Obama to become 1st sitting president to visit Hiroshima

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Eager to heal old wounds and galvanize new generations, President Barack Obama this month will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, where seven decades ago the U.S. dropped the devastating atomic bomb that ushered in the nuclear age.

By visiting the peace park near the epicenter of the 1945 attack, the president hopes to reinvigorate efforts worldwide to eliminate nuclear weapons. But in a sign of the extraordinary political sensitivities attached to the gesture, the White House is going out of its way to stress Obama will not come bearing an apology.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said flatly: “He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II.” Instead, Rhodes said in a statement, Obama will spotlight the toll of war and offer a “forward-looking vision” of a non-nuclear world.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who will accompany Obama on the visit, said no apology is expected – or necessary.

“The prime minister of the world’s only nation to have suffered atomic attacks, and the leader of the world’s only nation to have used the atomic weapons at war will together pay respects for the victims,” Abe told reporters. “I believe that would be a way to respond to the victims of the atomic bombings and the survivors who are still in pain.”

The U.S. attack on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killed 140,000 people. A second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days later, killed 70,000.