Obama willing to visit Hiroshima while still in office

“The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency,” Obama said in an exclusive interview.

Obama would be the first U.S. president in office to visit the Japanese cities, which the United States attacked with atomic bombs in the final days of World War II.

In Hiroshima, more than 140,000 people were killed instantly or died in the weeks after the August 6, 1945 attack.

Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped, killing more than 70,000 people in Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, ending World War II.

The nation has since been officially pacifist, while also becoming one of the United States' closest allies, hosting some 47,000 U.S. troops.

While no sitting U.S. president has visited Hiroshima or Nagasaki, Jimmy Carter went to the Hiroshima memorial after leaving office and Richard Nixon as a private citizen between his terms as vice president and president.

The U.S. president, who will visit Japan on Friday and Saturday as part of an Asia tour, has promoted the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Obama said in a speech in Prague this year that the United States has “a moral responsibility” to work toward the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have repeatedly requested that Obama visit the cities, but the U.S. president told Japan's national broadcaster that “unfortunately I can't visit this time because my schedule was so compressed.”

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