http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/05/19/apology-question-hounds-obamas-planned-visit-hiroshima/84589324/

He'd probably do it too. Should Pearl Harbor survivors ask for an apology from Japan?

The people who should apologize are President Truman and US military decision makers at the time.

They've long since died I'm sure.

Of course? While atomic bomb survivors ask for an apology, Japanese people also say they owe an apology to the US for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/08/world/pearl-harbor-remembered-japanese-think-they-owe-apology-are-owed-one-war-poll.html

I've read about a meeting in the 1980's where WW2 Japanese pilots met with a group of American veterans who were survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack. If I recall correctly, an official apology was given.

Both the Pearl Harbor attack and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible actions and if the victims and survivors seek an official apology, it's the least they should be given.

Have you ever visited Japan? Today the Japanese people is the most friendly I've ever met after having visited more than 35 countries.

I don't think he should to be honest. It's in the past and obama didn't have anything to do with it. Also, white people shouldn't apologize for slavery. It's in the past and they don't have anything to do with it today.

They better be happy to be alive today because tomorrow president Trump might nuke them again

An apology doesn't bring back the hundreds of thousands killed or the millions that lost loved ones. It doesn't make that hole any smaller. All it does is make those demanding look like they're posturing politically.

The US has long since made up as much as humanly possible with Japan from the moment the latter surrendered. There's no need to try and open old wounds here except for the potential political gain of the group making the demands.

It doesn't make you a smaller person or country when you apologize, rather the opposite.

If it's important for victims of such terrible actions (both sides) to receive an apology in order to find peace, I don't see why one shouldn't be given.

Angela Merkel didn't have anything to do with the persecution of the Jewish population. Still, she has apologized for Germany's actions during WW2 because it meant a lot for many people that found it easier to move on constructively afterwards.

It's too loaded of a political situation. Of course the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was deeply, deeply regrettable, but Japan's actions obviously also contributed to that outcome.

Merkel apologizing to the Jewish community is different because the Jewish community was never an organized military force that attacked Germany, they were a persecuted minority. The US has apologized (I believe) to Japanese Americans who were held in internment camps in WW2. That's a more apt comparable. 

Japan was a nation state that attacked the US first and ravaged most of the Pacific.

Apologizing for the past isn't pertinent, just make sure something like Hiroshima never happens again in human history. Nuclear weapons should never be deployed on civilian populations and if they are, then we have failed somewhere along the way as a species.

Oh fuck that, Japan wasn't willing to surrender and the nukes were the result. Our leaders don't need to apologize for something just.

I don't think anybody really benefits from Merkel apologizing about the attempted genocide of Jews. Also, very different from the US and Japan situation.

This won't end well, but didn't japan attacked a military base on Pearl Harbor where the US dropped a nuclear bomb on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

So.. to make it clear.. Japan attacked a military base and the US dropped a nuclear bomb on civilians. Yeah... Japan should really apologies first, right?

But hey.. maybe people shouldn't get taught in history by Micheal Bay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease