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Letter to the editor

Japan's defense minister resigns

He alienated many by saying two 1945 atomic bombings were inevitable.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 4, 2007

TOKYO - Japan's defense minister resigned Tuesday after suggesting the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inevitable, a remark that stirred furious criticism in a nation where many consider the attacks an unjustified slaughter of civilians.

Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, a native of Nagasaki, said he did not mean to condone the 1945 bombings, which Washington has argued were necessary to end World War II without a potentially bloody land invasion.

"I just meant that there was nothing we could do about it, " he said after tendering his resignation to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose administration has seen its popularity plunge ahead of parliamentary elections this month. "I don't think people understood what I meant."

He hit a very sore nerve, however.

Kyuma's comments generated angry criticism from survivors of the bombings, opposition lawmakers and fellow Cabinet members. The mayor of Nagasaki was among the most vocal critics, telling Kyuma to stay away from a ceremony marking the bombing anniversary next month and saying the comment "tramples on the feelings of A-bomb victims."

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped a bomb on Hiroshima, killing at least 140, 000 people in the world's first atomic bomb attack. Three days later, it dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, where about 74, 000 are estimated to have been killed.

Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945.

In a speech Saturday, Kyuma said the atomic bombings caused great suffering. But he added that Japan would have otherwise kept fighting and ended up losing a greater part of its northern territory to the Soviet Union, which invaded Manchuria on the day Nagasaki was bombed.

"I understand that the bombings ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped, " he said.

Though Kyuma's statement was similar to the interpretation in the United States that the bombings hastened the war's end and thus saved lives, it contradicted the generally held Japanese stance that the use of nuclear weapons is never acceptable.

A ban on possession of such weapons is a hallowed tenet of Japan's postwar pacifist policies. Kyuma's remarks were slammed as both a tacit acceptance of the U.S. decision in 1945 and of the use of nuclear weapons in general.

Kyuma was succeeded by national security adviser Yuriko Koike, the first woman to assume the defense portfolio in Japan.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Kyuma's resignation was an internal matter for Japan. But he said the United States looked forward to working with Japan's first female defense minister.

[Last modified July 4, 2007, 01:24:13]