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Lawmaker says no apologies will ever pardon US for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Speaker of Russia’s Federation Counci said that the bombing raids were similar to "testing nuclear weapons on human beings"

NAGASAKI, November 3. /TASS/. No apologies will ever make amends for the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko, told reporters during her visit on Thursday to Nagasaki.

"I believe that, of course, apologies are necessary. However, no amount of apologies will ever be enough to make amends for that country’s guilt, which used atomic bombs against peaceful cities, against civilians," Matviyenko said during a visit to the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

She noted that the bombing raids were similar to "testing nuclear weapons on human beings," even though the effects of these air strikes were well-known.

"They need to go to church and pray every day to atone for their sins, for this terrible tragedy in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, for that monstrous crime committed by the United States," Matviyenko stressed.

On August 6, 1945 US bomber B-29 Enola Gay dropped a four-tonne uranium bomb codenamed Little Boy on Hiroshima. The explosion instantly killed an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people. The overall number of fatalities exceeded 140,000. Three days later, in the morning of August 9, 1945 another B-29 bomber dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 and razing the city to the ground.

US Air Force bombing of Tokyo 

The notorious air raid that entered historical records as one of the most devastating bombings ever took away more than 100,000 human lives.

The US Air Force squadron that took part in the Operation Meetinghouse on March 10, 1945, had 334 bombers.

In the preceding phases of the war, the Americans seized a number of Pacific territories in the vicinity of the Japanese archipelago, including the Mariana Islands. Fuel economy allowed B-29 Superfortress planes based there to increase the payloads taken aboard for sorties to the maximum.

All in all, the American crews dropped almost 1,700 firebombs on the city, which caused sweeping fires and provoked a firestorm similar to the one that annihilated Dresden in Germany after the US-British bombing about a month before that.

As a result of the firebombing in Tokyo, the city lost some 330,000 buildings, or 40% of what it had at the moment. More than a million residents of the Japanese capital found themselves without shelter.

Operation Meetinghouse is comparable in terms of its atrocious scope and scale only to the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.