Obama to become first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima

Barack Obama has announced he can visit Hiroshima, Japan, becoming the 1st sitting president to go to the positioning wherever the U.S. born Associate in Nursing atom bomb in 1945, killing an calculable one hundred forty,000 people in the final days of the second warfare.

In a statement the White House confirmed the visit, saying Obama’s visit can “highlight his continued  commitment to following peace and security in a world while not nuclear weapons”.

Earlier this month the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the president will not believe the U.S. ought to apologize for its use of atom bombs on Japan in 1945, a point reiterated by his national security authority, Ben Rhodes, on Tuesday.



“He will not go back the choice to use the atom bomb at the tip of warfare II”, Rhodes wrote in a post on Medium. “This visit will provide Associate in Nursing chance to honor the memory of all innocents UN agency were lost throughout the war.”

Rhodes added that the visit aids the reconciliation between the U.S. and Japan, and the nations’ mutual commitment to reducing the “the role of nuclear weapons in our security and within the policies of other world powers”.

Obama will visit the town, where 140,000 people died when the bombing on the morning of half-dozen August 1945, with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, at the end of the two-day summit on 26-28 might in Ise-Shima.

“The prime minister of the world’s only nation to have suffered atomic attacks, and the leader of the world’s only nation to possess used the atomic weapons at war can along pay respects for the victims,” Abe told reporters late Tuesday.

“I believe that would be some way to retort to the victims of the atomic bombings and therefore the survivors who area unit still in pain.”

In April, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, visited the site, where he created Associate in Nursing emotional speech. “It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a person's being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary quality of decisions in war and of what war will to folks, to communities, to countries, to the world,” he said.
Kerry laid a wreath at the monument and delineated  his tour of the near  peace memorial deposit as “gut-wrenching”. His visit was well received in Japan, where several atom bomb survivors have born demands for Associate in Nursing apology, hoping instead that a presidential visit will spur future U.S. administrations to push more durable for nuclear demobilization.

Obama said throughout a visit to Japan in late 2009 that he would be “honoured” to go to Hiroshima and metropolis, which was conjointly bombed as half of the U.S. decide to finish the war while not a devastating invasion. “I certainly would be worthy – it would be substantive on behalf of me to go to those 2 cities within the future,” Obama said at throughout his 2009 trip.

Jimmy Carter visited the atom bomb memorial in Hiroshima in 1984, after he had left workplace. The highest-ranking US official to visit the positioning before Kerry was city Pelosi, then the House speaker, in 2008. The US ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, attended the 70th day of remembrance commemorations last year.

Japanese officials had created it clear that they would welcome Obama’s presence at the monument, which includes the names of each person to possess died in reference to the bombing.

Earlier this year, the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, said he believed a visit by Obama would strengthen the campaign for nuclear demobilization. “An Obama visit would certainly carry lots of weight,” he said.

Survivors of the attack have also inspired Obama to see for himself the size of the destruction at the peace deposit, as well because the transformation the town has undergone over the past 70 years. Sunao Tsuboi, 91, a survivor and head of a survivors’ group, welcomed the call on Japan’s NHK national televison.

“We are not posing for Associate in Nursing apology,” Tsuboi said. “All we need is to envision him lay flowers at the peace park and lower his head in silence. This would be a primary step toward abolishing nuclear weapons.”