It has been 71 years since the Second World War and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans. With recent visit on May to Hiroshima by the US President Obama and on December to Pearl Harbour by Japanese PM Abe, the wound between the two countries are healing. However there has not been a clear apology being said by neither of the leaders during their visits. Having the atomic bomb killed or wounded at least 150,000 in Hiroshima and 75,000 in Nagasaki (http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/200708230009.html) , the US president’s responsibility of an apology towards the victims is debated. Ethically, and politically, there are reasons to why the US should, and should not apologise for the decision made in 1945.

Ethically speaking, the dropping of the nuclear weapon onto the two cities is contrary to jus in bello - justice in war. In Walzer’s text Just and Unjust Wars , it says that the Japanese “never posed such a threat to peace and freedom as the Nazis had”, on creating and using an atomic bomb as a weapon. This means that the Americans have attacked a country that never threatened to use an atomic bomb, which violates Wink’s idea of the “just cause”. Furthermore, the destruction at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki either killed or wounded thousands of non-combatant civilians, whose rights were taken away. This also opposes jus in bello, as “immunity” (Wink, p.133) between the military and the civilians was not made, and therefore, it may be argued that the US