MR Mellows' intemperate and abusive letter is, unfortunately, all too symptomatic of the still widespread attempt to deny that the atom bombing of two Japanese cities was a war crime.

But the deliberate targeting of civilians without warning with new and terrible weapons cannot really be anything else.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli politician and Nobel Peace Laureate, was quite right to compare Hiroshima with Auschwitz.

Gar Alperovitz, in his monumental study, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, establishes that, even the reason used that the bombing was the only alternative to an invasion, was a deliberate lie concocted after the event.

It has been accepted as true merely because, in a way of which Dr Goebbels would have approved, it has been so often repeated.

The truth of the matter is quite the opposite -- a war which could have been ended weeks or even months earlier was deliberately protracted until the bombs were ready for use.

Cold War

The aim was to cow the Russians by a display of American power because the Cold War had already begun.

Alperovitz makes use of all known primary and secondary sources, and the 800 pages of his study is a massive read.

I shall be recommending the library to purchase it and advise Mr Mellows to read it.

Malcolm Pittock

St James's Avenue

Breightmet