Saturday, June 30, 2007 5:33 pm | 
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Defense Minister: Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs ‘inevitable’
Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said Saturday at a lecture at a university in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture that he thinks of the US atomic bomb droppings in 1945 as an inevitable way to end the war, Kyodo News Agency reported.
It is very rare for a Japanese Cabinet Minister to express such sentiments, and the remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb victims. Kyodo suggested that this may become another “source of headache” for the Abe-led government, which is already struggling with the pension fiasco and other scandals, ahead of the July 29 upper house election.
Kyuma went on to say that the United States ”dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki although it knew Japan would lose the war”, but that it couldn’t be helped and was excusable as it prevented the Sovet Union from waging war with Japan.
Kyuma himself comes from Nagasaki, which was bombed by the U.S. on August 9 1945, three days after the atomic bomb was first dropped on Hiroshima. Japan surrendered 6 days after the Nagasaki bombing.
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