Bob Turner sent out a statement this afternoon slamming President Obama for his attempts to “apologize” to the Japanese people for the atomic bomb blasts at Hiroshima.
“If this is true, it shows in our President an alarming lack of historical understanding and an extraordinary disregard for the moral courage of former President, Harry S. Truman, who made one of the most difficult calls in history to save American lives,” Mr. Turner said in a statement. “Those two weapons ended the war and probably saved in excess of 100,000 American lives. If this report is true, President Obama indeed owes an apology, but to the citizens of this nation, especially those who experienced that terrible war. The American public needs detailed answers on this.”
According to a cable published by Wikileaks last month, the Japanese government told American diplomats ahead of a presidential trip to Japan that an American apology would be a “non-starter” and instead encouraged Mr. Obama to make a visit “without fanfare” to Hiroshima.
The Obama administration pushed back on the report, saying there was never any plan to apologize.
The 1945 bomb blast over Japan killed an estimated 70,000 Japanese, and another 70,000 are believed to have died later on from exposure to radiation.
