Victims of the atomic bombings of Japan want an apology from US President Barack Obama when he visits Hiroshima next week, the head of a survivors’ group said on Thursday.
Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, killing about 140,000 people in total.
Tens of thousands were killed by the fireball that the powerful Hiroshima blast generated, with many more succumbing to injuries or illnesses caused by radiation in the weeks, months and years afterwards.
Vast swathes of the city, including many of its military and industrial installations, were flattened.
The southern city of Nagasaki was hit by a second bomb days later, killing 74,000 people, in one of the final acts of World War II.
"I urge him to apologise to those who died, bereaved families and parents who lost their children," Terumi Tanaka, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations and a survivor of the Nagasaki explosion, told reporters.
The comments came as Obama’s much anticipated journey to Hiroshima reignited an emotional debate over whether the bombings were justified and whether the US president should apologise.