US President Barack Obama is to visit Hiroshima on Friday, where the US dropped the world’s first nuclear bomb, the BBC reports.
The visit, after the G7 summit, will be the first to the Japanese city by a serving US president.
Mr Obama has said he will not be issuing an apology for the nuclear attack, but will honour all those who died in World War Two.
He told Japanese media the visit would show that “even former adversaries can become the strongest of allies”.
“Hiroshima reminds us that war, no matter the cause or countries involved, results in tremendous suffering and loss, especially for innocent civilians,” he wrote in the Asahi newspaper.
The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 killed at least 140,000 people. Two days later a second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 74,000.