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A non-apology that may be a sorry

Close on the heels of the apology tendered by the Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau for the ill-treatment to mostly Sikh passengers of the Komagata Maru ship, came another momentous event when the US President, Barack Obama, felt to finally appear at the Hiroshima bomb sight.

A non-apology that may be a sorry

Trudeau’s sorry was very comprehensive but Obama sought to apologise by his presence



Bharat H. Desai & Balraj K. Sidhu

Close on the heels of the apology tendered by the Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau for the ill-treatment to mostly Sikh passengers of the Komagata Maru ship, came another momentous event when the US President, Barack Obama, felt to finally appear at the Hiroshima bomb sight. The city was reduced to ashes on 6 August 1945 by orders of the President Harry Truman when the first nuclear device ‘Little Boy’ killed thousands of people. Obama laid a wreath at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, closed his eyes and bowed his head to pay homage to departed souls. It became yet another occasion when a head of state sought to come to terms with a past wrong. 

Obama was the first sitting US President to visit the first nuclear bomb site in 71 years. He underscored the frailty of human beings despite ego pangs to atone for historical wrongs. The Obama visit fell short of an expected apology. His presence at the site of death and destruction, humility of action as well as carefully chosen words indicated trappings of atonement. “We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell...we listen to a silent cry…demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself”, he said. 

Such occasions defy words due to enormity of the past ‘wrong’. Not all actions, howsoever gruesome and unjustified, are made accountable. So it is highly significant that, in the final months of his Presidency, Obama chose not to sit on the dilemma “to apologise or not to apologise” and desist from making an appearance. The Obama visit to the site of enormous harm underscored that the US action was against all humanitarian tenets of modern warfare. It became a testament of smallness of human beings on the sands of history. Did he do “what people do when words fail them", as the German Chancellor Willy Brandt said on his spontaneous dropping to knees in December 1970 to mark the commemoration of Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto?

Obama’s dramatic gesture without invoking words such as sorry/regret/remorse/shame/failure appeared to redeem the promise held out by award of the Nobel Peace Prize at the outset of his Presidency. It requires enormous courage to go to the site where thousands were incinerated by the first atomic device that rained “death from the sky” and changed the world for ever. 

For some this amounted to a war crime that was never accounted for before the Tokyo Tribunal set up to prosecute and punish the Japanese war criminals. In the words of Judge Radha Binod Pal, the Tokyo Trials became a saga of infamous “victor’s justice”. The path to atonement that Obama has ignited could be completed in future by another US President as such wrongs do haunt people, their leaders and nations. As continuing nations have continuing responsibilities, future generations do need to account for wrongs committed by their forefathers. Hence even a silent acknowledgement is a good beginning to accept that it was patently wrong to use a nuclear bomb that did not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, a vital difference for attributing accountability for war crimes.                 

Historically, many countries have, through elected leaders, sought to come to terms with past wrongs and tendered apologies, paid reparations and atoned in various ways. Every internationally wrongful act of a State which constitutes a breach of its obligations entails an international responsibility. However, most of such historical wrongs are trapped in time-warp that haunts nations and their leaders warranting an apology as humanly as possible. It may not fully mitigate effects of past wrongs, yet does help in reducing bitterness, trigger a process to heal wounds and possibly even a closure. 

Some notable examples include expression of mea culpa in 2009 US federal apology for treatment of African-Americans during the slavery era, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s apology in 2007 for horrors caused to the ‘comfort women’, the South African President de Klerk’s admission in 1996 of ‘mistakes’ for abhorrent apartheid policies and the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aboriginals. Even the 1992 apology by Pope John Paul II for Vatican’s persecution of Galileo after 359 years, proved that time is no bar in admitting past mistakes or making amends for wrongs that refuse to fade away.

Over the past century, efforts have been made to institutionalise ‘permanent’ courts and tribunals to do justice and adjudicate upon wrongs inherited from the past. It primarily used to comprise payment of reparations. In the post-second world war era, international law has risen to cover actions of individuals and fixed their responsibility for acts done on behalf of sovereign states. This has led to Nuremburg and Tokyo trials as well as more recently ad-hoc criminal tribunals for post-conflict justice in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Thus, it seems, Barack Obama’s appearance at the Hiroshima bomb site is not too late. It only proves how human actions are fragile, not infallible and get tested on the touchstone of wisdom of the future generations. It does point at scores of other wounds that still lie uncovered and wait for at least sincere apology to heal them. To err is human but to forgive is divine. All nations have skeletons in the cupboards of their past. Only wiser counsels can help in rediscovering the divinity to seek forgiveness and acknowledge past wrongs against a country’s own people as well as against peoples of other countries.

The authors are associated with the Centre for Advanced Study on Courts & Tribunals (CASCT)

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