Obama to Pay Historic Visit to Hiroshima This Month

WASHINGTON— In a moment seven decades in the making, President Barack Obama this month will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb, decimated a city and shot the world into the Atomic Age...
Obama to Pay Historic Visit to Hiroshima This Month
FILE - In this March 31, 2016, file photo, U.S. President Barack Obama speaks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during their meeting at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. Obama will travel to Hiroshima in May 2016 in the first visit by a sitting American president to the site where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb. The White House says Obama will visit along with Abe during a previously scheduled visit to Japan. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File
The Associated Press
Updated:

WASHINGTON— In a moment seven decades in the making, President Barack Obama this month will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb, decimated a city and shot the world into the Atomic Age.

Obama will visit the site with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a previously scheduled trip to Japan, the White House announced Tuesday.

The president intends to “highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Obama will not apologize, the White House made clear.

The president’s visit has been widely anticipated since U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to the memorial to the Hiroshima bombing in April. Kerry toured the peace museum with other foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and participated in an annual memorial service just steps from the site’s ground zero.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, fourth from left, puts his arm around Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida after they and fellow G7 foreign ministers laid wreaths at the cenotaph at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan. U.S., on April 11, 2016. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo via AP, File)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, fourth from left, puts his arm around Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida after they and fellow G7 foreign ministers laid wreaths at the cenotaph at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan. U.S., on April 11, 2016. Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo via AP, File