Visitors bow their heads at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a site President Obama is expected to visit during a trip to Japan later this month. | AP Photo Obama to be first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima

President Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima when he travels there later this month, the White House announced Tuesday.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on the Japanese cities in 1945 during World War II.


He is scheduled to travel to Vietnam and Japan from May 21 through May 28 on his 10th trip to Asia, where he is expected to highlight America’s commitment to increase diplomatic, economic and security engagement with Asian nations and their people. The White House said Obama will participate in his final G-7 Summit when he visits Japan.

“The President and Prime Minister Abe will meet bilaterally to further advance the U.S.-Japan alliance, including our cooperation on economic and security issues as well as a host of global challenges,” the White House said in a statement. “Finally, the President will make an historic visit to Hiroshima with Prime Minister Abe to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said late May is the appropriate time for Obama to visit the city and shrine.

“So, on May 27, the President will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a site at the center of the city dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing, where he will share his reflections on the significance of the site and the events that occurred there,” Rhodes wrote in a Medium post. “He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the generation of Americans who fought in World War II saved the world from tyranny but added that the U.S. now has a duty to be a leader in the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons.

“The president certainly does understand the United States bears a special responsibility,” Earnest said. “The United States continues to be the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and it means that our country bears a special responsibility to lead the world in an effort to eliminate them.”

But the visit should not be misconstrued as an apology, he added. “If people do interpret it that way, they'll be interpreting it wrongly,” Earnest said.

Obama’s scheduled visit follows John Kerry’s historic trip last month as the first secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, where he toured the Peace Memorial Park and Museum.

“It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” Kerry said at the time. “It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices in war and of what war does to people, to communities, to countries, to the world.”

Brianna Gurciullo contributed to this report.