June 30, 2007 TOKYO -- Japan's defense minister said Saturday that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, drawing criticism from atomic bomb survivors.
''I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped,'' Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Nobuo Miyake, director-general of a group of Japanese atomic bomb victims living in Tokyo.
''The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved American lives,'' said Miyake, 78. ''It's outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim.''
Kyuma said later that his comments were misinterpreted. He told reporters he meant to say the bombing ''could not be helped from the American point of view.''
''It's too bad that my comments were interpreted as approving the U.S. bombing,'' he said.
Defense Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment Saturday.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped a bomb nicknamed ''Little Boy'' on Hiroshima, killing at least 140,000 people in the world's first atomic bomb attack. Three days later, it dropped another atomic bomb, ''Fat Man,'' on Nagasaki. City officials say about 74,000 died.
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