It took 71 years, but it finally happened.
U.S President Barack Obama just became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bombing, and said that the “memory of August 6, 1945, must never fade.”
The president visited a memorial for the 1945 U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday, where he laid a wreath before speaking alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
He became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the bombing, which instantly killed between 60,000 and 80,000 people - and 140,000 in total - and hastened the end of the Second World War.
During his historic speech, he said “death fell from the sky” on the day the bomb was dropped in 1945. “The memory of August 6, 1945, must never fade,” Obama said. “That memory allows us to fight complacency.”
Speaking of the relationship between the U.S. and Japan, he said: “Since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance than a friendship that has won far more for our nations that conflict ever could.”
He added that nations, like the U.S., that have stockpiles of nuclear weapons must possess “the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them. We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.”
He concluded that he hoped the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would eventually be remembered not as the “dawn of atomic warfare” but “the start of our moral awakening.”
Speaking after Obama, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Obama’s visit marked a new chapter of reconciliation between the U.S. and Japan.
