THE letters from Mr Reeson and Mr Dixon (August 17) vindicating the holocaust by atomic bombing shocked me, a Japanese professor living in York with respect and love for British society.

It is true that many prisoners of war died in the prison camps under the poor and cruel treatment of the Imperial Japanese Army. They ignored the Hague and Geneva Rules on the treatment of POWs.

After the end of the war, the accused 984 Japanese soldiers and officers were condemned to death by special courts for their behaviour against Asian citizens and the POWs.

We Japanese accepted our guilt so seriously we determined to abandon the right of belligerency of the state in our constitution of 1947.

Since then, Japanese forces have never injured or killed any person outside of Japan.

Japanese prime ministers have expressed official apologies for the victims almost every year.

However, there can be no justification for the atomic bombs. The Hague/Geneva Rules prohibit not only the abuse of POWs but also the aerial bombardment of civilians.

The dropping of nuclear bombs was a violation of these international rules. Almost all the victims of the two atomic bombs were children, women and older people living under the tyranny of the militant Japanese government.

The target was not the Japanese army or navy in the battlefield but defenceless people in the cities. Japanese troops were not damaged by the A-bombs.

America rushed to atomic bombing to win a political advantage over Russia before the Soviet Union went to war with Japan. Even in wartime, the abuse of harmless POWs and the use of nuclear weapons on citizens are not justified at all.

Takashi Sugimoto,

Associate professor of Kansai University, Visiting Researcher at York St John College,

Markham Street, York.

Updated: 10:24 Wednesday, August 24, 2005