Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, according to a news report yesterday.
"I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't
be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II, in the world's only nuclear attacks.
Kyuma, who is from Nagasaki, said the bombing caused great suffering in the city, but that he did not resent the US because it prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war with Japan, Kyodo said.
It is rare for Japanese Cabinet ministers to make such remarks.
On August 6, 1945, the US dropped a bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, killing at least 140,000 people in the world's first atomic bomb attack.
Three days later, it dropped another atomic bomb, "Fat Man", on Nagasaki. City officials say about 74,000 died.
Japan, which had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbour, surrendered on August 15, 1945.
Bombing survivors have developed various illnesses from radiation exposure, including cancer and liver diseases.
Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb victims.
"The US justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of victims living in Tokyo.
"It's outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim."
In America, the bombings are widely seen as a weapon of last resort against an enemy that was determined to fight to the death but instead surrendered unconditionally, six days after Nagasaki was attacked.
Critics - including many Japanese and also some Americans - believe US President Harry Truman's Government had other motives: a wish to test a terrifying weapon, the desire to defeat Japan before the Soviet Union arrived, and the need to strengthen Washington's hand against Moscow in what would become the Cold War.
