LETTER: DROPPING BOMB JUSTIFIED

To the editor:

I saw the Enola Gay drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima 50 years ago. I am a former prisoner of war of the Japanese for three and a half years. I spent the first two and a half years in the Philippine Islands and the last year in Japan.

Our prisoner-of-war camp in Japan was about nine miles from Hiroshima. Therefore, we could see the B-29 very will. We had no idea what the B-29 dropped or what it hit. All we saw was the mushroom cloud, which everyone is now familiar with. It was determined that everything within a 50-mile radius of Hiroshima was exposed to radiation. The radium from Nagasaki where the second atomic bomb was dropped was determined to be 150 miles for radiation.

Was the atomic bomb a moral weapon? The Japanese like to try to make us feel guilty for dropping the bomb and that we are the bad guys. Was the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor moral? What about the Bataan Death March? I was on the march every foot of the way. Words cannot describe the atrocities of the Japanese soldiers against the American and Philippine soldiers. This was just the starting of the atrocities that lasted throughout World War II. The Japanese order posted in prisoner-of-war camps in 1944 read, "Kill Them All" and told how the prisoners of war were to be disposed of, such as decapitation, poison, poisonous smoke and mass bombing. For this reason I believe the use of the atom bombs was morally just.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has recently determined that starvation of POWs in both Germany and Japan causes a disease called wet beriberi, which causes swelling of the lower extremities. It finally reaches the heart and can cause several diseases. I have this disease, according to the Veterans Administration, which caused a stroke a few years ago. I am unable to walk due to the stroke and will probably never be able to walk again.

I could list a large number of things, such as hell ships which took us to Japan, but the ones I mentioned are good examples.

The idea of the Japanese being poor, beleaguered people defending their homeland and the Americans being the aggressors seems to be the picture the Japanese want to paint to the world.

CHARLES BRANUM

Cape Girardeau