At Hiroshima memorial, Obama calls for a nuclear-free world, a 'moral awakening'

In a speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Obama called for an end to nuclear weapons. On June 6, 1945, Obama said, "death fell from the sky and the world was changed." When the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki, killing about 210,000 people and effectively ending World War II, the bomb "demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself."

"We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell," Obama said, "We listen to a silent cry." He did not apologize, but said the memory of Hiroshima "must never fade." He ended his speech with a call for "a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not known as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening."

Obama is the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. Before speaking, Obama laid a wreath at the monument, and afterward he met with survivors of the bombing. Obama also signed the guest book, and this is what he wrote: "We have known the agony of war. Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace, and pursue a world without nuclear weapons."

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