Obama to make historic visit to Hiroshima

Barack Obama will this month become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, but the White House is scotching talk of an apology for the devastating 1945 nuclear bombing of the city, reports AFP.

 

Obama, accompanied by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will make the deeply symbolic visit on May 27, after attending a G7 summit in south-central Japan, his spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday.

 

The White House described the trip as an effort to highlight the US "commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

 

On August 6, 1945, the US dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing around 140,000 people, including those who survived the explosion itself but died soon after from severe radiation exposure.

 

Three days later, the US military dropped a plutonium bomb on the port city of Nagasaki, killing some 74,000 people.

 

The announcement comes after months of speculation in the US and Japan that the president, a Nobel peace laureate, would pay a visit to the city.

 

The bombings remain controversial in the United States and around the world.

 

Opinion is sharply divided on whether president Harry Truman's decision ended the brutality of World War II and avoided a bloody US invasion of Japan, or whether dropping nuclear weapons on a civilian area constitutes a war crime.

 

A Pew poll last year showed 56 percent of Americans think the bombing was justified, while 14 percent of Japanese do. In both countries, approval of Truman's order has waned dramatically over the years.

 

The White House has expressed understanding at the dilemma Truman faced.

 

"I think what the president would say is that it's hard to put yourself in that position from the outside," Earnest said.

 

"I think what the president does appreciate is that President Truman made this decision for the right reasons. President Truman was focused on the national security interests of the United States...on bringing an end to a terrible war. And President Truman made this decision fully mindful of the likely human toll."

 

"I think it's hard to look back and second-guess it too much."