Sister city relations between municipalities of different countries are familiar to most people, though sometimes these arrangements have a specific purpose. Apparently, in 2016 there was a sister-type relationship forged between the Sekigahara battlefield in Gifu Prefecture, where General Toyotomi Hidetoshi, fighting for the Oda Nobunaga clan, lost to the forces of the Tokugawa Shogunate in October 1600, thus ushering in three hundred years of Tokugawa rule; and the Gettysburg battlefield in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle of the American Civil War. There are enough thematic similarities between the two battles to make the sister relationship apparent, but, obviously, the deal was made mainly for tourism purposes.

A more recent sister partnership is less easy to explain. On June 29, the city of Hiroshima announced it had concluded a “sister park” agreement between the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Hawaii. The agreement was signed by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel and Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui. According to a report in Tokyo Shimbun, the sister park agreement was proposed by the U.S. State Department last April as a gesture before this year’s G7 Summit, which took place in Hiroshima in May. Ostensibly, the state department said the purpose is to promote peace education and help set up an exchange program to share experiences and resources that would help foster historical facilities and, yes, tourism. As to the thematic relationship between the two memorial parks, the state department said that they represent the two temporal poles of the Pacific War, meaning Pearl Harbor was where the war started and Hiroshima was where it ended. Given that Hiroshima was attacked with an atomic weapon on June 6, 1945, and another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, and the emperor of Japan did not announce Japan’s capitulation until August 15, by which date many other cities in Japan had be “conventionally” bombed by U.S. forces since Hiroshima (including some that were bombed even after the emperor’s broadcast), it would seem that the historians at the state department should reread their John Dower. 

Of course, this simplified narrative was put forth for a simple reason, to reinforce the idea, which is widely accepted in the U.S., that the Hiroshima bombing ended the war and, while it killed more than 100,000 civilians, saved many more lives than would have been lost had the war continued through to a U.S. invasion of Honshu. This scenario continues to be a controversial one, but, added to the fervor with which Americans “remember” the attack on Pearl Harbor—a military target—as an act of “treachery,” in President Roosevelt’s immortal words, it basically renders the Hiroshima bombing as something that Japan had coming to it. 

In that regard, the sister park agreement was a public relations gambit designed to preempt any discussions at the summit about nuclear weapons considered disadvantaeous to American interests. To the vast majority of the world’s peoples, Hiroshima stands for one thing: the first city ever to be attacked by an atomic weapon. The choice of Hiroshima as the site of the G7 summit was thus fraught with significance. How could the world leaders who assemble there not address nuclear disarmament, which the U.S., the possessor of the most nuclear warheads in the world and the greatest advocate of the theory of “nuclear deterrence,” would prefer to avoid? And in the end, what the summit produced was the Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament, which, despite its title, still proseytizes for nuclear weapons as a means to “deter aggression.” 

Predictably, the survivors of the atomic bombings, as represented by various anti-nuclear groups, were outraged, as they were blindsided by the news. Though the state department was pretty clear about its intentions toward the sister park agreement from the beginning, the city of Hiroshima put off its announcement until the agreement was actually signed, obviously knowing how the survivors would react. And mainly what the survivors are saying is that the agreement further normalizes the U.S. narrative and thus encourages future generations to ignore the real lessons of the atomic bombing. 

Prof. Nobuyoshi Takashima of the University of the Ryukyus told Tokyo Shimbun that the two memorials convey very different ideas. Hiroshima’s basically puts forth a quest for peace in a world without atomic weapons, while the Pearl Harbor memorial is a testament to America’s martial power and its eventual victory over a country that killed 2,400 people during the sneak attack. There’s a submarine on exhibit whose hull is festooned with small paintings of Japanese flags, each one representing a Japanese ship the submarine sank. The fact that the flags have been retouched over the years indicates to Takashima that the successes of the submarines are worthy of “boasting,” despite the fact that one of the boats it sank was carrying 1,500 evacuating students. 

But Takashima harbors more enmity for Japan’s leaders, which have never owned up to the Japanese military’s own destructiveness in Asia. He talks about how German leaders, whenever they visit Dresden, the target of one of the worst Allied firebombings of the war and which killed tens of thousands of civilians, mention the Nazis’ part in bringing this misery upon their own people. But when the late Shinzo Abe, in his capacity as prime minister, visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial all he talked about was the strong alliance between the U.S. and Japan. “Reconciliation without a sincere sense of remorse leads to ambiguity about responsibilities,” said Takashima.

Kunio Sakuma, who was nine months old and 3 kilometers from the epicenter when the bomb dropped, told Tokyo Shimbun that he resents the idea that people will think the citizens of Hiroshima support both the G7 Vision statement and the sister park arrangement, since neither represents the sentiments of the survivors. The idea that the Vision statement is the “first step” toward elimination of nuclear weapons is merely “propaganda.” If anything, the Vision statement “suppresses” the realization of nuclear disarmament. He also abhors the U.S. narrative about the bomb ending the war. “The U.S. dropped the bomb as part of its postwar strategy for leading the world.”

Former Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba commented that the state department’s control of the sister park story will lead people to believe that the Hiroshima bombing was a direct result of the attack on Pearl Harbor. If anything, the sister park agreement “justifies” the use of atomic weapons under such circumstances. He finds Hiroshima city’s acquiesence to the agreement appalling. “They didn’t even present it to the city assembly for the citizens’ approval.”

Hiroshi Harada, former director of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb archives, despairs that the sister park agreement forestalls any further discussion on the “true reason” for dropping a bomb that its creators knew would overwhelmingly kill civilians rather than soldiers, and expressed disappointment with former U.S. President Barack Obama, who pledged during his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Park in 2016 that he would work to bring about a world devoid of nuclear weapons. As far as Harada can tell, Obama has done no such thing. If anything, America’s current trend is for nuclear rearmament with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in mind. 

Tokyo Shimbun goes on to wonder how Hiroshima has now come to undermine its own image as a city of peace. In addition to buckling under pressure from the central government to sign the sister park agreement, it has recently removed references to the manga Barefoot Gen, which graphically depicts the atomic bombing, from school textbooks, and “mistakenly” cut down a tree that miraculously survived the bombing after being irradiated. As it happens, the tree was cut down as part of the preparations for the summit. Be sure to remember Pearl Harbor, but it’s OK to forget Hiroshima.