While the president was in Japan, he laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
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The highest-ranking USA official to visit the site was Nancy Pelosi in 2008 when she was House speaker. “It makes me sick to my stomach that anybody would apologize for the things that we’ve done as a nation since the 1940s”, Schilling said on “Morning Meeting”. American POWs also died in the atomic bombing. He said it would help the suffering of survivors and he echoed the anti-nuclear sentiments.
In his speech, Mr Abe said: “This tragedy must not be allowed to occur again”.
There are activists looking for a pledge of new, concrete steps to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Among the protesters, there were labor union members, college students as well as survivors and the relatives of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, 1945. He’s referring to the day the USA dropped the atomic bomb on the western Japanese city. That memory fuels our imagination.
Abe, in his speech, called Obama’s visit courageous and long-awaited.
Barack Obama on Friday paid tribute to the 140,000 people killed by the world’s first atomic bomb attack and sought to bring global attention to his unfulfilled vision of a world without nuclear weapons, as he became the first sitting USA president to visit Hiroshima. The American leader is to be accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“Japan has to apologize for Pearl Harbour, too, if we’re going to say the USA must apologize”.
America dropped the atomic bomb during World War II as an attempt to force Japanese surrender and partly in retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a military base near Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. But Obama said before his trip that he would not apologize for the attack.
He renewed his call for a world less threatened by danger of nuclear war.
The visit has attracted attention from around the world, despite repeated statements from the USA side that President Obama would not apologize for the attack, which claimed an estimated 140,000 lives.
Obama arrived in Hiroshima after addressing USA and Japanese troops at nearby Marine Corps station.
Obama said in a statement Thursday in Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily: “Hiroshima reminds us that war, no matter the cause of countries involved, results in tremendous suffering and loss, especially for innocent civilians”. Women disapproved using the bomb, 54 percent to 33 percent.
“Why did we come to this place, to Hiroshima?”.
He said that he was disappointed the president would not be offering an apology for the bombing but that he was still grateful for the visit. “And it’s a testament to how even the most painful divides can be bridged; how our two nations – former adversaries – cannot just become partners, but become the best of friends and the strongest of allies”.
Mr Obama also talked to Sunao Tsuboi (91). He says the world mustn’t forget to honor those who have given everything for freedom.
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“We must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them”, Obama said of nuclear weapons.
