US Envoy Welcome at Hiroshima Ceremony

Japan welcomed Thursday the United States' decision to send its ambassador to a ceremony next week marking 65 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

John Roos will become the first official to represent the U.S. at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Aug. 6, "to express respect for all of the victims of World War II," said the U.S. State Department.

"The government of Japan welcomes" the decision, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said. "It will be an opportunity for him to deepen his understanding of Japan's strong desire of never repeating the horror of the atomic bombings."

Tokyo has often asked Washington to send an envoy to the annual ceremony.

Roos is expected to lay a floral wreath on the 65th anniversary of the WWII bombing that helped force Japan's surrender, reports said.

The U.S. has never apologized for the mass killing, and U.S. domestic public opinion holds that it was necessary to end the war.

Japan is the only nation ever attacked with atomic bombs.

More than 140,000 people were killed instantly in Hiroshima or died in the days and weeks after the U.S. attack. Three days later, a U.S. plane dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing more than 70,000 people.

Akihiro Takahashi, formerly the director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, told public broadcaster NHK: "I feel hatred [toward the United States] as an atomic bomb survivor, but you can't erase hatred with hatred. I don't say the ambassador ought to apologize in front of the cenotaph [for atomic bomb victims], but I want him to pray for the dead in a pious manner. I want him to pledge nuclear abolition."

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