Donald Trump slams Barack Obama for not mentioning Pearl Harbour attack

Washington: Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has attacked President Barack Obama for not mentioning the deadly Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 during his historic trip to Japan this week.

"Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. #MDW," tweeted Trump, who emerged as the Republican party's presumptive presidential nominee last week.

Obama did not publicly mention the surprise 1941 attack that pulled the US into World War II while on his historic trip to Japan this week, during which he became the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima.

He used the visit to discuss the threat of nuclear weapons.

"Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder the terrible forces unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead ... Their souls speak to us and ask us to look inward. To take stock of who we are and what we might become," Obama had said during his visit to the city's Peace Memorial Park.

The White House didn't immediately comment on Trump's tweet Saturday evening, CNN reported.

Trump supporter Sarah Palin also criticised Obama's trip to Hiroshima, calling it part of the President's "apology lap."

The former Alaska governor, Palin, speaking at a Trump rally in San Diego on Friday, said Obama's trip to Hiroshima was "dissing our vets."

Earlier in the week, in a joint press conference with Obama, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he had no plans to visit Pearl Harbor despite the president's trip to Hiroshima.

In the Pearl Harbour attack on December 7, 1941, over 2,400 Americans were killed and over 1,100 others were injured.