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President Obama Makes History 71 Years After Hiroshima

CBN

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President Obama visited the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
He is the first sitting president to do so in the 71 years following the atomic bombing of the city.

The U.S. dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima during World War II as its ultimate retaliation to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Japan attacked the entire pacific fleet of the U.S. Navy on December 7, 1941 killing 2400 Americans and ushered the nation into World War II. Four years later on Augist 6, 1945 the atomic attack on Hiroshima killed 140,000 Japanese.

Mr. Obama met with two living survivors, Sunao Tsuboi, 91, and Shigeaki Mori, 79. Mori was only eight when the bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945. 

President Obama did not offer an apology for the attack, but he did say the horror of Hiroshima should spark a 'moral awakening' that could lead to a world without nuclear weapons.

"Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering, but we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again", he said.

"Some day the voices of the Hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombs) will no longer will be with us to bear witness.  But the memory of the morning of August 6, 1945 must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency," Obama remarked. 

Some believe the U.S. should apologize for using the atomic bomb and ushering in the nuclear age, others say it was necessary to end the war and save millions of lives.

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