US Presdent Barack Obama (R) shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) after laying a wreath in front of the cenotaph to offer a prayer for victims of the atomic bombing in 1945 at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on May 27, 2016. Furthermore, he pointed out that those chiefly responsible for the horrors were from the “wealthiest and most powerful of nations”, from civilizations that “had given the world great cities and magnificent art” and whose “thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth”.
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After such dispiriting campaigns for the Democratic and Republican nominations, President Obama’s judicious speech at the Hiroshima memorial is a bracing reminder of what can be achieved when political rhetoric is used with intelligence and empathy. “We are determined to realise a world free of nuclear weapons”, he said.
The nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, changed Japan and the world forever; 70,000 people were killed instantly.
President Obama solemnly paid his respects there today. “I still cannot contain my anger against the act of the United States”, he said at a news conference in front of the memorial, because the USA had engaged in mass killing of civilians despite having projected that the bombing could result in tremendous suffering.
“We come to ponder the bad force unleashed in the not so distant past”, Obama said after laying a wreath at a Hiroshima peace memorial. The prime minister also accompanied Obama on a tour of the World War II Memorial, where Abe laid a wreath and prayed for the souls of the dead.
For weeks, the White House had refused to say whether Obama, would meet survivors. “Obama is seized with the wild ambition to dominate the world by dint of the USA nuclear edge”, the agency said. “What a precious thing that is”. “That is the future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not for the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening”.
Mr Obama’s trip provides a coda eight months before he steps down and nearly five years after he announced Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, a foreign policy strategy that has been overshadowed by emerging security threats from the Middle East and Russian Federation.
Obama’s call from Prague in 2009 to “put an end to the cold war thinking” and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the US and its allies’ security strategies has not been matched by action, she said. “But even more so Nanjing should not be forgotten”, the ministry’s website cited him as saying.
In his remarks, Obama looked forward in hope as frequently as he looked backward in mourning. In Japan, almost 8 out of 10 people see the bombings as unjustified. Yes, we’ve build the most risky engines of war in history, but that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to use them. Wilson said, “but historical research shows that the Japanese surrendered because the Soviets declared war the night before we bombed Nagasaki”.
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Abe reminded reporters that he gave a speech to the U.S. Congress during a state visit to Washington last spring that reflected on the war and the sacrifices of Americans.
