President Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the White House announced on Tuesday, making a fraught stop this month at the site where the United States used an atomic bomb at the end of World War II.

The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan on Monday achieved an agreement meant to resolve a decades-long impasse over Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during World War II. [...] The deal, which included an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and an $8.3 million aid fund from Tokyo for the elderly former sex slaves, could reverse decades of animosity and mistrust between the thriving democracies, trade partners and staunch U.S. allies.

The outcome of apology diplomacy between the countries never satisfies any of the parties. Despite some heartfelt apologies from the Japanese government, neither Beijing nor Seoul has been satisfied. Words that have been used in textbooks, visits by Japanese prime ministers to the Yasukuni Shrine, movies and fiction about World War II have all became divisive issues in one of the economic engines of the world.