Questions About Hiroshima Endure; Opinion in U.S. And Japan Still Split On Whether Bomb Was Necessary to End Wwll Quickly and Finally

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HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) - Minoru Hataguchi gently opens a box in his office and pulls out a corroded belt buckle - the one his father wore the day he died with tens of thousands of others in the American atomic blast that wiped out Hiroshima.

For Hataguchi, who was still in his mother's womb at the time of the Aug. 6, 1945, attack, the context of the A-bomb - Tokyo's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, America's reluctance to invade Japan by land - takes a back seat to the human suffering it caused.

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Questions About Hiroshima Endure; Opinion in U.S. And Japan Still Split On Whether Bomb Was Necessary to End Wwll Quickly and Finally

"Of course, America used a huge amount of money to build the nuclear bomb, so they thought they should use it. I understand that," said Hataguchi, now director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. "But when I look at the victims, as far as the regular people are concerned, it just wasn't necessary to drop the bomb."

Across the Pacific Ocean, Jame...

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