Obama’s trip to Hiroshima made him the first US president to visit the site of the world’s first atomic bomb attack, and he sought to walk a delicate line between honouring the dead, pushing his as-yet unrealised anti-nuclear vision and avoiding any sense of apology for an act many Americans see as a justified end to a brutal war that Japan started with a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.
“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 honours those killed on Aug. 6, 1945.
“The flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”
In a carefully choreographed display, Obama offered a somber reflection on the horrors of war and the dangers of technology that gives humans then “capacity for unmatched destruction.” With Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe standing by his side and an iconic bombed-out domed building looming behind him, Obama urged the world to do better.
“We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell,” Obama said. “We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry.”
A second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima, killed 70,000 more. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, ending a war that killed millions.
Obama hoped Hiroshima would someday be remembered not as the dawn of the atomic age but as the beginning of a “moral awakening.” He renewed his call for a world less threatened by danger of nuclear war. He received a Nobel Peace Prize early on in his presidency for his anti-nuclear agenda but has since seen uneven progress.
“Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” Obama said.
Abe, in his speech, called Obama’s visit courageous and long-awaited. He said it would help the suffering of survivors and he echoed the anti-nuclear sentiments. “At any place in world, this tragedy must not be repeated again,” Abe said.
Those who come to ground zero at Hiroshima speak of its emotional impact, of the searing imagery of the exposed steel beams on the iconic A-bomb dome.
N Korea slams Obama’s ‘childish’ Hiroshima visit
Nuclear-armed North Korea has ridiculed US President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima as the “childish” diplomatic ploy of a “nuclear war fanatic.” In a commentary released late on Thursday, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Obama’s decision to become the first sitting US president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bomb strike was an act of stunning hypocrisy. “It is a childish political calculation,” the agency said.
“Even if Obama visits the damaged city, he cannot hide his identity as a nuclear war fanatic and nuclear weapons proliferator,” it added.
Heavily sanctioned for its four nuclear tests, Pyongyang insists its entire weapons programme is an unavoidable response to decades of US nuclear hostility. Obama laid a wreath in Hiroshima late on Friday at a memorial to the bombing which ultimately claimed the lives of around 140,000 people.
The KCNA commentary also questioned Tokyo’s motives in organising Obama’s visit, saying it was playing up the notion of Japan as a victim of war, and shifting the focus away from the pain its colonial ambitions and wartime aggression inflicted on others.
“Japan seeks to put under the carpet its true colours as a provocateur of the war and aggressor ... despite its past crimes,” the agency said. The Korean peninsula suffered more than three decades of harsh Japanese colonial rule which only ended with Japan’s surrender following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.