IT is unfortunate that people in Britain are not better informed about the details of the the Second World War in the Far East. Sometimes misinformation, exaggerated fictions and relics of wartime propaganda are reported in the media.

Mr Reeson (Letters, August 31) writes that the atomic bombs forced the Japanese tyrant Tojo to sue for peace and saved the lives of many Allied soldiers.

However Hideki Tojo had been ousted from power in 1944. The Japanese cabinet began to prepare for surrender in June of the following year. Prime Minister Suzuki sent messages to the Russian government asking Stalin to take the role of peace intermediary.

Simultaneously, the Japanese Embassy in Switzerland contacted a US high official, Allen Dulles (the famous Director of the CIA in the 1950s), and had several negotiations with him about conditions for Japan's surrender.

The Japanese government had been seeking a way of ending the war before Hiroshima and Nagasaki because Japan had not been able to continue the fight against the Allied Powers.

Isolated, Japan had exhausted her resources, especially oil, for the war and the daily life of the nation. So, General Eisenhower was strongly opposed to the use of the atomic bombs against Japan. An official US military report concluded in 1946 that Japan would have surrendered before the close of 1945 even if the atomic bombs or an invasion of Japan had not been planned.

Nuclear attacks on defenceless citizens were unnecessary.

It would be good if British and American people could learn more about the accurate history of the war in the Far East, not only to remember the heroism of the Allied soldiers but also to prevent a recurrence of one of the most brutal holocausts in human history.

Takashi Sugimoto,

Markham Street,

York.

Updated: 11:02 Friday, September 09, 2005