(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) Washington, May 11 (QNA) - Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city where the United States dropped the first atomic weapon in August, 1945.
Obama will visit the city on May 27 but his aides say he will not apologize for the bombing. Many historians today say the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, and two days later on Nagasaki, were unnecessary to end the Second World War, as Japan was ready to surrender.
"He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, saidBen Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, in a posting online.
Other historians cling to the idea that the bombings, which killed nearly 200,000 people prevented thousands of American deaths from a possible invasion of Japan. Most Americans hold this view and to apologize would be a hugely controversial step by Obama.
The president started out his term in office with a much heralded 2009 speech in Cairo in which he admitted grave mistakes that the United States had made in the Middle East. Conservative critics have ever since chastened Obama for "apologizing for America." Obama made another high profile 2009 speech in Prague in which he called for a world without nuclear weapons. It is in this spirit that Obama will visit Hiroshima, his aides said.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has welcomed the announcement of Obama's visit and has not called for an apology. The mayor of Hiroshima, however, has sought a stronger commitment by the U.S. to rid itself of nuclear weapons. (QNA)