Lingering memories: Vietnam, Hiroshima

Updated: 2016-05-27 13:07

By Chen Weihua(China Daily USA)

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Lingering memories: Vietnam, Hiroshima

US President Barack Obama shakes hands with a local resident as he leaves a restaurant in Hanoi after having dinner with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain on Monday. Provided To China Daily

US President Barack Obama is on his first visit to Vietnam and Hiroshima, Japan, a trip seen as evoking lots of emotion from some and suspicion from others, including China, Chen Weihua reports from Washington.

Bun cha Huong Lien, an inexpensive street food shop in Hanoi, Vietnam, was made famous overnight on Monday with visits by two unexpected guests.

US President Barack Obama and CNN celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain were seen squeezing around a small table, enjoying cold local beer and grilled pork patties served in a bowl of fish sauce, along with vermicelli noodles, herbs and lettuce on the side.

By the time Obama was leaving the eatery, he had been surrounded by crowds of Vietnamese greeting the president of a nation that was once Vietnam's bitter enemy.

Lingering memories: Vietnam, Hiroshima

On the same day, Obama, with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang standing at his side, unexpectedly announced the lifting of a longstanding arms embargo on Vietnam.

The news has been widely interpreted by Western media as a move to lure Vietnam from China into the US sphere or a move to counter the influence of a rising China, especially regarding maritime disputes in the South China Sea.

Obama said the decision to lift the arms ban was not based on China or any other considerations. "It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam," he said in Hanoi on Monday.

His words were met with suspicion from many Chinese experts studying China-US relations, who see any visit by Obama to the region as move to undermine China's interests.

But reaction from China's foreign ministry was calm.

"As a neighbor to Vietnam, China is happy to see Vietnam develop normal relations with all countries including the US. And we hope this would be conducive to regional peace, stability and development," spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing on Tuesday.

While the US and North Vietnam were enemies 40 years ago, China, then a much poorer nation under Chairman Mao, provided the most personnel and equipment support to the then North Vietnam, led by the same ruling party in Vietnam today, in a prolonged war against South Vietnam backed by US troops.

Reconciliation

Kurt Campbell, chairman of the Asia Group and assistant-secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2009 to 2013, had accompanied Obama on several Asian trips. He interpreted the trip to Vietnam and Hiroshima as not about China, but more about reconciliation with nations of two major wars.

"The Second World War and the Vietnam War are two extraordinarily difficult issues that stir a lot of emotions in the US," he said.

It was Obama's first trip to Vietnam and to Hiroshima, where the US military dropped its first atomic bomb on Aug 6, 1945.

Campbell described it as an extremely difficult rebalancing act for Obama in many places.

Lingering memories: Vietnam, Hiroshima

"This can't be an apology tour. This can't be sort of resisting historical fact. It can't be sweeping under the table what transpired in Vietnam," he said.

While more than 58,000 US military personnel died during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, the death toll of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians was estimated at 3 million.

It is believed that more than 1,600 US military servicemen never returned from that war. And their relatives have pushed Obama to demand Vietnam's help in accounting for them.

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese over three generations are still living with the effects of exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange, SkyNews quoted Vietnamese authorities as saying.

US military sprayed around 12 million gallons of the toxic herbicide across the country during the war. The victims also included US military who returned from the war.

The peace memorial

After attending the G7 summit on Thursday and Friday in Ise-Shima in Japan, Obama will become the first sitting US president to pay a brief visit on Friday to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also known as the Atomic Bomb Dome.

The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 200,000 people, mostly civilians, during and after the explosions.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that a group of South Koreans plan to protest during Obama's visit to Hiroshima. Among the people killed by the atomic bombs, some 40,000 to 50,000 were Koreans who had been taken to Hiroshima or Nagasaki against their will as forced laborers, or had settled in the cities after fleeing deprivation in their occupied homeland.

In a statement this week, the Korean survivors said the US would have moral authority only after it apologized for the "original sin" of dropping the bombs and paid reparations to innocent victims.

In surveys, most Japanese have not demanded an apology from Obama, citing that Japan started the war. Some worried that a demand for an apology might have forced Obama to cancel the trip.

Inside the US, veterans and military historians insisted that Obama should not apologize because dropping the bombs was necessary to shorten the war and forestall an invasion of the Japanese island of Kyushu, which could have led to many more US casualties.

Obama and other US officials have emphasized the importance of looking to the future. In his remarks at Hiroshima, he will continue to promote his 2009 vision of a nuclear free world.

Michael Green, senior vice-president for Asia and the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that message will not be unpopular in Hiroshima, but he is not sure about the Japanese and South Korea governments which are increasingly concerned about nuclear weapons systems in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, noted that Obama has been working hard in the past two years to reconcile with old enemies and passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to make both part of his presidential legacy.

That reconciling included restoration of a diplomatic relationship with Cuba on July 20, 2015, after a hiatus of 54 years, Obama's trip to Cuba in March of this year, and improving relations with Iran last year with the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

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