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“Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” read US President Barack Obama's opening speech at the Peace Memorial on Friday.
Barack Obama becomes the first United States incumbent President to visit Hiroshima where he took a few longer strides besides this one. It goes without saying that most of the speech spiralled around the fateful day of August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Although Obama did not apologise for America's decision on dropping the bombs, he did gesture for all of the world to surrender its weaponised nuclear capabilities, including the United States.
"We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans and a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us."
During the ceremony, Obama shared a moment with Shigeaki Mori, 79, who was 8 years old when the bomb fell and had spent his life researching the US soldiers who had died while they were being held as prisoners of war.
