US President Obama visits Hiroshima 71 years after first atomic bombing

U.S. President Barack Obama underlined “humanity’s core contradiction” of war in Hiroshima, Japan on Friday, pointing out that despite the teachings of love and and peace by all of the world’s great religions, they all have believers that claim their faith as a “licence to kill”.

Prior to the speech, BuzzFeed spoke to Hiroshima residents about what they wanted the president and the U.S.to know.

Here are the important facts about Obama’s historic visit.

Mr Abe said the visit hailed a new chapter of reconciliation between the U.S. and Japan.

“I sincerely welcome this historic visit, which has always been awaited by not only people of Hiroshima but by all Japanese people”. He said, “At any place in the world, this tragedy must not be repeated again”.

Speaking alongside Abe, Mr. Obama said the memory of August 6, 1945, “must never fade”, and that it allows the world to fight complacency and fuels a common moral imagination.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, where he reiterated his call for a “world without nuclear weapons” during his speech at the Peace Memorial Park in the city devastated by the world’s first atomic bomb 71 years ago.

It was the first such attack anywhere in the world.

The president is in Japan for the G7 Summit in Ise-Shima, following a visit to Vietnam.

The Obama administration had primed the groups for the president’s visits to both Vietnam and Hiroshima by inviting representatives to the White House to meet with national security adviser Susan Rice and assuring them that there would be no apologies.

Bomb survivor Kinuyo Ikegami, 82, paid her own respects at the cenotaph early Friday before the politicians arrived.

Long lines of schoolchildren took turns bowing and praying beside her.

Retiree Tsuguo Yoshikawa took a walk in the park, and said it’s time for the US and Japanese people to move forward without grudges.

Still some hoped for more from the USA leader. But he’s glad that the time has come.

Instead, as the New York Times reported, Obama instead focused on how the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now experiencing peace.

Against the devastation wrought by the bombs, Obama contrasted the small joys of everyday life: “The first smile from our children in the morning”.

At least 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and another 74,000 three days later in a second bombing in Nagasaki.

He will not apologize. He will not second-guess President Harry Truman’s decision to unleash the bad power of nuclear weapons.

Obama offered a somber reflection on the horrors of war and the dangers of technology that gives humans the “capacity for unmatched destruction”.

Before Hiroshima, Obama had stopped at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni.