‘US, Japan May Never Apologize To Each Other For WWII’: Truman’s Grandson

Clifton Truman Daniel, grandson of President Harry Truman, who authorized bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, says the United States may never apologize for bombing Japan.

According to Daniel, his grandfather said he ordered the atomic bombings with the belief that it would save thousands of lives. But Daniel’s views changed after his son brought home a book about a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing.

Sadako Sasaki survived the bombing at the age of two. But she died of radiation-induced leukemia 10 years later.

For a long time, Daniel did not think much about the bombing as it was just another incident in history for him. But one day he realized that people had lost their lives in terrible ways due to the bombing.

Daniel was the first from the Truman family to go to Japan. In 2012, he was invited by Masahiro Sasaki, Sadako's elder brother, and took part in a commemoration of the victims of the bombings.

A Japanese reporter repeatedly asked him if he would apologize for his grandfather’s decision. “I don’t know that there’ll ever be an apology,” Russia Today quoted Daniel. “Maybe the two countries can find language that brings them together to say, ‘you know we acknowledge that serious hurt was done on both sides and we own that and going forward we pledge not to do something like that,’ but it doesn’t feel at this point that there will ever be a flat-out apology from the U.S. to Japan or the other way around.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday, the 70th anniversary of the bombing, that Hiroshima had revived to become “a city of culture and prosperity.”