Hiroshima, April 11 (RHC)-- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will not offer any apologies to the people of Hiroshima over the 1945 atomic bombing of the Japanese city, a senior U.S. official says.

Kerry arrived in Hiroshima on Sunday and is reportedly arranging for a trip by President Barack Obama as the first U.S. president to visit the city, as part of his trip to Japan for a G-7 summit in late May.  “If you are asking whether the secretary of state came to Hiroshima to apologize, the answer is no,” a senior US official told reporters Sunday, on condition of anonymity.

Kerry and a number of other foreign ministers are slated to visit Peace Memorial Park as well as a museum dedicated to the obliteration of the city by an American atomic bomb on August 6, 1945.  The bombing killed nearly 140,000 people and was shortly followed by another U.S. atomic bombing on the port city of Nagasaki, killing about 70,000 people three days later.