Re: Reflections of Japan, 68 years after surrender (Letters, Aug. 9)
Two women of South Korean and Japanese descent I heard, recently, said the American interventions in their countries was neither “moral” nor for the “defence of individuals,” as Keith Sketchley asserted.
“We have never been told the about the horrors and real purpose for using the A-bombs,” the Japanese woman told us.
She spoke at the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Day in Tillicum-Gorge Park.
There wasn’t even a hint that the United States “saved” Japan from tyranny in 1945. Brig.-Gen. Hugh Hester affirmed this.
He noted that top military leaders of Great Britain and the United States are on record as stating there was no military necessity for dropping the bombs.
The conclusion is, therefore, inescapable that the decision to drop them was political: a warning to the Soviet Union, wrote Hester in his book Twenty-six Disastrous Years.
Larry Wartel, Victoria