Considering Shinzo Abe said something along the lines of that future (or newer) generations shouldn't be held responsible for what our ancestors did during the apologist speech for Japan's war crimes in China and Korea - and I definitively agree with that sentiment -, I really don't see why Obama should apologize for anything.

Ridiculous. What was done was done in a time of war and it potentially saved millions of American and Japanese lives that would've been lost with a land invasion. No apology is necessary.

Wow, was that him?

I don't get the logic here. Japan commited warcrimes against civilians in Manchuria, the Phillippines etc. so that makes it okay for the US to commit warcrimes against civilians in Japan? I don't get how the Japanese governments own actions has *anything* to do with this, because it's not the fucking Japanese government asking for an apology. It's the civilian victims of the American government's actions. I strongly doubt they were responsible for the warcrimes Japanese troops commited in the Pacific theater, so why the hell do people
bring them up? What the fuck does the actions of a nation's government have to do with what some civilians from that nation are asking for?

And obviously people aren't saying that Obama should apologize on his personal behalf. If he apologizes, it would be on the behalf of the American government, which, while it does not at all consist of the same people now as it did them, can be seen as an entity, and that entity is responsible for those actions. So it's not like they are saying that the people currently sitting in the American government have inherited the blame, but rather that the entity of the American government itself has responsibility for those actions, and Obama merely represents that entity.

I'm not even saying if he should apologize or not, but the reasons he shouldn't that many are using in
this thread are stupid.

Well there is a major difference:  Japanese atrocities were performed upon occupied populations who had already surrendered.  Millions died at their hands, most civilians or medical non-combatants.  The deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while a show of force, were colateral damage in the bombing of legitimate military targets, Hiroshima being the center for command of southern Japan and a sizable military base (40,000 toops stationed there) and Nagasaki a major cog in the industrial machine that produced warships, munitions, etc. Both cities would have been bombed severely in the course of a conventional invasion.  Welcome to total war in a period without precision weaponry. 

And the bigger issue is Japan has never fully accepted their past actions and elements within its government and civilian population have acted in a revisionist action, going back on admissions of crimes and even trying to deny or whitewash what happened.  So the general sentiment I have is that if they are going to do that, what right does anyone from Japan have to demand appologies for Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Not that all people in Japan are this way, some have even tried to sue the Japanese government for stubbornly ignoring the Potsdam Declaration and trying to hide it from its people all so that they could shoot for an armistice that would have helped *no one* but the government leaders.  But to appologize for the atomic bombings would only further encourage the frankly disgusting revisionist attitudes in Japan.  I would just say nothing if I was Obama; apologizing, while a sentimental idea, is an unhealthy exercise.

But what I'm saying is that the actions of the Japanese government during WW2, while much more atrocious that probably anything else during WW2, are completely irrelevant to this discussion, because this is about civilian victims asking for something. This entire dicsussion of who did what and who is worse (which clearly was Japan!) is stupid, because IT. DOESN'T. MATTER.

First of all, Norway doesn't have a president.

Second of all, the Norwegian government as an entity has only existed for a bit more than a century, and thus can't be seen as a part of the entity that commited those raids about ten centuries ago. There's a 9 century gap inbetween before our government (thus the entity that currently rules Norway) existed at all.

So even if I had said that he should, you'd still be in the wrong.

Is this an extension of the thanks Obama joke?

The Americans saved a lot of lives using those bombs. It's horrific what happened but nothing in the grand scheme of the war and ended it early.

Agreed.  I am just explaining why it rubs many the wrong way.  It seems unreasonable to ask the States to take the stance of a wrongdoer when Japan was a worse one.  

However, I do feel my second point is important to keep in mind.  Revisionism is a major issue in Japan and such an apology would feed that movement.  I just don't think it's worth that.  Revisionism only moves people back, not forward.  If Japan as a whole nation had accepted its past like the States with regards to the Trail of Tears - universally seen as tragic - or Germany with regards to their own atrocities, I would be more meh on the whole thing.

He won't do it because the republicans would act shocked and make a big deal out of it. A kick in the teeth to the heroes who did what they had to do to quickly end the war, ect.

Hillary would also take that line because she'd be too scared of being associated with the apology.

It's only political weakness that's prevents an apology.