Barack Obama seemed to work some baby soothing magic during a stop-off at a US air base on route to his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial last Friday. As he mingled with the excited crowds at Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station, on his way to Iwakuni, a woman handed the President a crying baby. But when Obamahanded the child back all was calm.
Obama became the first incumbent US president to visit Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bombing , in a gesture Tokyo and Washington hope will showcase their alliance and reinvigorate efforts to rid the world of nuclear arms.
The two governments hope Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, where a US atomic bomb killed thousands instantly on August 6, 1945, and some 140,000 by the year’s end, underscores a new level of reconciliation and tighter ties between the former enemies.
