2016 President Barack Obama's Speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan About the World War II Atomic Bombing of August 1945: Honoring the Victims of the First Nuclear Weapon

On May 27, 2016, American President Barack Obama visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan. He made a historic speech discussing the bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. He noted: Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 in Japanese men, women and children; thousands of Koreans; a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.