0 to visit Hiroshima

First-ever trip by a US prez

WASHINGTON — President Obama will travel to Hiroshima this month, making the first visit by a sitting American president to the site where the US first dropped an atomic bomb, decimated a city and shot the world into the Atomic Age.

The White House announced the visit in a statement Tuesday.

Obama, who will be joined by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, intends to “highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” spokes- man Josh Earnest said. Asked last week if the president believed an apology was warranted, Earnest was direct: “No, he does not.”

Obama’s visit has been anticipated since Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Hiroshima in April.

The bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, in the final days of World War II, killed 140,000 people. While it scarred a generation of Japanese, many Americans be- lieve that the bombing, along with the Aug. 9 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, hastened the end of the war.

Those diverging views of an act that forever changed war has made a visit from a sitting American president a delicate and arguably politically risky move.

No US president has ever visited, and it took 65 years for a US ambassador to attend the annual memorial service.