In historic visit to Hiroshima, Obama calls on the world to morally evolve - latimes

President Obama paid somber tribute here Friday to the devastating human cost of war and pleaded with the world to progress morally as it does technologically, decades after an American warplane dropped an atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima and ushered in the age of nuclear warfare.

Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot on the site of the world’s first nuclear attack, joining with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to chart the devastation and lay a wreath at a memorial commemorating the 140,000 estimated to have died.

In a sweeping address that set aside policy in favor of a rumination on the obligations of humankind, Obama reflected on early civilization and the ancient nature of conflict. He noted that as battlefield weapons and tactics evolve, accompanying norms about using them advances in fits and starts.

"Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us," Obama warned. "The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well. That is why we come to this place."

Obama did not apologize for the nuclear attacks here and in the city of Nagasaki, strikes he believes ended the perils of Japanese aggression and brought about the end of World War II.

But as the leader of the only country ever to have deployed nuclear weapons, Obama said it is the responsibility of those who hold terrible power to face the consequences of its use.

"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. Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness," he said, using the Japanese term for survivors of the nuclear blasts.

The Peace Memorial park he visited Friday afternoon marks the darkest days of Hiroshima, where about 350,000 Japanese civilians and military personnel were living on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the bomb fell.

An estimated 60,000 to 80,000 people were killed instantly and tens of thousands more died from the effects of radiation in the months and years that followed. 

Among the dead were thousands of junior high school students mobilized to clear fire breaks in preparation for conventional bombings like those that had hit other Japanese cities in the weeks leading up to Aug. 6. - Read More 

In historic visit to Hiroshima, Obama calls on the world to morally evolve

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