Seventy one years ago, the world was rudely awakened to a holocaust ushered in by a horrific mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. A few days later, the mass carnage was repeated in Nagasaki. The death toll in Hiroshima alone was 130,000 people, with thousands incinerated instantly, the rest dying painful deaths from burns and radiation over weeks, months and, years. Along with Nagasaki, the total death toll was 200,000 people. Never before in history, had so many civilian non-combatants been obliterated in the blink of an eye, nor left to die slowly and painfully later. Since then, the US had never seen fit to apologise for this massacre, seeking to justify it by arguments about Japan's unwillingness to surrender. Others argue all the signs of an imminent surrender were visible therefore the atomic bombs were dropped as an assertion of power in the post-Second World War world with an eye to the resurgent Soviet Union. Whatever the truth, successive US presidents have shied away from an admission of guilt reflected in an apology.