason he won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

“The symbol of Hiroshima is the significant and even, in some ways, tragic ability that mankind has to wreak terrible destruction,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a recent briefing.

But Mr. Earnest was unequivocal when asked whether the president believes that Japan deserves a formal government apology: “No, he does not.”

The bombings killed more than 200,000 people, most of them civilians, and led to the Japanese surrender.

Some historians say the bombings were unnecessary and even criminal, while others argue that they saved American lives and those of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who would have perished in an American invasion. Older Americans tend to view the bombings as necessary, while younger ones see them as far more problematic.

There appears to be little official appetite in Japan for an apology.

In 2007, Fumio Kyuma, Japan’s defense minister at the time, referred to the bombings as “something that couldn’t be helped.” 

A secret 2009 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks in 2011 quoted a top Japanese diplomat as calling a visit to Hiroshima “premature” and any apology a “nonstarter.” And Japan’s own record of delayed apologies for its wartime behavior and atrocities has been criticized.

ٍSource: MENA