歴史に残るオバマ大統領の広島での英語スピーチの全文

オバマ大統領の歴史的な広島訪問とスピーチは歴史に残ると思います。

そこでこのスピーチの全文を記してみました。

歴史に残るスピーチと全米でも放送されました。

とくに下線部についてのところは、とても印象にのこる

名文だったと思います。

オバマ大統領の広島平和公園での全文スピーチ

７1 years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and

the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a

city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force

unleashed in the not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over

100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans and a dozen

Americans held prisoner.

Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward to take stock of who we are and

what we might become.

It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict

appeared with the very first men. Our early ancestors, having learned to make blades

from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind.

On every continent the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity

of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. Empires

have risen and fallen, peoples have been subjugated and liberated, and at each juncture innocents

have suffered — a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.

The World War that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among

the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities

and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth,

and yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest

that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities

and without new constraints.

In the span of a few years some 60 million people would die; men, women, children — no different

than us, shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed starved, gassed to death.

There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war — memorials that tell stories of courage

and heroism, graves and empty camps, the echo of unspeakable depravity.

Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of

humanity’s core contradiction — how the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts,

our imagination, our language, our tool making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature

and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.

How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily do we

learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause?

Every great religion promises a path to love and peace and righteousness. And yet no religion

has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith has a license to kill.

Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation,

allowing for remarkable feats, but those same stories have so often been used to oppress

and dehumanize those who are different. Science allows us to communicate across the seas,

fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos. But those same discoveries

can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.

The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress

without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the

splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.

That is why we come to this place. We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves

to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused

by what they see.

We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war,

and the wars that came before, and the wars that would follow.

Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly

into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.

Some day the voices of the Hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory

of the morning of August 6, 1945 must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency.

It fuels our moral imagination, it allows us to change.

And since that fateful day we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan

forged not only an alliance, but a friendship that has won far more for our people that we can ever

claim through war.

The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy.

Oppressed peoples and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions

and treaties that worked to avoid war and aspired to restrict and roll

back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.

Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression

that we see around the world shows our work is never done. We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity

to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we formed must possess the means to protect ourselves.

Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage

to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them. We may not realize this goal in my lifetime,

but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.

We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles, we can stop the spread to new nations,

and secure deadly materials from fanatics. And yet that is not enough, for we see around the world today

how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale.

We must change our mindset about war itself — to prevent conflicts through diplomacy and strive

to end conflicts after they’ve begun; to see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation

and not violent competition; to define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build; and

perhaps above all reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race — for this too,

is what makes our species unique.

We’re not bound by genetic codes to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose.

We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war

less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.

We see these stories in the Hibakusha: the woman who forgave the pilot who flew the plane that dropped

the atomic bomb because she recognized what she really hated was war itself; the man who sought out

families of Americans killed here because he believed their loss was equal to his own.

My own nation’s story began with simple words. All men are created equal and endowed with certain

inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens.

But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends

across continents and across oceans.

The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary

notion that we are part of a single human family: that is the story that we all must tell.

That is why we come to Hiroshima, so that we might think of people we love, the first smile

from our children in the morning, the gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table, the comforting

embrace of a parent.

We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here 71 years ago.

Those who died, they are like us.

Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders

of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it.

When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders reflect this simple wisdom,

then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.

The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace.

What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting and then extending to every child.

That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the

dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　（共同通信より）