HIROSHIMA, Japan – Nearly 71 years after an American bomber passed high above this Japanese city on a clear August morning for a mission that would alter history, President Obama on Friday called for an end to nuclear weapons in a solemn visit to Hiroshima to offer respects to the victims of the world’s first deployed atomic bomb.
Writing in the Hiroshima Peace Park guest book, Obama called for the courage to “spread peace and pursue a world without nuclear weapons.” In later remarks, he said that scientific strides must be matched by moral progress or mankind was doomed.
Obama’s visit had brought great anticipation in Hiroshima, and across Japan, among those who longed for an American president to acknowledge the suffering of the estimated 140,000 killed during the bombing on Aug. 6, 1945 and its aftermath. That figure includes 20,000 Koreans who had been forced by the Japanese military to work in the city for the imperial war machine.
Three days later in 1945, a second U.S. atomic bomb in Nagasaki killed a total of 80,000, including another 30,000 Koreans. Most of those killed in both cities were civilians. The Japanese emperor announced his nation’s surrender a week later.
On Friday, people lined streets as Obama’s motorcade entered the city. The presidential limousine pulled up behind the Peace Memorial Museum.
In the park, guests were seated just in front of the curved, concrete cenotaph that pays tribute to the dead with an eternal flame burning just beyond it. The Genbaku Dome, or A-bomb dome, the preserved, skeletal remnants of a municipal building destroyed in the blast, was visible in the distance.
National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice and Ambassador Caroline Kennedy walked out from near the museum, along with their Japanese counterparts, followed by Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Then Obama was handed a wreath and laid it on a stand in front of the cenotaph. He bowed his head and stood silently for a minute. Abe then did the same.
“We come to remember the terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past,” Obama said, adding that the souls of the people who died in this city “speak to us and they ask us to look inward and take stock of how we are and what we might become.”
The president called for nations to reconsider the development of nuclear weapons and to roll back and “ultimately eliminate” them.
“The world was forever changed here. But today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is the future we can choose,” he said. “A future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not for the bomb of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.”
After the remarks, Obama and Abe walked to the front row to greet Sunao Tsuboi, a survivor of the atomic blast, who stood up clutching a walking cane. Then Obama greeted Shigeaki Mori, another survivor, giving him a hug.
The president and prime minister then walked north toward the dome. Reporters rushing to get photographs of the two got involved into an aggressive shoving match with Secret Service agents and Japanese security officials.
Obama and Abe stood together gazed at the dome for several minutes. Abe appeared to be explaining the significance to Obama. To their left was a statue of Sadako, a child who died of radiation and became known for her colorful paper cranes, that have become a symbol of Hiroshima’s effort to promote peace.
Obama’s motorcade snaked back through the city to the helicopters waiting to ferry the president on the start of his journey home after a weeklong Asian trip.
As the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Obama’s visit was infused with symbolism for the two nations that have transformed from bitter World War II enemies into the closest of allies.
