At least 3 A-bomb survivors to attend Hiroshima event for Obama visit
The three are Sunao Tsuboi, 91, and Mikiso Iwasa, 87, who were in Hiroshima during the U.S. atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, and Terumi Tanaka, 84, who was in Nagasaki when the second atomic bomb was dropped three days later.
All three are senior officials of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, known as Hidankyo.
Obama is expected to lay flowers at the cenotaph in the memorial park near ground zero and make a short statement Friday afternoon. It is still unclear at what point the three will be present.
"I will not give up on the goal of nuclear abolition to ensure the happiness of human beings," Tsuboi said in Hiroshima. "I'd like to tell Mr. Obama 'I cheer you on' because he called for a nuclear-free world," Tsuboi added.
Tsuboi, one of the three chairpersons of Hidankyo, was 20 when he was exposed to the radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which left him with permanent health complications.
Iwasa, also a Hidankyo chairperson, lost his mother and younger sister in the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Tanaka was 13 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing five members of his family.
Sumiteru Taniguchi, 87, the other chairperson of Hidankyo who was in Nagasaki at the time of the atomic bombing, was also asked to attend the event in Hiroshima, but he is unlikely to make it due to poor health, the officials said.
On the U.S. side, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society, a war veterans group, said Wednesday a former prisoner of war held by Japan has been informed by the White House that he will not be among the group of veterans present in the Hiroshima park.
The veterans group said the White House had earlier contacted it to identify a former POW able to travel to Japan on short notice and Daniel Crowley, 94, of Simsbury, Connecticut, had been selected.
Crowley who had been waiting in San Antonio was disappointed, saying, "I think it was ludicrous to reach out to me and then not include me," according to the veterans group.
Crowley, who served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Philippines, fought in Bataan against Japanese forces and became a prisoner of war with the fall of Corregidor in May 1942. He was sent to Japan in early 1944 as a slave laborer, according to the veterans group.
The Associated Press reported that a senior official of the White House said it did not send an official invitation for the Hiroshima trip to the veterans group.
Source: Kyodo News
