It was a solemn walk down the promenade for President Barack Obama with Japan’s Prime Minister. With every step, Hiroshima’s Atomic Dome came into focus, the Pond of Peace shimmering brightly thanks to the Eternal Flame licking the sky.
After delicately placing a wreath at the foot of the Memorial Cenotaph, Obama moved to the podium. He took a few extra seconds to begin, to honor the moment: the first President of the United States to visit the city that a predecessor bombed with the deadliest weapon known to man.
Obama acknowledged the magnitude of that decision without apology. He appealed to all nuclear nations, including the United States, “to have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”
He mourned the innocent from all of the world’s wars, saying “we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.”
Hindsight, they say, is 20-20. And the farther away we get from a historical event, the more clarity we seem to gain.