US President Barack Obama: No Hiroshima apology

US President Barack Obama will not apologise for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on his landmark visit this week, he told Japanese public broadcaster in an interview.

Asked if an apology would be included in remarks he plans to make there, he told the broadcaster NHK: “No, because I think that it’s important to recognise that in the midst of war, leaders make all kinds of decisions.

“It’s a job of historians to ask questions and examine them, but I know as somebody who has now sat in this position for the last seven and a half years, that every leader makes very difficult decisions, particularly during war time”. Mr Obama will become the first sitting US President to visit Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, killing about 1,40,000 people in total.

Meanwhile, a group representing American former prisoners of war under Japan says the White House has invited one of them to accompany President Barack Obama on his historic visit to Hiroshima this week.

Tens of thousands were killed by the fireball that the powerful Hiroshima blast generated, with many more succumbing to injuries or illnesses caused by radiation in the weeks, months and years afterward.

The southern city of Nagasaki was hit by a second bomb three days later, killing 74,000 people, in one of the final acts of World War II.

A group representing American former prisoners of war under Japan says the White House has invited one of them to accompany President Barack Obama on his historic visit to Hiroshima this week.

Mr Jan Thompson, head of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society, said the group has chosen 94-year-old Daniel Crowley of Simsbury, Connecticut, and submitted his name to the White House.

Mr Crowley was in the US Army Air Corps when his unit surrendered in the Philippines in 1942. He was shipped to Japan in 1944 and forced to work in a copper mine until the war’s end.