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. “I don’t think people understood what I meant.”
He hit a sore nerve, however. Kyuma’s comments generated criticism from survivors of the bombings, 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 Aug. 6 bombing anniversary.
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 U.S. 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.
Kyuma was succeeded by National Security Adviser Yuriko Koike, the first woman to assume the defense portfolio in Japan.
