Overwhelmed: US President Barack Obama hugs Shigeaki Mori, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, during a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park yesterday.
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“Death fell from the sky and the world was changed”, Obama said, after laying a wreath, closing his eyes and briefly bowing his head before an arched stone monument in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park that honors those killed on August 6, 1945.
The president has said he will not apologize for the decision then president Harry Truman made to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima, killing 80,000 people instantly and wiping out 90 percent of the city.
“You should come visit Hiroshima from time to time and meet lots of people”.
Secretary of State John Kerry became the highest-ranking administration official to visit the site when he attended a memorial ceremony in Hiroshima in April.
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.
In Japan, Pearl Harbor is not seen as a parallel for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but as an attack on a military installation that did not target civilians.
Mr Obama, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 on the back of his promotion of nuclear non-proliferation, used a speech at the memorial site to reaffirm his commitment to reducing global stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Hattori’s parents and grandparents, who sold rice near where the bomb fell, all either died that day or in the years that followed. Three days later, the U.S. dropped another bomb on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 more.
The visit was delicate for Obama to navigate. “I could understand what he wanted to say by his expression”.
Obama called for a world without nuclear weapons during his visit.
In an emotional moment, President Barack Obama embraced and shook hands with Hiroshima survivors on May 27 during his historic visit to the Japanese city.
Other U.S. presidents had considered making the trek to Hiroshima over the years but decided against it, in part because of political sensitivities. “A-bomb survivors including me are getting older”.
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We see these stories in the hibakusha: the woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. Thousands more died in the decades after from radiation sickness. While holding banners that read “Get rid of all nukes immediately”, “Remove all USA bases from Okinawa” and “We won’t let you use military alliances to start your next war”, protesters also shouted “You’re not welcome here, Obama and Abe” and “Get out of Hiroshima”.
