Not a war crime

Unfortunately we all possess degrees in Hindsight.

It is easy to look back on events that happened 60 years ago with the eye of an expert and call the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and so forth as "war crimes", quoting hackneyed phrases such as "non-military", "the war was nearly over", "targeting women and children" etcetera.

But, and this is the crux of the matter, we were at war with Japan at the time and anything to hasten the end of the war, the continuation of which would have led to the loss of many more thousands of lives, both Allied and Japanese, was justified.

The Americans dropped millions of leaflets on Japan on a daily basis, advising them to vacate their cities before they were bombed, and for the people to try persuade the militaristic Japanese government to surrender.

In the 35 days leading up to August 5 1945, B-29s dropped no fewer than 3,000,000 leaflets on Japan.

So there was still a tremendous effort being put into trying to persuade the Japanese to surrender, before it was decided to drop the first A-bomb.

With due respect, Mr. Westmoreland, the bombing of Hiroshima was not a "war crime" any more than the bombing of York was in the so-called Baedeker raid of April 28-29 1942. It was war.

Philip Roe,

Roman Avenue South,

Stamford Bridge, York.

Updated: 10:55 Thursday, August 11, 2005