Hiroshima, August 6 (RHC)-- The mayor of Hiroshima mayor has slammed the nuclear deterrence claims of world's Western powers as "folly" while Japan marks the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on the city that massacred nearly 140,000 people and has never apologized for the terrorist crime.
Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. deadly atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where the city mayor called the Group of Seven leaders’ idea of nuclear deterrence a “folly.” “Leaders around the world must confront the reality that nuclear threats now being voiced by certain policymakers reveal the folly of nuclear deterrence theory,” Mayor Kazumi Matsui said, referring to the Group of Seven leaders' idea of justifying such theories. “They must immediately take concrete steps to lead us from the dangerous present toward our ideal world,” he added.
On August 6, 1945, at the end of World War II -- and when Japan was ready to surrender -- an American bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, instantly killing around 140,000 people. Three days later, a second bomber dropped another a-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.
There has never been an official apology from Washington for its nuclear bombing of the two Japanese cities. The United States has rather been careful not to apologize while only expressing 'sorrow' over the colossal destruction it caused.
The U.S. continues to boastfully justify the bombings and the ensuing carnage, contending that they were necessary to end the war and “save lives,” although many historians question that view and insist they were unjustified.
The White House says the U.S. president does not intend to apologize for the crime committed by his country. In May, when U.S. President Joe Biden was set to visit Hiroshima for the Group of Seven summit, the White House clearly said he will not offer an apology for the United States’ use of nuclear weapons against Japan.
While Biden was scheduled to visit the Hiroshima Memorial Museum with the other six G7 leaders and participate in a wreath-laying and tree-planting ceremony with his counterparts from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, some Japanese politicians called for the U.S. to offer an official apology for the atomic bombing of the country.
But like the first U.S. president to visit the memorial site, Barack Obama did not apologize for the use of nuclear weapons when he visited in 2016, the White House said Biden will not do so either.
