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US nuked Japan to prevent ex-Soviet Union meddling in Asia: Analyst

Friday, 27 May 2016 6:08 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 27 May 2016 8:36 AM ]

This handout picture taken on August 6, 1945 by US Army and released from Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum shows a mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped by B-29 bomber Enola Gay over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. ©AFP

Press TV has conducted an interview with Paul Street, author, journalist and political commentator from Iowa City, and Edward Peck, a former US diplomat from Washington, to discuss the United States’ refusal to apologize for nuking Japan in 1945 during World War II.

Street says the Japanese elite do not expect an apology from US President Barack Obama for the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

The author argues that Tokyo is in fact satisfied with Washington’s refusal to apologize because the Japanese themselves committed war crimes against other Asian nations during the war and they “do not have any particular desire to open up that can of worms, which I think would be opened if Obama apologized.”

He further says the American authorities and military officials were sure that the use of nuclear bombs against Japan would push the Asian country to the verge of surrender and defeat.

Street adds that both cities had been “purposefully kept out of conventional bombing so that…the carnage effect of the nuclear bomb would be amply demonstrated” there.

“It is very clear that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sort of the first shots of the Cold War. These were statements to the Soviet Union to stay out of the Asian theater and to understand that in the wake of World War II, there was one and only one nuclear superpower,” Streets adds.

The analyst says the US officials claim they have “good intentions” when they order invasion of other countries, but the American wars were initiated based on a “criminally-concocted pretext.”

Peck, for his part, believes there is no need for the United States to apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki incidents because the Americans nuked Japan with the mere aim of ending the war.

“The decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made in the hope of saving lives,” says Peck, adding that Japan itself has not apologized to China, Philippines, Myanmar, Korea, Manchuria and the US for the atrocities it perpetrated during the two world wars.

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