G7 Foreign Ministers in Hiroshima

Foreign Ministers and Secretary of State of Group 7 for the first time held their annual meeting in Hiroshima, where human being experienced unprecedented devastation brought by one atomic bomb seventy-one years ago. They visited Peace Memorial Museum, offered flowers in front of monument that had a message of “Rest in peace, because we will never repeat the mistake,” and walked around Atomic Bomb Memorial Dome. The expectation of the people in the host nation is that they will work harder to eliminate that inhumane weapon.

The place of G7 Foreign Ministers Meeting was decided with firm initiative of the host nation, Japan. There was an internal political calculation, since Japanese Foreign Minister, Fumio Kishida, was a Representative of electoral district in Hiroshima. Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, must have thought to make his political legacy by paving the way for Barack Obama to visiting Hiroshima for the first time as the President of United States.

Foreign Ministers’ visit to Peace Memorial Museum was not opened to the media with firm opposition of U.S. government. No one can go through the exhibition, which includes actual clothes, hair or nail of the victims, without regretting about war. U.S. government did not like Secretary of State John Kerry to issue a comment deeply regretting that nuclear war. “It is a stunning display, it is a gut-wrenching display,” told Kerry after the visit, anyway. “War must never be the first resort. If it must be, it must be the last resort,” he also described. But, his comment made a clear difference from the sentiment of the sufferers in Hiroshima, who had been thinking that war would not even be the last resort.

The G7 diplomatic leaders left short notes for the museum. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier realized the suffering and deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a warning not to stop the effort for peace and achievement of the world without nuclear weapons. Kerry wrote his message: It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.

On Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, Kerry expressed his hope. “I hope one day, the President of United States will be among the everyone who will be able to be here,” told Kerry in his press conference. It is not Kerry, however, but U.S. citizens who will bring POTUS to Hiroshima with sincere hope for world peace.