US Secretary of State John Kerry  visited the  Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park and Museum in Japan on Monday, delivering  a message of peace and hope for a nuclear-free world. He became the first  US secretary of state to visit  Hiroshima's atomic bomb museum  which commemorates  victims of the 1945 US nuclear attack.

Mr Kerry will also attend  G7 foreign ministers meeting in Hiroshima. US president Barack Obama is also expected to visit Hiroshima for  a Group of Seven (G7) meeting of leaders in May, US media reports said.

John Kerry said at the beginning of his meeting with Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida, that, "I will be pleased to visit later today the Peace Memorial Park ... in a moment that I hope will underscore to the world the importance of peace and the importance of strong allies working together to make the world safer and, ultimately, we hope to be able to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction."

"And while we will revisit the past and honor those who perished, this trip is not about the past. It's about the present and the future particularly, and the strength of the relationship that we have built," Kerry said.

The US secretary did not speak publicly at the ceremony.  He wrote in the museum's guest book, that, "Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial. It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself."

"War must be the last resort never the first choice. This memorial compels us all to redouble our efforts to change the world, to find peace and build the future so yearned for by citizens everywhere," he added.

What happened in Hiroshima?

A US warplane dropped a uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy", on Hiroshima at  8:10 local time on 6 August 1945. It claimed the life of at least  140,000 people by the end of the year. The US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki city of Japan on August 9.

Nandini