Prisoners of Japan saved by the atom bomb

sir – I read with interest Emily Strasser’s article (Features, August 1) about her grandfather’s involvement in making the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

My family were living in the Far East when Japan entered the war. The Japanese set up more than 300 concentration camps for white women and children around the Dutch East Indies – and, although we were a mixed-race family, my mother, myself and my two siblings were incarcerated on Java for almost four years.

We shared a three-bedroom bungalow with 100 other women and children. We were starved, beaten, hit with bayonets, tortured and forced to stand and bow to the emperor for hours in the sun. There was almost no food, water or medication. Many did not survive.

My father was taken to work as a slave labourer on the Burma Railway and the bridge over the River Kwai, then transported to Osaka, Japan, to work in an underground munition factory. He never recovered emotionally and died young.

A few years ago, I went on a pilgrimage to Japan, with two of my children and a grandchild, to make my peace. My siblings do not understand why I made this trip, but I am glad I did. Most Japanese people, I learnt, are not aware of the atrocities committed by their country during the Second World War. Perhaps it is time that the Japanese said they were sorry.

I am sad when people remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not why the atom bombs dropped. I have no doubt that those bombs saved my life, and that of many thousands of others.

Please do not judge those who were involved in making them.

Hanneke Coates

Budleigh Salterton, Devon