Obama pays tribute to ‘silent cry’

gesture for two allies ready to bury a troubled past.

Obama’s remarks showed a careful awareness of the sensitivities. He included both Korean and American prisoners of war in recounting the death toll at Hiroshima — a nod to advocates for both groups that publicly warned the president not to forget their dead.

Obama spoke broadly of the brutality of the war that begat the bombing, but did not assign blame.

After his remarks, he met with two survivors, but his remarks to the aging men were out of ear shot of reporters.

At one point, Obama could be seen laughing and smiling with 91-year-old Sunao Tsuboi, and he embraced Shigeaki Mori, 79, in a hug. But mostly, Obama just listened to the men as they spoke through an interpreter.

The president’s call for a nuclear-free world was a far cry from the optimistic rallying cry he delivered as young, newly elected president. Obama did not employ his campaign slogan — “Yes, we can” — as he did in a speech in Prague in 2009. Instead, the president hoped for the “courage to escape the logic of fear” and spoke of diligent, incremental steps.

“We may not realize this goal in my lifetime but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe,” he said. “We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles.”

Bomb survivor Kinuyo Ikegami, 82, paid her own respects at the cenotaph on Friday morning, well before Obama arrived, lighting incense and chanting a prayer.

Tears ran down her face as she described the immediate aftermath of the bomb.

“I could hear schoolchildren screaming: ‘Help me! Help me!’” she said. “It was too pitiful, too horrible. Even now it fills me with emotion.”

Han Je o n g - s o o n , the 58-year-old daughter of a Korean survivor, was also at the park Friday.

“The suffering, such as illness, gets carried on over the generations — that is what I want President Obama to know,” she said. “I want him to understand our sufferings.”

Obama’s visit is a moment 71 years in the making. Other American presidents considered coming, but the politics were still too sensitive, the emotions too raw. Jimmy Carter visited as a former president in 1984.