Tokyo: Japan is making arrangements for the G7 leaders to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II, at the next summit in May 2023, the NHK broadcaster reported on Wednesday.
Japan will chair the G7 multilateral platform in 2023. The top-level G7 summit will be held in the city of Hiroshima from May 19-21, 2023. NHK noted that if the plan is realized, it would be the first such visit by all G7 leaders together.
Japanese citizens, in Hiroshima in particular, are calling on the government to invite world leaders to visit the museum in order to learn about the true horrors of the atomic bombing of the city.
In May 2016, former US President Barack Obama paid a historic visit to Hiroshima, making him the first US president to visit the city since World War II.
In August, Japan marked 77 years since a US B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 140,000 people. The second atomic bomb strike on the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later killed 70,000 people. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history.