Fumio Kyuma's resignation Tuesday as defense minister over his remarks on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has spotlighted the still sharply divided perception gap between Japan and the United States over what some see as one of the most horrific war atrocities in history.
In a speech in Chiba Prefecture on Saturday, Kyuma said the atomic bombings "could not be helped" as a means to end the war and avoid a postwar joint occupation of Japan that would include the Soviet Union. He was excoriated by various circles in Japan, who accused him of using, in part, the same logic as the Americans to justify the strikes.
The atomic bombs had left an estimated 140,000 people, most of them noncombatants, in Hiroshima, and another 70,000 in Nagasaki dead by the end of 1945. Even today, survivors who were exposed to radiation suffer health problems.