Secretary of State John Kerry placed a wreath at the Hiroshima memorial on Monday. He described the experience as gut-wrenching.
Kerry is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, where 140,000 people died when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in August 1945. That, plus the bomb a few days later at Nagasaki, led to the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II.
Here & Now host Peter O’Dowd spoke with Shihoko Goto from the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program, about the significance of Kerry’s visit, which Goto says has been welcomed by Japanese media.
“There are of course those Japanese who say that Kerry should have apologized for the United States bombing Japan, but by and large, the public perception is that Kerry set the right tone,” she said.
Guest
- Shihoko Goto, senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program. She tweets @gotoeastasia.
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