US President Barack Obama to make historic visit to Hiroshima

President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, later this month, nearly 71 years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city during World War II, killing 140,000 people.

He will be there to remember, not to apologize, administration officials said.

The White House formally announced the visit Tuesday after weeks of speculation that Obama would stop in the city after attending the Group of 7 economic summit in Ise-Shima. Aides said the president's arrival May 27 in Peace Memorial Park would serve as a symbolic gesture to promote his nuclear nonproliferation message and highlight the reconciliation between wartime enemies that have become close allies.

Presidential advisers categorically ruled out an apology from Obama for President Harry S. Truman's decision to authorize the use of the world's first atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945. A second U.S. atomic weapon three days later killed 80,000 people in Nagasaki. Most of those who perished in both cities were civilians.

Some Republicans and conservative news outlets have criticized a potential presidential visit to either city as unnecessary atonement. Many Americans believe the bombs helped bring an end to a war that began when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

"That's a relevant discussion for our country to have, and there's no reason that people should shy away from considering the impact of a decision like that," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said when asked if Obama was wary of reigniting a debate over the war. "But when the president goes to Peace Park in Hiroshima, he's just going to offer some short, simple reflections on his visit, and that will include an observation on the way that the relationship between the United States and Japan has been transformed."

White House advisers had debated for weeks the merits of making a presidential visit during an election year, mindful that Obama could draw criticism from Republicans and U.S. veterans' groups for appearing to capitulate to the Japanese. His visit also could draw negative reactions from South Korea and China, both of which have objected to portrayals of imperial Japan - which brutally invaded much of Northeast Asia and attacked Pearl Harbor - as a victim in World War II.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe publicly welcomed the announcement Tuesday and said he would join Obama in Hiroshima to help promote the president's efforts "to realize a nuclear-free world." Behind the scenes, however, some of Abe's advisers have been reticent about a visit at a time when the Abe administration is pursuing a stronger national defense policy in the face of threats from a nuclear-armed North Korea and competition from a resurgent China.

Abe, who has sought to move beyond wartime grievances, forged a fragile agreement with South Korean President Park Geun-hye last year over the Japanese military's use of Korean women as "comfort women," or sex slaves, during the war.

But White House advisers were buoyed by the response in the United States and Japan to Secretary of State John F. Kerry's visit last month to Hiroshima, where he laid a wreath at the cenotaph in Peace Park and joined other foreign ministers from the G-7 nations on a tour of the Peace Memorial Museum.

That visit, which Kerry called "gut-wrenching," was well-received in Japan and drew minimal criticism in the United States. Afterward, several major mainstream news outlets, including The Washington Post and the New York Times, published editorials calling on Obama to make his own trip to the city.

"The Japanese public as a whole welcomes his visit to Hiroshima," said Andrew Oros, an East Asian affairs specialist who serves as director of international studies at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. "Many Japanese disagree on aspects of U.S. policy, but they will be happy about the symbolism of a U.S. president making some nod to the victimization of everyday Japanese people. And they expect he will renew a commitment to a nuclear-free world, which has been the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy for the whole post-war period."

Obama's visit to Hiroshima will come after he spends two days in Vietnam, stopping in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and two more days at the G-7 Summit in Ise-Shima.

At the conclusion of the summit, Air Force One will ferry Obama to the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni, outside of Hiroshima. White House officials did not say whether the president would meet with any of the atomic bomb survivors, known in Japan as "hibakusha," who are now in their 70s, 80s and 90s and whose numbers are dwindling rapidly.

The visit, which is sure to draw enormous media attention, also will provide Obama with a chance to counter suggestions by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that the United States allow Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons arsenals to protect themselves.

White House aides have called that idea "catastrophic" and emphasized that each Republican and Democratic administration since World War II has had a policy of nonproliferation. Trump's campaign did not respond to requests for comment to the news of Obama's trip.

Most Republicans on Capitol Hill also did not react publicly, though Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-South Carolina, said of Obama: "I don't think he's going to go apologize. I don't mind the president going to the memorial." Graham noted that former president Ronald Reagan visited a military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, in 1985, although that trip elicited fierce criticism in the United States and other countries.

Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California - who in 2008, while serving as House speaker, became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Hiroshima - hailed Obama's decision. Rep. Mark Takano, D-California, a Japanese American, said a GOP lawmaker praised him after he publicly urged Obama to visit Hiroshima during a speech last month on the House floor.

Yet Takano, whose great-aunt survived the Hiroshima bombing, provoked many angry responses when he posted a video of his House speech on Facebook, which drew 271 comments.

"There were people all over the country, who clearly hadn't even read or listened to my speech, who were automatically, reflexively calling it an apology," he said.

Even some of those who are supportive of a presidential trip, including anti-nuclear-weapons advocates, said the move could backfire if Obama fails to enunciate a path forward toward dramatically reducing the global stockpile.

The president "will look insincere," said Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, "if his words espouse ridding the world of nuclear weapons while at the same time his administration continues its plan to spend a trillion dollars over 30 years to upgrade nuclear weapons."