“On a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky”

U.S. President Obama laying a wreath at the Hiroshima Memorial in Japan – the first sitting U.S. President to visit the site. He said, ““Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city, and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself,” Obama said. “Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward. To take stock of who we are, and what we might become.” Earlier, he had said his visit would be a reminder of the need of a sense of urgency about the risks of nuclear conflict.