Honoring the memory of victims of the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima seven decades ago, U.S. President Barack Obama said the world has a shared responsibility to prevent the suffering that took place in the Japanese city from happening again.
"We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell," Obama said Friday at Hiroshima's Memorial Peace Park. "We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across that arc of terrible war and wars that came before and wars that would follow.”
Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made history simply by walking through the memorial park together.
An American warplane dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 during the waning days of World War II, killing tens of thousands and subjecting a generation to radiation sickness.
Obama is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the city.
"We come to mourn the dead," the U.S. leader said after he and Abe each placed a wreath at the Peace Memorial.
"We have a shared responsibility to look directly in the eye of history. We must ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again," a solemn Obama said. "We must re-imagine our connection to one another as members of the human race."