Obama Positively Mulling Visit to Hiroshima: Spokesman

Washington, April 12 (Jiji Press)--U.S. President Barack Obama is positively considering visiting Hiroshima, one of the two Japan cities that were destroyed by the U.S. atomic bombings in the closing days of World War II, during his trip to the nation next month for a Group of Seven summit, a White House official suggested Tuesday. While noting that no side trip has been fixed for Obama's upcoming Japan visit, press secretary Josh Earnest said that the devastation of Hiroshima shows "the significant and even, in some ways, tragic ability that mankind has to wreak terrible destruction." "One of the reasons that the president has started and routinely convened a Nuclear Security Summit is in pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons," Earnest said at a press conference, adding, "That continues to be a long-term goal." He also said, "Symbolically, there's no more powerful illustration of that commitment than the city that contained the victims of the first use of that weapon." Obama is studying whether to visit the western Japan city on the occasion of the summit among the seven major industrial nations--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States--in Mie Prefecture, central Japan, on May 26-27, informed sources said. Hiroshima was shattered by a U.S. atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki in southwestern Japan suffered the same fate three days later. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park with other G-7 foreign ministers on the sidelines of their two-day meeting in Hiroshima through the same day. They laid flowers at the cenotaph there for victims of the atomic bombing. Some Americans have criticized Kerry's visit to the park, saying that the Obama administration is apologizing for the United States' victory in WWII. But Earnest said that whatever decision the president makes and whatever policy decision the administration makes will be "consistent with the president's strong view about the bravery, courage and heroism of those Americans who fought and won World War II, thereby, securing the liberty and freedom not just of the United States but of human beings around the world." END