Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avagint.

This day, May 27th, 2016, President Obama offered remarks in which he said, quote,

71 years ago on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.

These were his remarks at Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bombing,

the bomb dropped by the US on the city that killed an estimated 140,000 people. Three days later the US

would bomb Nagasaki killing 80,000 people. The vast majority of those killed of

course were civilians. now Obama was in Hiroshima 71

years later to offer remarks and an apology of sorts he and Prime Minister

Shinsel Abbe visited the memorial laid a wreath and after the speech and during his remarks. So here to discuss Obama's Hiroshima visit,

why it took this long and this president

to be the first to visit and offer remarks of this kind.

And a little bit on the larger context of presidential apologies are as always

Nicole Hemmer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hi Jody. Hey there. We did an episode fairly recently about the Tuskegee experiments and it was

hooked to Bill Clinton offering an apology for those actions by the U.S. government and

you know towards the end we were kind of talking about what kind of apology was it how forceful was it and you know I'll just start by

saying Clinton in his remarks around Tuskegee says quote we cannot stop turning our heads away I want to be clear what we did was shameful and I am very sorry

Mickey you study the Obama presidency you'll you know you'll guide us through kind of a lot of how this came

together but in terms of the kind of apology or if even that's the right word how to Obama's

remarks at Hiroshima stack up on that sort of spectrum of forceful acknowledgement and apology.

I'm not even sure you would use the word acknowledgement, except to say that it's an

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