Report: Japan defence chief says U.S. dropping of A-bomb 'couldn't be helped'

TOKYO (AP) - Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during the Second World War was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday. "I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.

The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of the Second World War, in the world's only nuclear attacks.

Kyuma, who is from Nagasaki, said the bombing caused great suffering in the city, but that he does not resent the United States because it prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war with Japan, Kyodo said.

It is rare for Japanese cabinet ministers to make such remarks.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped a bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, killing at least 140,000 people in the world's first atomic bomb attack.

Three days later, it dropped another atomic bomb, "Fat Man," on Nagasaki. City officials say about 74,000 died.

Japan, which had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945.

Bombing survivors have developed various illnesses from radiation exposure, including cancer and liver diseases.

Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb victims.

"The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of victims living in Tokyo. "It's outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim."

In America, the bombings are widely seen as a weapon of last resort against an enemy that was determined to fight to the death but instead surrendered unconditionally, six days after Nagasaki was attacked.

Critics - including many Japanese and also some Americans - believe U.S. President Harry Truman's government had other motives: a wish to test a terrifying weapon, the desire to defeat Japan before the Soviet Union arrived, and the need to strengthen Washington's hand against Moscow in what would become the Cold War.

Defence Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment Saturday.

© The Canadian Press, 2007