President Obama next month will make a historic visit to Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bombing.
U.S. officials told the Nikkei Asian Review that the visit will come after the G-7 summit in Japan in May, making Obama the first sitting U.S. president to visit the city.
Japanese officials have been pushing the U.S. for weeks to get Obama to visit the city and its peace memorial. The U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II. About 80,000 people were killed in the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be present during Obama’s visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, according to the officials. The president is likely to make a speech calling for “a world without nuclear weapons,” but will avoid appearing “apologetic.”
Obama’s speech will echo his speech in Prague in April 2009, when he called for a world without nuclear weapons.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry became the first sitting secretary of state to visit Hiroshima earlier this month. He laid a wreath at the memorial, but offered no apology for the bombing.
Arrangements between U.S. and Japanese governments are being made for Obama to visit Hiroshima on the final day of the Group of Seven summit on May 27, which will be held in Ise-Shima, halfway between Tokyo and Hiroshima. As soon as Obama returns to Washington, D.C., from his current tour of the Middle East and Europe, arrangements will be finalized, the sources told Nikkei.
Obama first visited Japan in 2009 and has been three times since, but has not yet visit Hiroshima, but said he hoped to do so while still in office.
