HIROSHIMA — While in Japan to attend the G8 Speakers’ Conference in Tokyo and Hiroshima, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and other conference participants visited the Hiroshima Cenotaph and Peace Memorial Museum on Sept. 2.

Pelosi entered the following inscription in the visitors’ register at the museum: “The visit to Hiroshima is a powerful reminder of the destructiveness of war, underscoring the urgency for all nations to promote peace and to build a better world.”

Pelosi is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bombing while in office.

Other officials who have paid their respects include former U.S. Ambassadors to Japan Mike Mansfield, Walter Mondale, Thomas Foley and Howard Baker as well as current U.S. Ambassador John Thomas Schieffer.