G-7 leaders tuck into fabulous fare during working lunch
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201605270078.html
Group of Seven leaders sat down to a lavish working lunch that few Japanese could afford.
The May 26 feast on the first day of the Ise-Shima summit in Mie Prefecture featured signature local dishes such as hugely expensive Matsuzaka beef, “Ise-ebi” lobster and "hamaguri" clams.
The two-day summit offers Japan an opportunity to show off its food culture.
The tasty treats were served to the G-7 leaders at the Shima Kanko Hotel in Shima, the venue of the summit.
The VIPs sat down to seared Matsuzaka beef tenderloin “nigirizushi” hand-pressed sushi, “Ise maguro” tuna, sea bream sashimi and “suimono,” a clear soup made with hamaguri clams harvested in Kuwana. The sea bream was from Shima.
The dignitaries toasted one another with “Zaku” brand “junmai daiginjo,” a top-drawer sake brewed with well-polished rice by Shimizu Seizaburo Shoten in Suzuka.
They were also served sake from Mie Prefecture and wine from Japanese vineyards.
According to Japanese government sources, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was relaxed and chatty after finishing a bottle of white wine.
For dinner the same day, Ise-ebi cream lobster soup, a specialty dish at the Shima Kanko Hotel, steamed abalone and Matsuzaka beef tenderloin steak were served.
The G-7 leaders continued their discussions at the hotel on May 27.
Three meal gatherings were scheduled, each one for working discussions.
The Shima Kanko Hotel and Japanese government came up with the menus using ingredients that were recommended by Mie Prefecture.
Obama: Let’s find the courage to pursue world free of nukes
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201605270100.html
HIROSHIMA--U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated his determination to lead efforts for a nuclear-free world in a May 27 speech delivered on his historic visit to the first city hit by an atomic bomb.
“Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” Obama said.
Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the city in western Japan devastated by the atomic bomb dropped on Aug. 6, 1945.
He was met at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the two leaders spent about 10 minutes at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
During his brief stop at the peace museum, Obama wrote a message that said: “We have known the agony of war. Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace and pursue a world without nuclear weapons.”
Obama then laid a wreath before the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims and observed a moment of silence. Abe followed and also laid a wreath at the cenotaph.
The U.S. president spoke in front of invited guests, including a number of atomic bomb survivors.
In explaining his reason for visiting Hiroshima, Obama said: “A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past.”
Obama also pointed out that the victims of the atomic bomb included not only Japanese, but also American prisoners of war and Koreans, touching upon the tragedy of war in which innocent people are often the first victims.
“We must change our mindset about war itself, to prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun,” Obama said.
However, Obama did not apologize for the decision by the United States to drop the atomic bomb 71 years ago, nor did he dwell upon the appropriateness of using the weapon.
He also referred to the speech he gave in Prague in 2009 in which he first laid out his goal of a nuclear-free world.
That goal would lead to a future, he said, “in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as ‘the dawn of atomic warfare,’ but as the start of our own moral awakening.”
He also described the Japan-U.S. relationship as a symbol of “reconciliation,” pointing out that Japan and the United States moved from wartime adversaries to mature allies after the war.
“The United States and Japan forged not only an alliance, but a friendship,” he said.
Abe also gave a short speech in which he thanked Obama for visiting Hiroshima.
“I would like to extend my heartfelt welcome for a historic visit that has been looked forward to by not only the people of Hiroshima, but all Japanese people,” Abe said.
After his speech, Obama had brief chats with Sunao Tsuboi, 91, a co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, and Shigeaki Mori, 79, who has continued with research into American POWs who were killed by the atomic bomb.
Both Tsuboi and Mori survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Obama shook hands with Tsuboi.
The U.S. president also hugged and patted the back of Mori, when he shed tears. (This article was written by Taketsugu Sato and Gen Okamoto.)
Obama stresses nuclear-free world in speech in Hiroshima
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201605270097.html
HIROSHIMA--U.S. President Barack Obama emphasized the need to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons during his visit to the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima on May 27, the first by a sitting U.S. president.
Obama visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and laid a wreath before the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
He then gave a speech that underlined the disastrous nature of a war.
“We force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. ... The memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade.”
The following is the full text of Obama’s speech:
* * *
Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over a hundred thousand Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us and ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.
It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors, having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind. On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain, or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. Empires have risen and fallen, peoples have been subjugated and liberated, and at each juncture innocents have suffered a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.
The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice, and harmony, and truth. And yet, the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination, for conquest, that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern, amplified by new capabilities, and without new constraints.
In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us, shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.
Yet, in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction, of the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will, those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth, how easily we learn to justify violence, in the name of some higher cost. Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.
Nations arise, telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats, but those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.
Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos. But those same discoveries can be turned into ever-more-efficient killing machines. The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth.
Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well. That is why we come to this place. We stand here, in the middle of this city, and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war, and the wars that came before, and the wars that would follow.
Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering, but we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again. Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But, the memory of the morning of August 6th, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination and allows us to change.
And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan forged not only an alliance, but a friendship, that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war.
The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed peoples and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.
Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done.
We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations, and the alliances that we formed, must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.
We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.
And yet, that is not enough, for we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mindset about war itself, to prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun, to see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition, to define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build.
And, perhaps above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another, as members of one human race, for this too is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely, and cruelty less easily accepted.
We see these stories in the hibakusha, the woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb, because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. The man who sought out families of Americans killed here, because he believed their loss was equal to his own.
My own nation’s story began with simple words: “All men are created equal, and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents, and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family, that is the story that we all must tell.
That is why we come to Hiroshima, so that we might think of people we love, the first smile from our children in the morning, the gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table, the comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago. Those who died, they are like us.
Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.
The world was forever changed here. But today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is the future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as “the dawn of atomic warfare,” but as the start of our own moral awakening.
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