More than 70 years later, Obama became the first sitting US President to visit Hiroshima -- a city synonymous with nuclear destruction and one US world leaders have been afraid to acknowledge for decades.
On August 6th, 1945 the US dropped the first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima killing up to 140,000.
It was an event that devastated the world and is often glossed over or viewed from a scientific perspective in US history books to this day.
“Technical progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us,” said Obama in a historic visit to the Hiroshima memorial site.
Obama embraces Hiroshima victim during historic visit: https://t.co/by7o3ywxIDpic.twitter.com/WqBcgwgy8k
— The Hill (@thehill) May 27, 2016
At the time, Harry S. Truman warned Japan before dropping the bomb, which would change the course of warfare forever, saying, “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
With the push of a button that is exactly what the US brought to Japan and it changed the world forever -- instilling in humanity an ice cold realization that the world could be destroyed through a nuclear arms race.
Between 1945 and 2015, ten US presidents chose to look away from Hiroshima until today, but Obama’s visit shows it’s never too late to acknowledge mistakes of the past and move toward a better future.
Obama is calling for Hiroshima to, first, never be forgotten, and, more importantly, to act as “the start of our own moral awakening,” which he said during his visit.
“We have shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history, and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again,” said Obama, calling for nations to pursue a world without nuclear weapons.
“That memory [of Hiroshima] allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change,” he told the crowd on the second day of the G7 Summit in Japan.
Inspiring words and motivation for peace are encouraging to see as the G7 Summit continues.
Apology or not, a debate that continues among some at the summit (which can be seen on The Guardian’s live coverage here), it is a powerful message. In 2016, it is time to put an end to nuclear weapons once and for all.