Students invite Obama to visit Hiroshima

HIROSHIMA, Japan, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Students in Hiroshima, Japan, asked U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to visit their city, saying he would be an advocate of a nuclear weapons-free world.

In a project organized by a Hiroshima newspaper, about 250 teenagers wrote letters to Obama in Japanese which are being translated into English by more than 100 students in the United States, Kyodo News reported Tuesday.

No sitting U.S. president has visited Hiroshima, where the United States dropped an atomic bomb in 1945 at the end of World War II, despite repeated calls from the city's government.

"I hope that a visit by Mr. Obama to Hiroshima would encourage people all over the world to change their views" on stockpiling nuclear weapons, one junior high school student said in her letter.

"If Mr. Obama visits the Peace Memorial Park (in Hiroshima), more people around the world will become interested in issues to do with achieving peace," another student wrote.

The students' letters were among around 350 letters sent to Chugoku Shimbun, the daily newspaper promoting an invitation to Obama to visit Hiroshima.