[AP/Yonhap News Photo]
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has faulted President Barack Obama over his recent visit to the atomic-bombed Japanese city of Hiroshima, saying he didn't even mention Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor.
"Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost," Trump said of Obama's visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in a Twitter message ahead of Monday's Memorial Day.
Obama visited Hiroshima on Friday, becoming the first sitting American president to do so since the 1945 bombing despite concern it could dilute Japan's wartime aggression by making the country look more like a victim, rather than the one who started the Pacific War by bombing Pearl Harbor.
Just days ahead of the visit, Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida sought to reinforce the notion of victimhood, saying the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "extremely regrettable" and do not conform to "humanitarianism."
The visit also raised eyebrows of many World War II veterans and their children who believe that the decision to drop the bombs saved countless American lives that would otherwise have been lost.
Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and now a key supporter of Trump, also denounced Obama's visit as an "apology lap," accusing him of "dissing our vets."
Speaking at a Trump campaign rally in San Diego on Friday, Palin said the visit amounts to suggesting, "We were wrong to prove that we would eradicate evil in World War II."
American veterans groups had urged Obama not to visit Hiroshima until the Japanese apologize for the wartime treatment of American prisoners of war, thousands of whom died of abuse and starvation in Japanese prison camps.
(Yonhap)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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