Looking back at the Hiroshima decision

Re “Why feel guilty about Hiroshima?” Opinion, Aug. 3

Max Boot describes some of the horrors of warfare, concluding with the statement that he doesn’t “think the atomic bombing of Japan was a uniquely reprehensible event.”

The fact that it may not have been “uniquely” reprehensible is hardly a reason for us all not to feel guilt and shame about our inability to conduct human affairs without resorting to the horrors that warfare represents.

And what about Nagasaki? Three days after Hiroshima, the second bomb fell specifically on that portion of Nagasaki that was the focus of Christianity in Japan.

LAWRENCE R. FREEDMAN MD

Los Angeles

(The writer is the former chief of medicine with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.)

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It is rare that I agree with Max Boot, but his commentary about Hiroshima was dead on. History revisionists and politically correct folk have made it more than clear over the last decade that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were evil deeds committed by the U.S. military, and any mention of Pearl Harbor is Japanese-bashing. Please.

Japan struck the first blow. The United States struck the last, and in so doing made certain that additional American lives would not be lost in an invasion of Japan.

Frankly, I don’t see how any American who had a relative fighting in World War II could condemn this country’s actions when it came to ending that war.

JOHN ZAVESKY

Riverside

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Even if you believe Japan would not have surrendered if not for our destruction of Hiroshima, I believe you should still feel guilty. We could have bloodlessly demonstrated the bomb.

We could have sent them a tape of the Trinity explosion, or, if that failed to impress, dropped Little Boy in the middle of Tokyo Bay.

Had we failed to achieve their surrender after a demonstration and after Stalin declared war against them, then we would have been in a far stronger moral position to justify use of the bomb on civilian targets.

CHARLES MILBOURNE

Woodland Hills