Documents show President Ford urged to visit Hiroshima
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
More than 64 years after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, no American president has visited the city devastated by that blast on Aug. 6, 1945. Now, with a visit from President Obama being planned for later this year, some Japanese people hope he will become the first sitting president to see the city that the American bomb targeted.
But newly discovered records show that in 1974, a senior adviser to President Gerald Ford urged him visit Hiroshima as part of the first presidential trip ever to Japan and to make a speech about peace and reconciliation The proposal was overruled, the documents show, by other White House officials, including then Deputy National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft (Scowcroft later was the National Security Advisor under both President Ford and President George H. W. Bush.)
The documents were found as a result of research conducted by the Japanese daily newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun, and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. The documents are stored in a box which is custody of The Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Mi. The library is part of the Presidential Libraries system of the National Archives and Records Administration.
In a memorandum for the president dated Sept. 16, 1974, William J. Baroody Jr. wrote, “As an extension of the presidential philosophy of reconciliation, I believe it would be advisable to include a visit to Hiroshima in your forthcoming Japanese trip.” Baroody added, “By making such a visit, you will provide indisputable assurance of your intent to heal wounds, both national and international.”
The memorandum referred to an example of “sincere efforts of reconciliation” in Europe attempted by then French President DeGaulle and then West German Prime Minister Adenauer after the World War II.
“Hiroshima – and Japan – are still alive with sentiment concerning the bombing and its aftermath. If a parallel can be drawn, your visit to Hiroshima would be comparable to the magnanimity of the French and Germans,” Baroody wrote. “Beyond question, your presence would afford a vehicle for bringing Japanese – American relations to a position of amity which no extremists will be able to attack with confidence.”
Baroody proposed that the visit include a speech by President Ford in Hiroshima.
“A Presidential speech addressed to the peoples of the world on behalf of a lasting peace in a thermo-nuclear age would be very effective. Our desire to effect arms control can thus be annunciated in a manner which would gain the attention of all peoples and all governments,” he said.
At that time, Japan had not yet ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the U.S. Government worried about the possibility of Japanese nuclear armament. And China had developed nuclear weapons by repeating tests.
“Your words, spoken in Asia, would have a particular impact in Peking, and would be most meaningful there”, the Baroody memorandum stated. “To the Japanese, still seriously involved in an understandable reversion to realistic defense policy without reliance upon the United States, a speech of this kind would be most salutary.”
Baroody was a 36-year-old assistant to the President at that time. He had worked for former Defense Secretary and US Representative Melvin Laird in both Congress and the Defense Department. Mr. Baroody joined the White House in 1973 and headed the Office of Public Liaison in charge of managing contacts between the Administration and various interest groups in America. He was promoted to “the highest staff rank in the White House” by President Ford in September 1974.
Baroody’s ideas didn’t survive a challenge from top security officials, who objected partly on grounds that it might create political problems inside Japan. Two weeks after the memo from Baroody, Scowcroft wrote , “We have given serious consideration to a possible Presidential visit to Hiroshima. As Bill Baroody has accurately stated, there are some advantages to such a stop. There are also, however, a number of major disadvantages. Some Japanese might regard it as an effort to recall that we had defeated them in World War II. It could rekindle old animosities in Japan at a time when we are striving for new relationships. It could also be exploited by the Left in Japan. On the basis of these considerations, we recommend that the President not visit Hiroshima during his trip to Japan.”
Scowcroft’s view carried the day. President Ford landed on Japanese soil for a four-day visit on Nov.18, 1974 as the first U.S .President to visit Japan. He visited Tokyo and Kyoto, but not Hiroshima.
Now, some Japanese believe a presidential visit is required to finally close the books on World War II..
“There has been no true closure with the U.S. over World War II”, Fumio Matsuo, a former Washington bureau chief of Kyodo News Service, wrote in a 2005 Wall Street Journal opinion article.
“My conviction that we need a postwar settlement of accounts is triggered by memory of the way the city of Dresden marked the 50th anniversary of the Allied bombings that killed 35,000. I was surprised to see in attendance the military leaders of Germany's former enemies and representatives of the British Royal Family. It was clear that everyone had engaged in much back-stage diplomacy. Japan and the U.S., on the other hand, have never engaged in any meaningful discussion of their wartime actions, even though far more people (conservatively, 83,793) were killed by the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, than in Dresden….. According to Japanese government estimates, about 510,000 civilians were killed. Yet Japan and the U.S. have never held such a reconciliation ceremony.”
Matsuo mentioned his own experience of being attacked by a U.S. bomber during World War II. Then he urged both America and Japan to use the Dresden precedent to “mourn the deceased and call for permanent reconciliation – what German President Roman Herzog referred to as ‘an expression of humane emotion dating back to the beginning of civilization’ -- with President Bush laying a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on his next visit.”
After World War II, Mr. Matsuo became a reporter for Japanese newspapers and has specialized in U.S.-Japan relations for more than 40 years.
He wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “By having the U.S. president respect the dead at the symbolic center of all bombing deaths, including the world's first nuclear attack, the thorn in our psyche might possibly be removed. There would be no need for remarks -- the mere presence of the president at the Memorial would speak for itself by opening a new page of true mutual trust and respect. In reciprocation, Japan's prime minister should quietly lay a wreath at Pearl Harbor on the appropriate occasion.”
On July 2, 2008, President Bush was questioned by a Japanese reporter during the Roundtable Interview prior to the G-8 Summit 2008 in Japan.
“During your presidency, the Japan-U.S. relationship was very strong. But there are still unresolved issues on -- regarding Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. And some historians propose that the Prime Minister should visit Pearl Harbor, and U.S. President should visit Hiroshima.”
President Bush replied by saying, “That's interesting. Symbolic gestures like that may make sense; I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. It's an interesting idea. You're the first person that's ever brought it up to me, I want you to know. But whoever the next President is must, one, understand the importance of the relationship; and two, be thinking about the future”.
Now some Japanese leaders want President Obama to take the step none of his predecessors has taken in 64 years. They take hope from, President Obama’s speech in Prague earlier this year in which he declared “America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He added, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act”, he said. “The United States will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.”
That speech has accelerated calls for the resident’s to visit Hiroshima.
The new Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, on Aug. 6 in Hiroshima said , “I think that it would be meaningful to invite President Obama to Hiroshima..” Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan defeated the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the Aug. 30 election. The LDP had held the government for nearly 53 years.
Matsuo said, after reading the memorandums from the Ford White House, that the proposal by Mr. Baroody is not only a history but also is still a valid proposal to both countries.
“The new administration should make the most of this proposal,” Matsuo said.
Toshihiro Okuyama is an investigative reporter for The Asahi Shimbun, the largest newspaper in Japan. He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Investigative Reporting Workshop since March 2009. This story was published on Sept. 15, 2009 by The Ashai Shimbun.
