More than 70 years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, President Obama became the first sitting American commander-in-chief to visit the Japanese city.
Advertisement
“We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell”, he added “We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see”.
American visitor Miki Palm welcomed Obama’s decision to come to Hiroshima, but it aggravated longstanding questions about wartime US President Harry Truman’s decision to use an atomic weapon to end the war. A second nuclear bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki three days later.
At a place of great suffering, where US forces dropped the atomic bomb that gave birth to the nuclear age, Obama will pay tribute to the 140,000 people who died from the attack seven decades ago.
Shim and other Korean atomic bomb survivors and supporters on May 27 held a memorial ceremony in front of a cenotaph for Korean A-bomb victims in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 15, 1945, nine days after the Hiroshima bombing.
Earlier in the week, in a joint press conference with Obama, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he had no plans to visit Pearl Harbor despite the president’s trip to Hiroshima. Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot, said: “My God, what have we done?” after the bomb dropped, according to news accounts.
-@POTUS speaks at Hiroshima.
“The world was forever changed here but, today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace”, the U.S. president said.
During the visit of Obama to Japan, many people wanted to hear apologies and recognizing the blame for the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. He shared an emotional embrace with Shigeaki Mori, a 79-year-old survivor who worked for four decades to gain official recognition of the 12 Americans killed in the bombing.
Ahead, see more photos of the historic visit.
He saw dead and dying people everywhere, many with their innards hanging out, and says he was only able to escape the horror by clambering over the barely-breathing bodies all around him. Presidents should adhere to our values and the Constitution, and not treat America’s enemies as morally equivalent to us.
The Chinese rhetoric was similar to what was aired in April following U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s own visit to Hiroshima. But Rhonda Powell, the group’s national security director, told Japanese media last week that the Legion neither supported nor opposed Obama’s visit.
Advertisement
The visit took place seven years after he made a rousing plea for an end to atomic weapons during a speech in Prague which helped him to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
