World 7 Powerful Reasons Why Obama's Visit To Hiroshima Was Historic

[PressRoom]

1. Barrack Obama has become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, 71 years after the Japanese city became the target of the world's first atomic bombing.
2. Obama did not offer an apology for the decision by his predecessor, Harry Truman, to unleash an atomic bomb over the city. But in a gesture of reconciliation he hugged Mori Shigeaki one of the survivors of the blast.
3. Japan’s president Shinzo Abe praised Obama’s “courage” in coming to Hiroshima. He also thanked those in America and Japan who have been committed to reconciliation over the last 70 years.
4. Earlier Obama hailed the “great alliance” between the United States and Japan. “We are reaffirming one of the greatest alliances in the world between Japan and the United States,” he told troops at a base in Iwakuni.
5. Obama wrote in the guest book at Hiroshima museum: “We have known the agony of war. Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace and pursue a world without nuclear weapons.”
6. President Obama spoke with two survivors in the audience for his remarks on Friday at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: Sunao Tsuboi, the 91-year-old head of a survivors group and embraces atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori, 79, an historian who was just 8 when the bomb detonated on Aug. 6, 1945.
   
   
7. Obama then stepped to Mori and shook his hand. He bowed his head briefly and nodded as the man spoke. He patted Mori on the back and hugged him. The president’s interaction with survivors was highly anticipated ahead of his historic visit. Obama did not apologise for the decision to bomb, but paid tribute to the victims and decried the horrors of war.