Nuclear security

What President Obama should say at Hiroshima

The White House is reportedly trying to decide whether President Obama should visit Hiroshima before he leaves office. He should go. And, since he is a very busy man, I’ve written his speech for him:

History is etched deeply into certain places. Seeking to discern the lessons of history, we come to these places to reflect and learn. Hiroshima is such a place.

Standing in this busy, prosperous metropolis today, it is hard to fully grasp what happened here 70 years ago. On August 6, 1945, a lone American B-29 flew over Hiroshima armed with a single bomb. It was 8:15 in the morning, and the streets were full of people on their way to work, children making their way to school. The bomb that was dropped, the world’s first atomic bomb, was, at around 16 kilotons, small by the standard of today’s nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, it destroyed most of the city, killing about 70,000 people immediately and about twice that number in the fullness of time.