Hiroshima- For the first time after the World War Two nuclear attack. The first sitting U.S. president Barack Obama has visited Hiroshima the Japanese city where America dropped an atomic bomb in 1945.
He was accompanied by Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister. Obama called for a “world without nuclear weapons” during his remarks at the city’s Peace Memorial Park.
Obama said during his address at the site of the first nuclear bombing that “71 years ago on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.” He added.
“A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city, and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”
The bomb “demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself”. He said: “Why did we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead”. He said. “Their souls speak to us, they ask us to look inward, take stock of who we are.”
Mr Obama spoke to two survivors of the World War Two in an address where at least 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 74,000 died in another attack three days later in Nagasaki.