Obama departs on trip to Vietnam, Japan

Barack Obama departed Saturday on a trip to Vietnam and Japan that will include the first visit to Hiroshima, site of the world's first nuclear attack, by a sitting US president.

Obama left at 1:20 pm (1720 GMT) aboard Air Force One on the first leg of the trip, a refueling stop at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska.

The president's tenth trip to Asia aims in part to close painful chapters on two past 20th century wars in a region he sees as vital to America's future.

In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Obama will stress improving relations with a dynamic and rapidly emerging country, but one which, for most Americans, remains a by-word for slaughter and folly.

A major talking point will be the lifting of a US arms embargo, a last vestige of a war that ended in 1975.

In Japan, Obama will attend a G7 summit and make history by becoming the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, where in 1945 then president Harry Truman dropped the world's first atomic bomb.