Caroline Kennedy snubs NHK over governor’s nationalist comments
Embassy doesn't deny report envoy refusing to give interview to national broadcaster to convey anger at comments on war by one of its governors
The US embassy in Tokyo was keeping silent after a report said Ambassador Caroline Kennedy had declined to be interviewed by Japan's national broadcaster because of controversial comments about the second world war by a member of the corporation's board of governors.
A spokesman for the embassy yesterday would not comment on the ambassador's schedule. That was not a denial of the Kyodo News report on Saturday that said the embassy was ignoring NHK's request for an interview because of remarks a fortnight ago by Naoki Hyakuta.
Speaking in support of candidate Toshio Tamogami in the February 9 election for governor of Tokyo, Hyakuta said the Tokyo war crimes trials conducted after the war were ordered to conceal the "genocide" of the firebombing raids on Tokyo in the early months of 1945 and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought the war to its end. Hyakuta went on to say that the 1937 Nanking massacre was Chinese "propaganda".
Kyodo reported that NHK had made a request to the embassy for an interview with Kennedy, the daughter of late US president John F. Kennedy, shortly after she took up her post on November 15.
The broadcaster apparently wanted the interview to appear on the current affairs programme.
The ambassador's schedule made it difficult for her to carry out the engagement in the early weeks of her time in Japan, but comments by senior NHK officials now appear to have ruled out the possibility of an interview in the foreseeable future.
Kyodo cited "sources close to the matter" saying that an embassy press officer had told NHK staff that it was both Kennedy's and Washington's will that no interview be granted in light of Hyakuta's remarks.
