A FORMER city Mayor has claimed the world ‘should be grateful Americans dropped the two atom bombs’ on Hiroshima, days before Worcester marks the 70th anniversary of VJ Day.
Coun Alan Amos made the provocative statement in a letter to the Observer (see page six) ahead of VJ Day commemorations on Saturday (August 15).
Current Mayor Coun Roger Knight, the Royal British Legion, the Worcester and Sherwood Foresters Association with the Mercian Regiment and Remember the Fallen will gather outside the Guildhall to remember the end of the Second World War in Japan.
However, ahead of the commemorations, Coun Amos said the world needed to ‘guard against the re-emerging threat which Japan poses to world peace’.
“Although it is not politically correct to say so, we should be grateful that the Americans dropped the two atom bombs which shortened the war and saved the lives of millions of allied troops who would otherwise have had to invade the Japanese mainland,” he said.
The United States carried out two bombings of Hiroshima in August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War.
At least 129,000 people were killed in the attacks which remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history.
Coun Amos, whose father was captured as prisoner of war by the Japanese, hit out at the Japanese for their ‘refusal to apologise for their dreadful war crimes’.
“Their Prime Ministers worship at the Yasukuni shrine where hanged war criminals are buried; school history textbooks have been re-written falsifying history and denying Japanese war atrocities,” he said.
“They now want to celebrate their murderous kamikaze pilots; and they have made April 29 a national holiday in honour of Hirohito, their wartime emperor and war criminal.
“It’s like Germany officially celebrating Hitler’s birthday,” he added.
Coun Amos also claimed the Japanese Government was working to change their postwar constitution to remilitarize the country.
“Already, we see Japanese aggression in the South Pacific provoking China by trying to take over rocks which are disputed territory with China and which China will rightly defend,” he added.
“So, as it’s a time for remembrance, let us remember the millions of victims of the evil committed by Japan rather than bothering about pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, in any case, were the direct consequences of Japan having started the Far East war in the first place.
“While Japan continues to falsify history, to show no remorse for past barbarities, and are now rearming, we must never forgive or forget,” he added.
