Majority of Japanese Believe US Should Apologize for Atomic Bombings

The majority of Japanese believe the United States should apologize for the 1945 atomic bomb attacks and that these bombings could not be justified by the war.

The majority of Japanese (61 percent) believe the United States should apologize for the atomic bomb attacks it carried out on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while 74 percent of respondents said that the attacks could not be justified by the war because the civilian death toll they inflicted was disproportionate, according to a recent Sputnik.Polls poll conducted in Japan by Populus for Sputnik.

Asked, “Do you think the United States should officially apologize to the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb attacks in 1945?” the majority of Japanese said it should. Only 11 percent of respondents said an apology was unnecessary. Almost 30 percent said they were not sure one way or the other. This proportion is especially high, at 40 percent, among young people aged between 18 and 24.

Only 10 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was designed to put an end to the war, which otherwise could have lasted longer”. A second statement, “the bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki could not be justified by the war, as they led to a massive death toll among civilians,” was supported by 74 percent of respondents.

The poll was conducted by Populus for Sputnik between July 29 and August 2, 2015 via online interviews. The sample, representative of the general population in terms of gender, age and geographic location, included 1,004 Japanese people aged 18 — 64. The confidence interval for the nationwide data was +/-3.1 percent, with a confidence probability of 95 percent.