Japan A-bomb survivors hopeful for Obama

Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have high hopes for US president-elect Barack Obama, believing he is the leader who could usher in a nuclear-free era.

Hiroshima residents have launched a letter campaign urging Obama to become the first sitting US president to see the site of the world's first nuclear attack.

The umbrella group representing atomic bomb survivors is also requesting a face-to-face meeting with Obama, who takes office on January 20.

The survivors place "high hopes in Obama's pledges to seek a nuclear-free world," said Terumi Tanaka, leader of the Japan Confederation of A and H bomb Sufferers Organisations.

On his campaign website, Obama said his goal was "a world without nuclear weapons."

Obama said that while the United States would retain nuclear weapons so long as they existed, his administration would "take several steps down the long road" to eliminating them, including ending development of new nuclear arms.

The policy marks a shift from that of the outgoing administration of George W. Bush, which updated the design of US nuclear warheads.

Obama's views are "unprecedented for the leader of the country which has resisted abandoning nuclear weapons," said Tanaka, a 76-year-old survivor of the atomic bombing in Nagasaki.

"We want to support him and encourage him to take the initiative in abandoning nuclear weapons by telling him directly of our experiences," Tanaka said.

In a letter to Obama, the survivors say they want to speak to Obama "to help you better understand the horror of nuclear weapons."

A single US bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 killed more than 140,000 people, either instantly or in the days and weeks that followed as radiation or horrific burns took their toll.

The United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki three days later, killing another 70,000 people. Japan surrendered less than a week later, ending World War II.

Citizens of Hiroshima, mostly teenage students, are sending a pile of 355 letters to Obama, calling on him to visit.

"We want him to see Hiroshima because he is a key person in world politics and the one who has the right to press the button to launch a nuclear-armed missile," said Keisuke Yoshihara, an editor at the local Chugoku Shimbun daily, who encouraged the letter campaign.

About 50 students in Punahou High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, from which Obama graduated, offered to translate letters into English, he said.

No serving US president has visited Hiroshima, although Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon both came when they were not in office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year became the highest-ranking US official to visit.

"For Obama to seek a nuclear-free world is of course a meaningful change from the Bush administration," said Masahiko Asada, professor of international law at Kyoto University.

"But disarmament experts will watch cautiously whether he takes concrete steps towards that goal, such as ratifying the CTBT."

The US Senate has not ratified the CTBT, or Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which aims to ban all nuclear explosions everywhere in the world.

Asada said US ratification would put pressure on other holdouts, such as China, India and Pakistan, enabling the treaty to take effect.

The professor said that a visit by Obama could influence him.

"I visited Auschwitz last year and I felt that while hearing about things is one thing, seeing them is quite another," he said.

Japan has been officially pacifist since the end of World War II and pushed for nuclear arms abolition. However, the country relies on the US nuclear umbrella for security from nuclear-armed North Korea.