60 Years After A-Bomb, Old Foes Meet Over a Deep Divide

That legacy remains the last major sore spot in the extraordinary peacetime relationship of the United States and Japan. As the 60th anniversary of World War II's end in the Pacific is marked on Aug. 15, Japan is still struggling to mend fences with China and South Korea over charges that the Japanese have yet to fully atone for wartime atrocities.

In stark contrast, the United States and Japan are jointly developing a missile defense system and beefing up strategic cooperation with the long-term goal of serving as a counterbalance to China's growing might. Japan, which has embraced pacifism since the bombings, now seeks to play a major role on the world stage. The government is moving toward changing its constitution, which renounces war, and hopes to gain a permanent seat on the United Nation Security Council.

Yet the atomic bombs -- which killed about 140,000 in Hiroshima and about 80,000 in Nagasaki while leaving tens of thousands survivors maimed or plagued by radiation sickness -- still haunt the United States and Japan. A joint poll last month by the Associated Press and Japan's Kyodo News Service found 75 percent of Japanese still feel the bombings were unnecessary, while 68 percent of Americans called them unavoidable.

Matsushima said many in Hiroshima were also opposed to his visit. But he said he thought it was a chance to share his story with American vets and "see this place in honor of the bomb's victims."

He and Kiyoshi Nishida, a 76-year-old Nagasaki survivor, were driven by event organizers to the now-overgrown runways where the U.S. B-29s carrying the bombs took off. They stoically studied the condition and quality of what in 1945 was the world's largest airfield. But at the now glass-encased pits that had stored Little Boy, the bomb that hit Hiroshima, and Fat Man, which hit Nagasaki, their reserve shattered.

"So this is where it came from. Somehow, I am glad to have seen it with my own eyes," Matsushima said, softly crying and clutching a bracelet of wooden Buddhist prayer beads. "This is what human did. So many dead. Maybe they were doing their jobs, but for us, it was hell."

Matsushima later participated in a panel discussion with one of the best-known American vets here, Harold Agnew, 84, who measured the yield of the Hiroshima bomb while in flight alongside the Enola Gay. During the 1970s, he was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the bombs were developed.

"So, you saw the mushroom cloud. I was underneath it," Matsushima said.

"Yes, you're lucky to be here," Agnew said.

Agnew nodded in agreement when Matsushima seemed to concede that the bomb, at least, had helped shorten the war. Last month, Agnew was flown by a Tokyo television station to Hiroshima, where he held a discussion with bomb survivors who had demanded an apology. Agnew, a tall, blunt man, had stood up in disgust and proclaimed "Remember Pearl Harbor!" The discussion abruptly ended.

"There is nothing to apologize for," Agnew later said in an interview. "This is exactly why the Chinese are still upset with them. Many Japanese still refuse to take responsibility for what they did, for starting that war. They can point at us. But believe me, they did some awful bad things. We saved Japanese lives with those bombs -- an invasion would have been worse."

Such tensions rarely flared at this reunion, perhaps because the organizers divided the Japanese and Americans into different dining times and distinct tours. There were carefully arranged encounters between both sides -- but many impromptu ones, too.

Fumiyaki Kajiya, 66, who saw his 3-year-old sister impaled by searing steel in Hiroshima, was visiting the pit where Little Boy was stored when he came across Leon Smith, the weapon's test officer who had been in charge of maintaining the bomb in Tinian. The men struck up a conversation through interpreters about the horror of the victims, the American rationale for dropping the bomb, and the paradox of Japan's ongoing protection under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Beside the atomic pit, the two shook hands.

"This is not something that can be resolved or agreed upon," Kajiya said. "But I feel that we've achieved something very important. We've finally started talking."

Special correspondent Taeko Kawamura contributed to this report.