Will Japan ever look into the mirror and atone for its war past?

Summer is the time when Japan observes the anniversary of its sufferings during the last year of World War II and its surrender on Aug 15, 1945, which it describes as "the end of war".

The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945, and a second on Nagasaki three days later. Before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, US B-29 Superfortresses had bombarded 64 Japanese cities, including Tokyo, Nagoya, Hamamatsu, Kawasaki and Sendai.

Passing through some of the bombarded areas, photographer John Swop, who on Aug 28, 1945, became one of the first Americans to set foot in postwar Japan, described them as "cities bombed into nothingness", "ghost cities", and "stinking ruins" peppered with "tin shanty shelters".