US President Barack Obama will use his trip to the World War II atomic bomb site of Hiroshima to emphasise the "very real risk" of nuclear weapons that still exists, he has said, hours ahead of his visit.
Obama will on Friday become the first sitting US president to visit the city, upon which US forces dropped the first of two atomic bombs in the final days of the war, 71 years ago.
"I want to once again underscore the very real risks that are out there and the sense of urgency we all should have," he said on the margins of a G7 summit in the Japanese resort of Ise-Shima, adding that the "job is not done" in terms of reducing the prospect of future attacks.
In particular, Obama said North Korea presented a danger.
While the country is not yet in a position to directly hit the United States, he said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "seems to be convinced that his own legitimacy is tied up with nuclear weapons."
"The dropping of the atomic bomb, the ushering in of nuclear weapons, was an inflection point in modern history," Obama said with a view to Friday's visit.
"The backdrop of a nuclear event remains something that I think presses on the back of our imaginations," he added.
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