Dropping A-Bombs on Japan

* You carried a commentary (“The Presidents Have No Regrets,” Aug. 4), by the apologists Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, once again crying over our collective guilt in the dropping of two A-bombs on Japan. By coincidence, Book Review carried a review of “History Wars,” a book of essays which helps to set the record straight. In my view, Hiroshima was not a “payback” for anything. War is hell, and the U.S. found the way to create a hell on Earth for its enemy before they could do the same to us.

At least a million Japanese casualties had already resulted from the firebombing night raids of U.S. B-29s, which destroyed Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Kobe. Is the dropping of two bombs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) a war crime, while 10,000 incendiary bombs is not?

It is also fatuous to say that the Japanese would have surrendered anyway in a few days, or a week or a month. Every day was critical for our servicemen in the area. Men were still fighting and dying, as were Americans, British, Australians and others, soldiers and civilians, who were in POW camps in Japan and elsewhere. Who wants to be the last one to die in the war, while the politicians are haggling over the details of the surrender?

There is no need to use the A-bomb again. Let’s close the book on the events of 51 years ago.

ROBERT E. GREEN

Sherman Oaks