Obama at Hiroshima: ‘Death fell from the sky’

President Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit the site where at least 140,000 people died from an atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

After both men had spoken, Obama, whose predecessor Harry Truman gave the go-ahead for the world’s first nuclear strike, greeted ageing survivors, embracing 79-year-old Shigeaki Mori, who appeared overcome with emotion.

The appropriate reference to a nuclear weapon-free world has been made by Obama at Hiroshima – but as in the case of the 2009 Prague speech, the caveat is unambiguous: “We may not realise this goal in my lifetime”. We remember all the innocents killed across that arc of awful war and wars that came before and wars that would follow.”.

“Obama is seized with the wild ambition to dominate the world by dint of the United States nuclear edge”, the agency said.

Most Americans have long viewed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few days later as necessary to end the war. “We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles”.

For South Koreans, this coalition against the North’s nuclear challenge could not resonate better as we live next to the North and fight the constant threat of the next nuclear attack, should it take place.

“Death fell from the sky and the world was changed”, Obama said.

People around Hiroshima were still talking about their glimpses of Obama as they lined the streets to watch his motorcade speed by or watched the media coverage that documented almost every single moment of the two hours he spent in Hiroshima in a carefully choreographed political performance meant to close old wounds without inflaming new passions.

Hiroshima’s peace memorial park is being cleared of visitors in preparation for President Barack Obama’s visit.

Obama previously said he would not apologize for the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe praised the courage of the visit, which he said offered hope for a nuclear-free future.

Before the event, another survivor, Sunao Tsuboi, said he “never imagined (the President) would come while I am alive”.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called Mr Obama’s visit courageous and long-awaited. “I was nearly about to ask him to stop holding my hands, but he wouldn’t”. But today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. “It is worth protecting”. “That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening”.

“As president I assure you that the U.S.is leading again in Asia because the region is vital”, he told those gathered in a large hanger before flying to Hiroshima in a Marine Corps helicopter.

He was accompanied by Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Japan, and by Susan Rice, his national security adviser.

“The world paid attention to what happened here, even if just for a while, because someone as important as (Obama) came to Hiroshima”. Before the Hiroshima trip, the administration was particularly concerned about offending World War II veterans and their families, Scott Horsley reports.

Obama has invested heavily during his term in modernising the USA nuclear arsenal, and Japan relies on the US nuclear umbrella for extended deterrence.

“Instead of wasting billions of dollars on unsafe new nuclear weapons that do nothing to keep our nation safe, Obama should scale back his nuclear weapons expansion plan”.

The Japanese peace park does not define the “error” in question, whether it refers to the USA bombings or the Japanese aggression and Second World War that preceded them; stubborn questions that are still answered differently in each country.

The Iwakuni base, where U.S. Marines work side by side with Japanese forces, “is a powerful example of the trust and the cooperation and the friendship between the United States and Japan”, he said.