The White House announced May 10 that President Obama will travel to Hiroshima, Japan, reports The New York Times.
This will be the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited the city where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb at the end of World War II. The trip, his advisers say, is designed to underline the importance of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
According to The New York Times:
The visit, hotly debated within the White House for months as the president planned his coming trip to Vietnam and Japan, carries weighty symbolism for Mr. Obama, who is loath to be seen as apologizing for that chapter in American history.
“He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, his deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, said in a blog post on Medium. “Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.”
“In making this visit, the president will shine a spotlight on the tremendous and devastating human toll of war,” Mr. Rhodes added in the blog post.
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