Obama mourns in Hiroshima

He implores world to get rid of nukes

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama stand at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in western Japan on Friday after laying wreaths for atomic bomb victims.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama stand at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in western Japan on Friday after laying wreaths for atomic bomb victims.

HIROSHIMA, Japan -- President Barack Obama paid tribute Friday to the "silent cry" of the 140,000 victims of the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. 71 years ago on Hiroshima.

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AP

President Obama hugs atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori during Friday’s ceremony at Hiroshima. Mori, a historian, has worked to get recognition for U.S. prisoners of war who died at Hiroshima.

photo

AP

A crowd at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Iwakuni, Japan, reaches to greet President Barack Obama as he arrives Friday for a visit before continuing to Hiroshima.

As the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site, Obama called on the world to abandon "the logic of fear" that encourages the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

"Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed," Obama said, after laying a wreath, closing his eyes and briefly bowing his head before an arched stone monument in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park that honors those killed on Aug. 6, 1945. "The flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself."

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

"Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us," Obama said, adding that such technology "requires a moral revolution as well."

With Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe standing by his side and an iconic bombed-out domed building looming behind him, Obama urged the world to do better.

"We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell," Obama said. "We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry."

A second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima, killed 70,000 more. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, ending a war that killed millions.

Obama hoped Hiroshima would someday be remembered not as the dawn of the atomic age but as the beginning of a "moral awakening." He renewed his call for a world less threatened by danger of nuclear war. He received a Nobel Peace Prize early on in his presidency for his anti-nuclear agenda but has since seen uneven progress.

"Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them," Obama said.

Abe, in his speech, called Obama's visit courageous and long-awaited. He said it would help the suffering of survivors and he echoed the anti-nuclear sentiments.

"At any place in the world, this tragedy must not be repeated again," Abe said. "We are determined to realize a world free of nuclear weapons."

Obama's remarks included both South Koreans and U.S. prisoners of war in recounting the death toll at Hiroshima. An estimated 20,000 Koreans who had been forced by the Japanese military to work in the city for the imperial war machine died in the Hiroshima bombing. Another 30,000 were killed in Nagasaki.

Obama spoke broadly of the brutality of the war that gave rise to the bombing -- saying it "grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes" -- but did not assign blame.

"We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past," Obama said. The souls of the people who died in this city "speak to us," he added. "They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become."

After his remarks, he met with two survivors. Although he was out of earshot of reporters, Obama could be seen laughing and smiling with 91-year-old Sunao Tsuboi. He embraced Shigeaki Mori, 79, who was 8 when the bomb fell and has spent decades researching the fates of U.S. prisoners of war who were killed in the bombing.

Later, Tsuboi, a chairman of the Hiroshima branch of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations, told reporters he was struck by how Obama held his hand and listened carefully.

"I held his hand, and we didn't need an interpreter," Tsuboi, 91, said later. "I could understand what he wanted to say by his expression."

He told Obama he will be remembered as the one who "listened to the voice of survivors like us."

"You should come visit Hiroshima from time to time and meet lots of people. That is what is important," Tsuboi said.

For weeks, the White House had refused to say whether Obama would meet survivors. It was a delicate decision. Many survivors long for an apology for an event that destroyed just about everyone and everything they knew, and there were small demonstrations near the ceremony on Friday by protesters demanding an apology.

"Of course, we have a feeling of wanting an apology," said Shigemitsu Tanaka, 75, the director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council, who survived the bombing of Nagasaki. "But the most important thing is to abolish nuclear weapons."

The White House had said before the trip that Obama would not apologize for the attack.

Hiroshima's peace park is a poignant place, with searing images of the burned, tattered clothing of dead children and the exposed steel beams on the Genbaku Dome. The skeletal remains of the exhibition hall have become an international symbol of peace and a place for prayer.

Han Jeong-soon, the 58-year-old daughter of a Korean survivor, was also at the park Friday.

"The suffering, such as illness, gets carried on over the generations -- that is what I want President Obama to know," she said. "I want him to understand our sufferings."

Obama's visit lasted just under two hours. Obama and Abe strode together along a tree-lined path, past an eternal flame and toward a river that flows by the ruin of the Genbaku Dome.

They earlier went to the lobby of the peace museum to sign the guest book: "We have known the agony of war. Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace, and pursue a world without nuclear weapons," Obama wrote, according to the White House.

The president's call for a nuclear-free world -- first made during a speech in Prague in 2009 -- focused on diligent, incremental steps.

"We may not realize this goal in my lifetime but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe," he said. "We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles."

Still, he said, more was needed. Noting that far more primitive weapons than nuclear arms are causing widespread destruction today, Obama called for humanity to change its mindset about war.

"The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace," Obama said. "What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. 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."

Obama touched down in Hiroshima after completing talks with world leaders at an international summit in Shima, Japan.

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

Nuclear nonproliferation experts said Friday's events at Hiroshima would be useful in highlighting the ongoing threat.

"It certainly was a powerful and important gesture of reconciliation and remembrance," said Daryl Kimbal, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. "Obama's visit puts the spotlight again on the continuing and grave risks posed by nuclear weapons, and the urgent need for renewed American and global leadership to deal with it. We hope President Obama will follow up with additional concrete actions to chart the course toward a world without nuclear weapons."

While Obama has called for deep cuts in nuclear weapons and measures to stop nuclear proliferation, he has come up short of targets he set himself early in his presidency. He has cut spending on programs to stop nuclear proliferation, left intact military spending on a new generation of nuclear-capable weapons, failed to persuade Pakistan and India to give up their nuclear-material stockpiles, and renewed a nuclear-cooperation accord with China that would allow it to pursue commercial plutonium reprocessing, heightening the risk of theft or purchase of dangerous nuclear materials.

Many proliferation experts say the deal with China could heighten the chances of a plutonium-reprocessing arms race in northeast Asia, and four lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill to tighten restrictions in the China agreement.

"They still need to do more," Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Non-Proliferation and Policy Education Center, said of the Obama administration. "They should follow Congress' call to work with others to promote a pause to prevent the piling up of nuclear gunpowder in the form of plutonium for 'peaceful purposes.'"

Before the ceremony in Hiroshima, Obama visited the Marine Corps Air Station about 25 miles south of the city, and spoke to a group of U.S. and Japanese troops. He told them that his trip to Hiroshima is "an opportunity to honor the memory of all who were lost during World War II."

Obama added: "It's a chance to reaffirm our commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world where nuclear weapons would no longer be necessary. And it's a testament to how even the most painful divides can be bridged; how our two nations -- former adversaries -- cannot just become partners but become the best of friends and the strongest of allies."

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.

Information for this article was contributed by Nancy Benac and Foster Klug of The Associated Press; by Gardiner Harris, Motoko Rich, Jonathan Soble and Jane Perlez of The New York Times; and by David Nakamura, Carol Morello and Steven Mufson of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/28/2016

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