ROGER Westmorland is wrong when he claims that dropping an an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a war crime.
Nor was it a crime to drop the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki two days later. That action by the USA and her allies ended the Second World War.
The Japanese did not surrender even after the first atomic bomb was dropped.
All the Japanese nation, men, women and children, supported their Emperor Hirohito and would have fought to the death if the allies had invaded mainland Japan.
How many allied troops would have had to die to overthrow the Japanese government had we used conventional weapons? Many millions of our side and that of the Japanese would have died.
Look what happened at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal.
There is no such thing as a nice war, Mr Westmorland, but the allies acted correctly to save as many lives as possible. Japan started the wars against China, Burma, India, the Philippines, the USA, Britain, New Zealand and Australia and the Dutch empire and we had to defeat them conclusively.
David Quarrie,
Lynden Way,
Holgate, York.
Updated: 11:22 Friday, August 12, 2005
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