Nuclear warfare

In replying to Deo Cassar's article Hiroshima: The Forgotten Genocide (August 13) I do not wish to give the impression that I am in any way ridiculing his concerns about the result of nuclear warfare. However, his information is clearly outdated, at odds with what is known today.

Mr Cassar quotes Dwight Eisenhower in Newsweek, November 11, 1963 as saying "... the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing" and "The Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb" - US News and World Report, August 15, 1960.

In the book The Last Mission, co-authors Jim B. Smith (who was a radio operator on board a B-29 on the war's last bombing mission) and Malcolm McConnell unearthed proof that, far from surrendering, ultra-nationalists were in fact planning a military coup to seize government by force and continue the war. This despite the dropping of two atom bombs!

Unlike the invasion of Europe (D-Day), geography and weather conditions meant that American intelligence were unable to mislead their Japanese counterparts about the true nature of their intentions. In fact, Japanese counter intelligence had accurately predicted an invasion date of late October, compared to the American date of November 1.

American casualties in the opening days of the invasion were estimated at 250,000 to 300,000. Going by the ferociousness with which the Japanese defended such islands as Okinawa and Iwo Jima, one could only imagine what the invasion force would have faced. Suffice to say that the Japanese army and navy between them possessed no fewer than 10,000 kamikaze planes.

Mr Cassar also stated that "250,000 innocent civilians, men, women and children were instantly exterminated". The killing of civilians in battle is always reprehensible but Hiroshima, according to The Last Mission, had become known as an "army city" to the Japanese. Several thousand troops were in fact exercising on that fateful day. As for the death toll, post-war estimates (including death from radiation sickness weeks later) range from 92,000 to 100,000, fewer than half the number mentioned.

Ironically, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which Mr Cassar described as "that horrendous and unnecessary crime against humanity") has diverted attention from other, equally serious, issues, such as Japanese aggression against other Asian countries for several years. The death toll from World War II stands at about 45 million. Weren't all those deaths "horrendous and unnecessary crimes against humanity"?

The actual target for the second bomb was meant to be the city of Kokura but because of smoke from factory chimneys the crew of B-29 Bock's Car diverted to the secondary target of Nagasaki, as they had clear instructions that bombing had to be made by visual means. Over Nagasaki, unbroken cloud came close to cancelling the mission, when the crew decided to go for a radar assisted bombing run. During a break in the clouds, they dropped Fat Man.

Fortunately for the city, the drop was two miles off target, in a valley were the steep hillside spared Nagasaki from much of the fallout. Despite having a yield twice that of the bomb dropped over Hiroshima, the death toll was estimated at 40,000 to 45,000, with a further 60,000 injuries of various degrees.

The US News and World Report, August 15, 1960 said: "Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb". When Truman told Stalin at Potsdam that "we have a new weapon of unusual destructive force", Stalin merely replied that he hoped the Americans would make good use of the weapon against Japan. And this for the simple reason that Klaus Fuchs, a German-born but naturalised British citizen, had been spying for years for the then Soviet Union, passing all secrets from the Manhattan Project. Thus, irrespective of whether it was used or not, the Russians would have obtained the bomb just the same.