--- ---  # Why It Took So Long for a U.S. President to Visit Hiroshima  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 10, 2016 5:10 PM UTC  Upon arriving in Japan, President Ford holds a meeting in Tokyo's Akasaka Palace State Guest House with his staff, Nov. 19, 1974 in Tokyo Upon arriving in Japan, President Ford holds a meeting in Tokyo's Akasaka Palace State Guest House with his staff, Nov. 19, 1974 in TokyoDavid Hume Kennerly—Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 10, 2016 5:10 PM UTC When President Obama [visits Hiroshima later this month](http://time.com/4324308/barack-obama-hiroshima-visit-japan), the trip will be the first time a sitting President has ever visited the site of where the U.S. dropped an atomic weapon in 1945\. The visit will highlight the President’s “continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” the White House said in a [statement](https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/10/statement-press-secretary-presidents-travel-vietnam-and-japan) on Tuesday, and the administration has [stressed](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/world/asia/obama-weighs-visiting-hiroshima-or-nagasaki.html) that such a visit is not meant to imply an apology. The trip will come a full 42 years after the first Presidential trip to Japan drew calls for a visit to Hiroshima as well. But, despite generally positive relations between the two nations in the last few decades, the idea never actually came to fruition—until now. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) The State Department’s [records](https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/president/japan) of official presidential visits to Japan begin in 1974, with Gerald Ford. Every President since then has made at least two visits to the nation, but as TIME [reported](http://time.com/vault/issue/1974-11-25/page/25/) during Ford’s trip, there was a reason why Ford was the first: “Dwight Eisenhower planned to go in 1960 but canceled the trip at the last minute because of massive protests by Japanese leftists. There were demonstrations in advance of Ford’s trip too, including firebombings of the American and Soviet embassies by extremists.” **MORE:** [See What the Only Hiroshima Building to Outlast the Atomic Bomb Looks Like Today](http://time.com/3978544/hiroshima-dome-photos/) In fact, Eisenhower’s trip had been more than “planned”—it was already [underway](http://time.com/vault/issue/1960-06-20/page/11/) when Japan told the President to avoid Japan during his ongoing Asia trip. It was seen as, TIME noted in a [cover story](http://time.com/vault/issue/1960-06-27/page/1/) about the decision, “a stinging slap to U.S. pride and prestige” by “the hand of organized Communism” that had made the demonstrations in Japan intense enough to warrant fears for Eisenhower’s safety. But, though Ford did set into motion a precedent of presidential visits, his trip only took him to Tokyo and Kyoto. Not that Hiroshima wasn’t considered: a 2009 [investigation](http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/articles/hiroshima/) by the Japanese newspaper _The Asahi Shimbun_ and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University found evidence in Ford’s presidential papers that he had been encouraged to make the trip Obama will now make. (The U.S. also dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki at the end of World War II.) ### Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Photos From the Ruins  Not published in LIFE. Urakami Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Nagasaki, September, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Nagasaki, September, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Hiroshima streetcar, September, 1945. J. R. Eyerman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Nagasaki, Japan, September 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. A photo album, pieces of pottery, a pair of scissors - shards of life strewn on the ground in Nagasaki, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  From notes by LIFE's Bernard Hoffman to the magazine's long-time picture editor, Wilson Hicks, in New York, September 1945. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Hiroshima, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Nagasaki, 1945, a few months after an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb, codenamed "Fat Man," on the city. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. The landscape around Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki, September, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  From notes by LIFE's Bernard Hoffman to the magazine's long-time picture editor, Wilson Hicks, in New York, September 1945. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Neighborhood reduced to rubble by atomic bomb blast, Hiroshima, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Bust in front of destroyed cathedral two miles from the atomic bomb detonation site, Nagasaki, Japan, 1945. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Hiroshima, 1945, two months after the August 6 bombing. Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Nagasaki, 1945. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Two women pay respects at a ruined cemetery, Nagasaki, 1945. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Hiroshima, September, 1945. J.R. Eyerman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images About two months before Ford’s trip, the investigation found, White House official William J. Baroody Jr. sent the President a memo urging him to go to Hiroshima to “provide indisputable assurance of your intent to heal wounds, both national and international.” At a time when Cold War nuclear proliferation was of concern, the visit would be both meaningful and useful, Baroody posited—in particular because Ford hoped “to receive assurances that the Japanese Diet would ratify the nuclear nonproliferation treaty,” as TIME [put](http://time.com/vault/issue/1974-11-25/page/1/) it back then. Others at the White House, however, felt that such a visit would be adding a dose of negativity to an otherwise positive trip, and that it would risk opening old wounds. That view won out in the end, and Ford skipped Hiroshima. **MORE:** [See the Original Operations Orders for the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki](http://time.com/3980421/hiroshima-nagasaki-operations-orders/) Similar concerns prevented later trips to Hiroshima. As recently as 2009, Japan [discouraged](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/09/28/news/obama-hiroshima-trip-discouraged-in-09-wikileaks-cable/#.VzIEsuen60k) Obama from including the city in a trip to Japan, because “the public’s expectations” for such a visit would be too complicated to manage. 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