President of the United States Barack Obama is set to make a historic trip to Hiroshima, Japan, on May 27. The news comes following weeks of speculation that he would visit the city after attending the G7 economic summit in Japan’s Ise-Shima region. This trip will make Obama the first US president in power to visit the site of the world’s first atomic bombing, The New York Times reported.
Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe will accompany Obama on the visit, where the US president is expected to deliver a speech on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Obama will “highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”, the White House said in a statement. The White House believes this is the right time for Obama, whose term as president ends this year, to make a symbolic gesture towards his disarmament goals, which he had announced in his first year in the Oval Office.
However, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes clarified in a blog post that during the trip, Obama will not offer an apology for the country’s past decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. “Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future,” Rhodes said in the post.
On August 6, 1945, at least 140,000 people were killed when the US bombed Hiroshima. The US had dropped another atomic bomb in Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later, killing another 80,000.
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