Obama Pays Tribute At Hiroshima Nuclear Memorial
Saturday, May 28th, 2016 1:21:06 by modousarr
The U.S president Barack Obama paid a tribute to the victims of the world’s first nuclear attack on Friday during a historic visit to Hiroshima.
“Death fell from the sky and the world was changed 71 years ago”, the US president said after laying a wreath, as he made history by becoming the first sitting US leader to visit the site.
Obama looked saddened as he gave the wreath, bowing his head and waiting for a few seconds with closed eyes before withdrawing and watched on as the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe did his tribute.
The bombing showcased that mankind has the means to destroy itself.
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The US president in his statement said “why did we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead,” he said.
The progress of technology without an equivalent progress in human institutions can ruin us. The revolution of science that led to the separation of the atom requires a moral revolution as well.
He went on to say “this is why we come to this place; we stand here, in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry.”
Obama reached at Hiroshima’s atomic bomb park on a historic first visit by a sitting US president.
The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe received Obama at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, where they laid a wreath at the cenotaph to the victims of the 1945 nuclear strike.
The visit came after more than seven decades when the Enola Gay bomber released its deadly atomic payload, known as the “Little Boy”, over the Western Japanese city.
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The lives of 140,000 people were claimed by the bombing, some of whom immediately died in a ball of searing heat. while many fall victim to injuries or radiation- related illnesses in the weeks, months and years that followed.
Three days later, a second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Coming in the final year of Obama’s term in office, the visit marks seven years since he used his trademark soaring rhetoric to call for the removal of atomic arms in a landmark speech in Prague that helped him in winning the Noble Peace Prize.
High anticipation was had in Hiroshima, where crowds of Japanese visiting foreigners were present near the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park where Obama was to appear.
American and Japanese flags flew high on the street in front of the site, with an official saying it was the first time the Stars and Stripes had been raised there.
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The US president told the American troops at a US military base in Iwakuni in the west of the country that his visit to Hiroshima was a chance to “honor” the memory of all who passed away in the war.
“It is a testament to how even the most painful divides can be bridged. How two nations can become not just partners but the best of friends” he said.
He went on to sat that the two countries were “reaffirming one of the greatest alliances in the world”
A Hiroshima survivor, Sunao Tsuboi, 91, told AFP that he had been invited to the event. He had earlier told the public broadcaster NHK that if he was given the chance to speak with Obama, he would “want to express my gratitude” for his visit.
“I have no intention of asking him for words of apology,” said Tsuboi.
However some quarters of Japanese society, have called for such a gesture, though Obama has ruled out and insisted he will not go back to the decisions of his predecessor Harry Truman at the close of World War.
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Even though some in Japan feel that the attack was a war crime because it targeted civilians, many Americans say it hastened the end of a brutal conflict, which ultimately saved lives.
While the visit was largely welcomed in Japan, it has brought to light less sympathetic reactions in other Northeast Asian countries where historical disagreements with Tokyo over wartime and colonial aggression is still raw.
On Thursday in a commentary released, North Korea’ official KCNA news agency called Obama’s visit to Hiroshima as an act of “childish political calculation” aimed at hiding the president’ true nature as a “nuclear war maniac”.
It was further said that “Obama is seized with the wild ambition to dominate the world by dint of the US nuclear edge”.
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