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US House speaker to make landmark Hiroshima visit


TOKYO (AFP) ― House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set this week to be the highest-ranking sitting US official to visit the site of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, which bitterly divides opinion six decades later.

No sitting US president or vice president has ever paid respects to the dead of the US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a sore point for many survivors in Japan.

Pelosi will travel to Hiroshima for a meeting of parliament speakers from the Group of Eight major industrial nations. Pelosi, who is second in line to the presidency, is a member of Barack Obama's Democratic Party.

On Tuesday, Pelosi and the other speakers will lay flowers at a memorial in Hiroshima, hear testimony from a bomb survivor and hold discussions on disarmament, according to Japanese officials.


This was about a year or so ago. Japan still won't admit to half the crap they did...so, screw 'em. I'm the first in my family who was born in the US, my family is originally from Europe...I don't feel any need to say "sorry" to blacks/indians or anyone else who believes their great-great grandpa got a raw deal. I don't want history to repeat itself when it comes to slavery, ect. but I also don't feel it's my responsibility to say sorry for events my family had no part in.