Photo: AP

Later this month, the White House announced on Tuesday, President Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, Japan. According to the New York Times, the president is “loath to be seen as apologizing for that chapter in American history.”

Indeed, in a blog post on Medium, Ben Rhodes, the president’s reclusive deputy national security adviser for strategic communication wrote, strategically:

On May 27, the President will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a site at the center of the city dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing, where he will share his reflections on the significance of the site and the events that occurred there. He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.

“The President’s time in Hiroshima also will reaffirm America’s longstanding commitment — and the President’s personal commitment — to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Rhodes wrote.

Approximately 200,000 were killed when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end of World War II. The necessity of this action is still widely contested.