WITH regards to the letter "Some crimes are worse than others" by Malcolm Pittock: its subject was the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, and its content was utter rubbish.

Pittock claimed no warning was given to the Japanese before they were used. This is not so. On July 26, 1945, the Allied Powers issued a proclamation calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally or face complete destruction. No response was received. So, in order to save both Allied forces' lives and the lives of the Japanese, the American President, Harry S Truman, decided to use the atomic bomb instead of launching a conventional ground invasion. This was undoubtedly the right thing to do.

The claim that the US President deliberately protracted the war in order to use the atomic bombs to "put the wind up the Russians", as Mr Pittock put it, is nonsense. The Americans had just succeeded in capturing the Japanese Island of Okinawa after tremendous losses on both sides -- 62,000 Americans were killed or wounded, and the Japanese lost 250,000. They were fanatical fighters who had fought on long after it was obvious they had no chance of winning. If they had fought so hard for Okinawa Island, how much more fiercely would they have fought for mainland Japan? How much more would victory by conventional military means have cost both Japanese and Allied forces in terms of dead and wounded?

Conventional weapons of destruction were often far more effective in killing than were the atom bombs. A single incendiary raid on Tokyo caused a "Fire Storm" that killed over 260,000 people in one night. The atom bomb that fell on Hiroshima killed 70,000. Sure, that number is terrible, but it was without dispute the lesser of two evils.

I have been to Japan on business 25 times and have discussed this with many of my Japanese friends and work colleagues. I have visited both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki atom bomb sites and I have yet to meet a Japanese who does not agree that the use of the two atom bombs saved many lives. It proved -- even to the war lords of Japan -- that there was no way they could win the battle, and finally brought the war to an end.

Not that they, or any one else, would condone their use for general warfare. They are too awesome to consider as a weapon of war, and the present hydrogen bomb, which is very many times more destructive than the atom bomb, is simply too devastating to contemplate as a weapon. In a war that uses them there will be no winners.

Mr A Hornby

Glendale Drive

Bolton

The use of the atom bombs, far from the general belief that they killed many thousands of lives unnecessarily, saved millions.

which was published in the Bolton Evening News on August 12