Was Hiroshima justified or a war crime?

I DON’T think anyone would claim dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was the civilised world’s finest hour, but it helped to save my father’s life. He was a PoW held on the Japanese mainland for nearly four years, and he told me he would not have lived much longer as he was so malnourished. His nightmares lasted until the day he died in 1998. I put the blame for the bomb at the door of the Emperor, who refused to surrender with no thought for his loyal subjects, let alone the Allied PoWs. Nagasaki followed, at the cost of more Japanese people.

IRENE WARREN, Billericay, Essex. WOULD those condemning the atom bomb feel the same way had they been Japanese PoWs? This action brought the war to an earlier end, saving many thousands of lives, both of the prisoners of war and those who would have been killed had an invasion become necessary.

C. CURREY, Portishead, North Somerset. THE suffering endured by Allied soldiers at the hands of the Japanese should never be forgotten nor condoned, but the behaviour of prison camp commanders and guards cannot justify dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the victims were civilians who had no involvement in the camps. What had the women, children and elderly people incinerated or mutilated in those nuclear blasts done to deserve such a fate? Punishment should be meted out to the guilty, not the innocent.

BEN MARTIN, Maidstone, Kent. IF JAPAN apologised to all the PoWs it tortured, starved and worked to death, I might have a little sympathy for those killed in Nagasaki and hiroshima. I do not think the Japanese will ever apologise because they all believe that their hideous treatment of all prisoners was normal behaviour.

M. FINN, Cannock, Staffs. MY FATHER was also a PoW on the Thai/ Burma Railway, and I thank my lucky stars that the bomb was dropped. The Japanese had sent out an instruction to all prison camp commanders that in the event of an Allied landing on the home islands, all PoWs were to be killed. A copy was found in a vault in Taiwan (then Formosa) after the war and the original is now in an American archive. It read: ‘Under the current system, when you take refuge from bomb explosions, you must make every prisoner being at one spot under strict caution and kill them all. Method: No matter individually, or in a group, by gas, by bomb, by poison, decapitated, be drowned, choose yourself which suits the occasion. ‘The principal object is “leave no traces”. Take every possible means for that.’

CEC LOWRY, Stockport, Cheshire.