Photo/Illutration Ryuichi Narita, professor emeritus of history at Japan Women’s University, during an interview with The Asahi Shimbun (Hiroyuki Yamamoto)

Editor’s note: One of the major themes at the Group of Seven summit, being held in Hiroshima from May 19, is working toward a world without nuclear weapons.

The Asahi Shimbun interviewed people from various backgrounds to collect their messages for the assembled G-7 leaders.

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To put my thoughts in order, I went over a speech that U.S. President Barack Obama gave in 2016 when he visited Hiroshima.

Early on, Obama said, “death fell from the sky and the world was changed.”

These words triggered intense debate because no mention was made of the fact it was the United States that dropped the atomic bomb.

I was also somewhat taken aback, but then Obama used the subject “we” and said, “We come to mourn the dead.”

He added, “among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to … pursue a world without them.”

While he avoided some aspects, I felt that he made an effort to proactively deal with history.

Hiroshima has always sought to go beyond an only one-sided perspective of the victims.

Why was Hiroshima targeted for atomic bombing? It had a concentration of military facilities and Ujina Port was the staging area for the deployment of Japanese soldiers overseas.

For this reason, the victims included ethnic Koreans as well as U.S. prisoners of war.

Seen from Asia and the United States, Hiroshima is also the site for aggressors.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has tried to transmit the two sides of Hiroshima as both victim and aggressor. It was an attempt to recognize the different stances of enemy and ally, to overcome that difference and to transmit Hiroshima’s plea to the world.

The G-7 summit is being held at a hotel in Ujina.

Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many people in the United States and Japan color their arguments in Cold War terms, such was whether one is an enemy or an ally.

But I feel that a new situation is arising.

The Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, who died in March, not only spoke about the tragedy of the atomic bombing, but was also a writer who had confidence in the “restorative ability of humans” that would allow them to overcome that tragedy.

When Obama visited Hiroshima, he met with Sunao Tsuboi, an atomic bomb survivor. I was greatly impressed when I saw Tsuboi standing ramrod straight when he shook hands with Obama. While some hibakusha have never forgiven the United States, in Tsuboi’s stance I felt the humanity of Hiroshima capable of meeting directly with Obama.

The world is now at a point of history when it faces many difficulties, such as epidemics, war and natural disasters. While people’s attention tends to focus on the crisis before their eyes, Hiroshima has something that could allow for contraposing a new alternative to the way of thinking of enemy or ally.

I believe Prime Minister Fumio Kishida should be shouldering that aspect of Hiroshima.

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Born in 1951, Ryuichi Narita is professor emeritus of history at Japan Women’s University who has written extensively about the memory of war and historical understanding.

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