World Apology Tour, 2016 Edition

In the news right now is a report that Obama is considering a stop at Hiroshima at some point in the coming months to apologize for our ending World War II decisively there in August of 1945. The New York Sun nails the matter in an editorial today:

It would be wrong of Mr. Obama to go to Hiroshima if his aim there is to apologize. There is no doubt that innocent Japanese — children, in the main — were among the 140,000 who perished in the first strike with an atomic bomb (another 80,000 died at Nagasaki). Their deaths, though, came in consequence of Japan’s own tyranny. What needs to be expressed by any American president is gratitude for the American heroes who brought the war to an end.

But before moving on, it behooves us to ramp up the amps here at Power Line, as I believe we were the first to break the story in the U.S. back in 2011 that Obama had wanted to go to Hiroshima then, but that the Japanese government sent word through diplomatic channels saying, “Please don’t.” Here’s the original post; one excerpt:

One problem for The One: Japan was not amused by this idea.  The U.S. embassy in Tokyo cabled Hillary Clinton to suggest with typically gentle diplomatic language that what Obama was proposing would be deeply offensive to Japanese.

I had been tipped off to the story in the Japanese press about this episode by a recent visitor, and within 24 hours Fox News had run with it, and the White House press office was denying it. Keep your eyes on this story over the next few days. I suspect the Japanese are no more interested today than they were in 2011 at serving as a stage prop for Obama’s moral vanity.

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