Barack Obama, who became the first serving US president to visit Hiroshima since the World War II nuclear attack on Friday, said the “memory must never fade”.
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The first sitting USA president to visit Hiroshima silently placed a white-and-yellow wreath in front of a concrete, arch-shaped monument at the expansive Peace Memorial Park representing a shelter for the victims’ souls bearing an inscription in Japanese: “Let all the souls here rest in peace; For we shall not repeat the evil”.
RT: How can Obama visit Hiroshima, talk about promoting peace and stopping the spread of nuclear arms, and at the same time be the very person under whose leadership nuclear arms budgets have been boosted in the US?
After both men had spoken, Obama, whose predecessor Harry Truman gave the go-ahead for the world’s first nuclear strike, greeted ageing survivors, embracing 79-year-old Shigeaki Mori, who appeared overcome with emotion.
President Obama also said, “Among those nations that have nuclear stockpiles, like my own, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them”.
Obama shook hands with Tsuboi. Some survivors and prominent Japanese politicians demanded an apology, which Mr Obama, mindful of the political fallout back home, where many believe the bombing helped end the war, never uttered.
“It’s not only a reminder of the bad toll of World War II and the death of innocents across continents but it’s also to remind ourselves that the job’s not done”, he said Thursday. The men walked along a tree-lined path, past an eternal flame, toward a river that flows by the domed building that many associate with Hiroshima.
Obama said the world must never forget what happened at Hiroshima.
“We must change our mindset about war itself to prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun”.
Among the governments critical of the visit, North Korea on Friday denounced Obama’s visit to Hiroshima as an act of stunning hypocrisy and “a childish political calculation”.
Obama entered the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where he was expected to sign a guest book. He later called for a “world without nuclear weapons” and reaffirmed America’s close alliance with Japan. Obama did not employ his campaign slogan – “Yes, we can” – as he did in a speech in Prague in 2009.
Speaking at the bombing site to an audience that included the actual survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945 and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama remarked that science had allowed for remarkable feats that lead to the eradication of diseases and many other progresses.
Obama did not apologize for bombing of Hiroshima, but he did pay tribute to the unfathomable suffering that it caused. U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, also joined the president.
Chinese official state media was also highly critical of today’s event, with foreign minister Wang Yi claiming: ‘It is worth focusing on Hiroshima, but it’s even more important that we should not forget Nanjing’. The skeletal remains of the exhibition hall have become an worldwide symbol of peace and a place for prayer. Tsuboi, the chairman of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organization in Hiroshima, shook Obama’s hand and made sure to have a few words with the president.
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“I could understand what he wanted to say by his expression”, he added.
