The upcoming visit to Hiroshima by U.S. President Barack Obama — the first by a sitting president of the sole country in the world to have used nuclear weapons in warfare to the city that experienced the first nuclear attack in history 71 years ago — will be significant if it indeed serves to rebuild the momentum for efforts to create a world free of nuclear arms, which Obama himself advocated at the beginning of his presidency.
The United States has ruled out an apology by Obama for its atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II in 1945, which together killed more than 210,000 people by the end of that year. But lack of an apology should not detract from the significance of the historic visit, during which he will be accompanied by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. What's more important will be the recognition that Obama's May 27 tribute to Hiroshima should bring to the catastrophic consequence of the atomic bombing — and a readiness to build on that recognition to move toward eliminating nuclear weapons.
Seven decades after the atomic bombings, a presidential trip to Hiroshima remains politically sensitive and risky in the U.S., where the view remains strong that the use of the atomic bombs just days before Japan's surrender were necessary to quickly end the war and save the lives of American troops. Concern has lingered among American officials that a presidential visit to the atomic-bombed city could be construed as an apology by the U.S. government.