Taking issue with A-bomb statement

ON the whole, I enjoyed Scott Martelle’s article “Desert Shares Its Atomic Secrets” [June 26], about his visit to the site where the first atomic bomb tests were conducted. But the article was marred by his comment that “arriving here means revisiting the irresolvable moral question of whether the certain deaths of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians were preferable to the probable deaths of thousands of American troops had the war in the Pacific sputtered on a few more months.” This statement was off base.

The loss of life and suffering experienced on both sides during the war was staggering. The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, was a regrettable but, under the circumstances, necessary part of the war. It brought to a conclusion a bitter and costly 3 1/2 -year struggle.

It is possible that Japan could have been broken by continued bombing by conventional weapons or by starvation by blockade, but Japanese casualties would no doubt have been greater and the loss of American lives would have been significant.

Richard Stack

Pacific Palisades