Obama concluded his remarks by saying that peace is worth protecting. One of the survivors stamped his cane emphatically while speaking to the president.
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The president’s interaction with survivors was highly anticipated ahead of his historic visit.
Atomic bomb survivor groups in the past have called for the United States to apologize for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, which they call inhumane.
Obama is the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima after the atomic bombing on August 6, 1945.
Other U.S. presidents had considered making the trek to Hiroshima over the years but decided against it, in part because of political sensitivities.
U.S. President Barack Obama visits the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on May 27, 2016 in Hiroshima, Japan.
The trip comes more than seven decades after the Enola Gay bomber dropped its deadly atomic payload, dubbed “Little Boy”, over the western Japanese city.
“We applaud the president’s decision to honor the brutal lessons of Hiroshima”, said Derek Johnson, executive director of Global Zero, which advocates for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
President Barack Obama traveled to Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday, marking the first time a USA president has visited the site of the world’s first nuclear attack, carried out more than 70 years ago…
Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made history simply by walking through the memorial park together. We come to mourn the dead … their souls speak to us and ask us to look inward. Two days later a second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 74,000.
Obama says the memory allows the world to fight complacency and fuels a common moral imagination.
As an eternal flame flickered behind him, however, he said leaders had an obligation to “pursue a world without” nuclear weapons.
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”.
“We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell”, Obama said.
Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (shin-zoh ah-bay) entered the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where Obama is expected to sign a guest book.
Obama’s remarks showed a careful awareness of the sensitivities. Nor will he dissect Japan’s aggression in the war.
“We definitely support his decision to not apologize because we truly feel like it would dishonor those who sacrificed”, Powell told NHK-TV.
Obama arrived in Hiroshima after addressing US and Japanese troops at nearby Marine Corps station.
Over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, and a dozen American prisoners of war died in the bombing.
The president’s call for a nuclear-free world was a long way from the optimistic rallying cry he delivered as young, newly elected president.
The US president earlier flew into the Iwakuni US base, some 40 km from Hiroshima, after leaving the G7 summit.
He praised the US-Japan alliance as “one of the strongest in the world”, with his visit “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”.
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The US justifies the bombings, contending that they were necessary to end the war and save lives, although many historians question that view and believe they were unjustified.
