IF Roger Westmoreland (Soapbox, August 9) views the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a "war crime", how would he describe the Japanese invasion and occupation of northern China between 1937 and 1945, during which 35 million Chinese were slaughtered by Japanese troops?

Japanese atrocities during this invasion included the rape and murder of women and children, the ritual beheadings of the men, use of captives, including babies, for live bayonet practice and vivisection for chemical and biological warfare testing. This is the Forgotten Holocaust.

Japan was categorically not an innocent "victim" of a motiveless bombing because it was conducting its own war before Hitler even started the war in Europe.

It used the advent of the Second World War to launch a further brutal and effective invasion of South East Asia and the Pacific Rim, in the hope that American and British forces would be too stretched to fight a war on such diverse fronts.

About 340,000 Allied servicemen, women and civilians were taken prisoner of war and treated in an appalling manner as slave labour, in breach of all conventions of conduct.

Many Australian nurses were marched into the sea and machine-gunned during the invasion of Singapore.

What words do you have for this, Roger?

Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd army, it was a communications centre, storage point and troop assembly area. Nagasaki was a seaport and produced ordnance, ships, military equipment and other war materiel.

Japan had to be stopped.

The atomic bombs achieved that in a much shorter timescale and with, arguably, significantly less loss of life than a prolonged conventional invasion.

This was warfare, not 'terrorism' and bears no comparison to the suicide bombers taking innocent lives on trains and buses.

Ian Richardson,

Grimwith Garth,

Clifton Moor, York.

Updated: 11:22 Friday, August 12, 2005