Kiroku Hanai's opinion piece is one of the best ever to appear in The Japan Times. It is perceptive, plucky, profound and prescient. If only the U.S. government could express the same qualities and apologize for the nuclear holocausts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would have more credibility in its attempts to restrain nuclear proliferation.

More fundamentally, how can a committee of the U.S. Congress have the hubris and hypocrisy to demand that Japan apologize for what amounted to terrorist acts against civilians when the U.S. has not apologized -- and will not apologize -- for one of the greatest acts of state terrorism against civilians in history? These acts have cast a great shadow of shame on both nations. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

mark j. valencia