The United States will not apologize for having dropped atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, a White House official said on CNN Sunday.
"In any event we would not (apologize)," Susan Rice, President Barack Obama's top foreign policy adviser, said on a CNN program when discussing Obama's upcoming visit to Hiroshima, the first by a sitting U.S. president.
Rice, who serves as national security adviser, made the comment after a White House spokesman said it would be wrong to interpret Obama's visit to Hiroshima as tantamount to an apology for the world's first use of nuclear weapons.
Since the May 10 announcement of the visit, the White House has sought to dismiss the view that it could be seen as an apology for the nuclear bombings.
The Japanese people have not asked the United States to apologize, Rice said.
She declined comment on President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 and another one on Nagasaki on Aug. 9. Japan surrendered in the war six days later.
She also stopped short of discussing whether Obama has a personal view on the atomic bombings on the Japanese cities, simply saying, "I am not saying he does not."
According to the city offices of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a total of more than 210,000 people — most of them civilians — died by the end of the 1945 as a result of the bombings.
Many Americans, including war veterans, believe the atomic bombings forced Japan to surrender in the war, thus saving the lives of a number of American soldiers as a result.