United States President Barack Obama has stated that he will not apologise for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during his visit -- the first by a sitting US president -- to the city, he told Japanese television.
The comments are the clearest yet from his administration over an issue that raises hackles in the United States and has been the subject of heated debate for decades.
Obama is visiting Japan to meet with world economic leaders this week, and he plans to stop at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and deliver remarks about war and nuclear proliferation. The visit, preceded by similar visits by US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and Secretary of State John Kerry, is controversial among those who say that dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped save American and Japanese lives, and bring about an end to World War II.
Asked if an apology would be included in remarks he plans to make, he said: "No, because I think that it is important to recognise that in the midst of war, leaders make all kinds of decisions.
"It is the 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."
"My purpose is not to simply revisit the past, but to affirm that innocent people die in a war, on all sides, that we should do everything we can to try to promote peace and dialogue around the world, that we should continue to strive for a world without nuclear weapons," Obama said in the interview with NHK, aired Sunday.
The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, ultimately killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of that year. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It was the first time that an atomic bomb was used in a theater of war.
Nearly 80 percent of surveyed survivors of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki said they are not seeking an apology from US President Barack Obama during his visit to Hiroshima later in the week, a Kyodo News poll showed Sunday.
In an interview-style survey of 115 atomic bomb survivors in Japan, 78.3 percent said they are not asking for an apology, while 15.7 percent responded they want an apology from Obama.
It appears that some survivors thought it best that Japan not seek an apology for fear it would be an obstacle to Obama making the trip to the atomic-bombed city on Friday, as the first sitting US president to do so.
