The visit that U.S. President Barack Obama paid to Hiroshima on Friday may contribute to an emotional reconciliation over the August 1945 atomic bombings by the United States in the final days of World War II. Obama became the first sitting president of the only country in history to have used atomic weapons in warfare to visit the first city to have experienced a nuclear attack. However, the significance of the historic visit will only remain symbolic unless it is followed by greater efforts to ensure that the devastation experienced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not repeated.
During his brief visit Friday evening accompanied by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama laid a wreath at a monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park honoring those killed by the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city. In a statement he made as several aging atomic bombing survivors watched on, the U.S. president reflected on the horrors of war and said the memory of the day the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima "must never fade." He called for a reduction in nuclear stockpiles and a move toward a world without nuclear arms. He shook hands with and embraced some of the survivors. He signed a guest book at the memorial, writing, "Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace, and pursue a world without nuclear weapons."
Obama's call for "a world free of nuclear weapons" in his April 2009 speech in Prague earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. But seven years on, the world is no closer to that goal. Unless serious efforts are made from now, the U.S. president's historic tribute to Hiroshima will not change this situation.