Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Barack Obama to visit Hiroshima on Japan and Vietnam trip


Barack Obama is to visit Hiroshima this month - the first serving US president to travel to the Japanese city since it was hit by a US nuclear bomb in 1945.
The visit will be part of an Asian trip from 21-28 May that will also take in Vietnam.
The Hiroshima bombing on 6 August 1945 killed 140,000 people. Along with a second bombing on Nagasaki - it is credited with ending World War Two.
The White House said there would be no apology for the bombings.
A statement from Mr Obama's press secretary read: "The President will make an historic visit to Hiroshima with Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons."
The bomb that changed the world.

A mushroom cloud over Hiroshima following the explosion of an atomic bomb
The bomb was nicknamed "Little Boy" and was thought to have the explosive force of 20,000 tonnes of TNT
Colonel Paul Tibbets, a 30-year-old colonel from Illinois, led the mission to drop the atomic bomb on Japan
The Enola Gay, the plane which dropped the bomb, was named in tribute to Col Tibbets' mother
The final target was decided less than an hour before the bomb was dropped. The good weather conditions over Hiroshima sealed the city's fate
On detonation, the temperature at the burst-point of the bomb was several million degrees. Thousands of people on the ground were killed or injured instantly.

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