Seventy-one years ago, on bright, cloudless morning, what fell from the sky changed the world. Flash of lights, along with fire, which destroyed the city, demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy ourselves.

Why do we come to this place, Hiroshima? We come to learn the force that was unleashed not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including a hundred thousand Japanese men, women, and children, thousands of Koreans, dozens of American prisoners.

Their souls speak to us.

Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared in their very first name, our early ancestors learned to use not just for hunting but against their own kind.

Our history and civilizations are filled by wars driven with hunger for gold, or religious zeal.

Empires have risen and fallen. People were subjugated. At each junctions, the innocence suffered and their names were forgotten.

The world war that reached at a brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, torn the most wealthiest and powerful of nations in the world. Their thinkes had advanced ideas and justice, harmony and truth. And yet, the wars rised from the same base instinct of domination, conquest, conflict among the simplest tribes. For the span of a few years, some 16 million people died, men, women, children, who were no different than us, shot, beaten, bombed, jailed, gassed to death---.

Many sites around the world can chronicle this war.

Yet in the image of the mushroom cloud, rose into the sky, we are most starkly reminded of the contradiction of very start of the start of the man species, our imagination, and languages.

We listened to a silent cry. We remember all the innocence killed across the ark of that terrible war and the wars that came before.

Mere word cannot give voice to such suffering. We are here to share responsibility to look directly in the eye of history .and ask what we must do differently to curve such suffering again.

Some day the voices of the Hibakusha no longer be with us to bear witness.

But the memory of the morning of August 6 1945,must never fade.

Nations of the Europe have built a union that replace battlefields with bonds with commerce and democracy. Press peoples and one nation one liberation, an international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war.

And inspire to restrict and rollback and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.

Still, every act of aggression between nations every act of terror and corruption cruelty, and suppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done.

We may not to be able to eliminate a man’s capacity to do evil. So nations and alliances We formed must possess a means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own nation who own the nuclear stockpiles, we must have a courage to escape the logical fear and pursue a world without them.

We may not realize this goal in my lifetime. But persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.

We can try to course the lead to destruction of these stockpiles.

We can stop the spread to new nations and secure the deadly materials from fanatics. And yet that is not enough.

We see around the world today , how even the crudest rifles, and barrel bombs conserve a violence of terrible scam. We must change our mindset about the war itself.

To prevent conflicts thorough diplomacy.

And strive to end conflicts after they began. To see and going in independence the cause of peaceful cooperation not violent competition, to define the nations not by our capacity to destroy, by what we built.

And perhaps above all we must reimagine our connection to one another, as members of one human race.

For this too is what makes our species unique, we are not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past.

We can learn.

We can choose.

We can tell our children a different story.

One that describes a common humanity.

One that makes war less likely.

And cruelty less easily accepted.

We see these stories in the Hibakusha, the woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb, because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself.

My own nation’s story begin with simple words.

All men are created equal, and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Realizing that ideal has never been easy.

Even within our own borders, even among our own citizens.

But staying true to that story is worth the effort.

It is an ideal to be strived for.

An ideal that extends across continents, and across oceans.

The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence of ever life is precious.

The radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single family.

That is the story that we must all tell.

That is why we come to Hiroshima.

So that we might think of people we love.

The first smile from our children in the morning, the gentle touch from the over the kitchen table.

The comforting embrace from a parent.

We can think of these things and know that those precious moments took place here 71years ago.

Those who died, they are like us.

Ordinary people understand this, I think.

They do not want more war.

They would rather, that the wonders of science be focused on life, and not eliminating it.

When the choices made by nations, and when choices made by leaders reflect this simple wisdom, and the lesson of Hiroshima is done.

The world was forever changed here.

But today, the children of this city, will go through their day in peace.

What a precious thing that is.

It is worth protecting.

And then extending to every child.

That is a future we can choose.

A future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare.

But as the start of our own moral awakening.

【日本語要約】

　７１年前、非常に晴れた朝、空から死が降ってきて世界が変わった。閃光（せんこう）が広がり、火の玉が広がり、この街を破壊した。これは人類が自分自身を破壊する手段を手に入れたということだ。

　私たちはなぜ広島にいるのだろうか。恐ろしい力がそれほど遠くない過去に解き放たれたことを考えるために来た。

　私たちはここに立ち、思いをはせる。この原爆を落とした時の子どもたちの苦しみ。子どもたちが目にしたこと。声なき叫び声に耳を傾ける。罪のない人が戦争に殺されたことを思う。これまでと、これからの戦争犠牲者に思いをはせる。

　いつの日か、被爆者の声はなくなっていく。しかし、１９４５年８月６日の苦しみは消えない。その記憶で、慢心と戦う。道徳的な想像力をかき立てる。運命の日から、希望を与える選択を行ってきた。人類が悪を廃絶することはできないかもしれない。自分たちを守る道具を持たなければならないが、勇気を持たないと。恐れのロジックから自由にならないといけない。私が生きている間にこの目的は達成できないかもしれないが、可能性を追い求めていきたい。

　私たちは広島に来た。朝起きてすぐの子どもの笑顔、配偶者とのテーブルを挟んだふれあい、親からの非常に優しい抱擁、素晴らしい瞬間が７１年前にここにもあったということを考えることができる。一般の方はそういったことを理解できるはずだ。

　もはやこれ以上の戦争を望んではいない。科学をもっと人生を発達させることに使ってほしいと考えている。国家が選択するとき、リーダーが選択して反省するとき、知恵というものが広島から得られる。

　世界はこの広島によって一変した。しかし、今日、この広島の子は平和な日々を生きている。なんて貴重なことだろうか。この生活は守る価値がある。それをすべての子どもたちに広げていく必要がある。これが私たちの選択する未来だ。広島、長崎は、核戦争の夜明けではなく、私たちの道義的な目覚めの始まりだったということを教えてくれた。

（中日新聞）