To the Editor:

With all due respect to Ms. [Niki] Van Aller (“Hinds Plaza Rally Commemorates Hiroshima,” page one, August 8, 2018) and her view of nuclear weapons, which I agree with regarding their possession and possible use by unstable leaders like those in Iran and North Korea, I have a slightly different view of the weapons used against Japan in World War II based upon two personal experiences. First is the fact that my father fought in the Pacific theatre, and would likely have been involved in an invasion of the Japanese mainland had that become necessary. It is highly likely that I owe my existence to those bombs, as do many of my generation.

Second is a conversation I had years ago with the mother of a business colleague of Japanese descent who lived in Japan during the war. I don’t recall how the subject of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came up, I certainly wouldn’t have raised it in such company, but she made a very insightful point about those events. When I tried to deflect the discussion by suggesting that the U.S. could have found a better way to use the bombs; perhaps making a giant crater in the middle of nowhere to show their potential, she replied “no” and offered the following: “The Japanese people were prepared to fight to the last man, woman, and child had the Emperor ordered it. The U.S. had to convince him that the war was unwinnable. Those bombs saved tens of thousands of Japanese lives.”

Expert estimates of the casualties on both sides resulting from an invasion of Japan, including Japanese civilians, tend to confirm her opinion. Numbers I’ve seen totaled upwards of one million. While a world free of nuclear weapons is certainly a worthy goal, as long as people like Kim Jong-un and Ayatollah Khamenei have them, the U.S. has no choice but to maintain its nuclear deterrent capability.

BILL MCJAMES

Hillsborough