Additional Itinerary in Hiroshima

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Fumio Kishida, announced on Saturday that Foreign Ministers of Group Seven countries would visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park taking opportunity of G7 Foreign Ministers Meeting later this month. It will be the first time for United States Secretary of State and Foreign Ministers of Britain and France to visit the park. Japan hopes those nations to correctly understand the consequence of nuclear war, even though seven decades have passed.

Japanese government has been urging G7 countries to accept the schedule for Foreign Ministers to visit memorial facility in Hiroshima, soon after the city was picked as the place for the foreign ministers meeting last year. The member countries agreed on Japan’s proposal. The ministers will see the exhibition of Peace Memorial Museum, which includes miniature of Hiroshima City when the atomic bomb exploded in the sky or nail, hair or other remains of the civilian victims.

The ministers will also give memorial service in front of Atomic Bomb Memorial Monument. “It is extremely important for promoting the world without nuclear weapon that the world leaders visit suffered place and know the reality of devastation by atomic bomb,” told Kishida in Hiroshima. He indicated that G7 member countries did not accept the offer of meeting with suffered people called hibakusha.

Although Japan has been requiring U.S. President to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the request has been turned down with negative opinion of U.S. public. In the school of U.S., dropping atomic bomb has been taught as a necessary measure to finish the war and avoid further damages and victims. It is still unclear that President Obama will visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki at the time of G7 Summit meeting in Tokyo late May.

While Obama has been eager to make the world without nuclear weapon, its effort was slow and weak. In the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., the world leaders shared perception on nuclear crisis brought by terrorists. Participants of the meeting watched a short video of possible fall of radioactive materials from drone controlled by terrorists. Threat is getting closer to the citizens.

United States appealed that over 3.8 tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium was removed from 30 countries and concentrated to U.S. or Russia during six years of Nuclear Security Summit. However, having nuclear weapon is still regarded as a status of powerful country as North Korea perceives. It is necessary for world leaders to realize that nuclear weapon does not produce any winner, but loser at all.