Obama's Hiroshima trip no occasion to whitewash Japan's WWII atrocities

BEIJING - The motive behind US President Barack Obama's planned visit to Japan's A-bombed Hiroshima on Friday may seem noble, but in reality, it is nothing more than yet another opportunity seized by Washington and Tokyo to pursue their own ulterior motives.

At first glance, for a city falling as the first victim to an atomic bomb in human history, a visit by the first sitting president of the country that dropped the bomb does appear "historic."

However, the symbolic nature of the visit is not intended to bring the two allies come closer to Obama's nuke-free dream; politicians both in Washington and Tokyo clearly have other calculations on their mind.

For the outgoing US president, the Hiroshima visit will help Obama secure yet another political legacy. He will be the first sitting president of the United States to visit the A-bombed city, after already having claimed the titles of the first African-American US president, the first sitting US president who won a Nobel Peace Prize after World War II (WWII) and the first US president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years.

Besides, visiting Hiroshima -- a symbol for Japan's "war victim" identity in the eyes of many Japanese -- will apparently help further strengthen the ties between Washington and Tokyo, a cornerstone for America's "pivot to Asia" strategy.