President Obama to visit Hiroshima 71 years after disaster
(Baonghean.vn)- During his Asia tour from May 21 to 28, US President Barack Obama has decided to visit Hiroshima. This is the first official visit by a sitting US President to Hiroshima since the Japanese city was hit by a US nuclear bomb during World War II.
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| US President Barack Obama. Photo: Reuters. |
The White House statement said President Obama will travel to Hiroshima with host country Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he visits Japan later this May to attend the Group of Seven (G7) Summit.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest stressed that this activity shows the US leader's commitment to continuing to promote peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted the Japanese government as confirming the above information, stating that the US President will arrive in Hiroshima on May 27 after the G7 Summit ends.
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| The Japanese flag flies at half-mast in front of the atomic bomb dome at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in western Japan on August 6, 1998. Photo: Reuters. |
Thus, Mr. Obama became the first sitting US President to visit Hiroshima, which was destroyed by a US atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Last April, US Secretary of State John Kerry also visited the memorial to the victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
Previously, US President Jimmy Carter also visited Hiroshima, but only after the end of his presidential term.
The nuclear bomb that changed the world * The bomb, code-named “Little Boy,” and with a destructive power equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. * Colonel Paul Tibbets, 30 years old from Illinois, was the commander of the operation to drop the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. * The Enola Gay, the plane that carried out the bombing, was named after Colonel Tibbets' mother. * The final target was decided less than an hour before the bomb was dropped. The good weather conditions in Hiroshima were an ominous sign for the city's fate. * When it exploded, the bomb's detonation temperature was several million degrees Celsius. 140,000 people died instantly. * Three days later, the second atomic bomb, code-named Fat Man, was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, continuing to cause humanitarian disasters in the war. * These two atomic bombs were also part of ending World War II. |
Lan Ha
(According to BBC)
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