Obama's Hiroshima Visit: Acknowledgment but No Apology

Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (Columbia University Press, 2015), talks about Obama's visit to Hiroshima this week. Obama has said that it's up to historians to determine whether using the bomb was justified.

With polls showing a major disparity between Japanese and U.S. opinions regarding the justification of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, Smith said President Obama will avoid an apology and seek to highlight the need for nuclear disarmament around the world.

"I think he's going to stay very far away from this apology idea," she said. "I think his remarks will focus on the devastation that nuclear weapons brought to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but then will go on to move forward to saying how important it is to eradicate these weapons or, at least, to work together to reduce the threat of a conflict that might again unleash that power."