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Published on 08/21/1995 All articles from this issue

LETTERS

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When telling the H-Bomb story

one should start at the beginning

In telling the "bomb story, I think one should start at the beginning, how the Japanese emboldened by successful military expansion over Korea, most of China and Southeast Asia, then attacked the United States in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

We were unprepared for war and this was a tenacious enemy. After a fairly poor start, we got the message, the Japanese were prepared to fight to the last man. The atomic bombs (two of them) not only saved untold thousands of lives, Japanese and American, but brought to an abrupt end the barbaric Japanese militarist regime responsible for a decade or more of incalculable human suffering in captured lands and prison camps.

How much longer it would have taken without the bomb and at what cost to lives, suffering and treasure, is not a matter of futile speculation. But don't forget America is a good and great nation. After the war, just look how we freely aided these people to recover from their self-inflicted destitution. In your wildest dreams, do you think they would have done the same for us?

W.A. Chapman

Los Altos

End the debate on Hiroshima-

lets have world disarmament

Instead of debating whether or not the bomb should have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, let's focus on what we have done or have not done since then.

During the past 50 years, the U. S. has spent $4 Trillion on nuclear weapons thereby draining the nation of funds which could better have been spent on housing, education, infrastructure, and health.

Our national nuclear program has encouraged global proliferation, not deterred it

We create environmental devastation by the continued production of nuclear weapons, to say nothing of the medical effects of all phases of this technology on humans.

The U.S. has failed to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; and we have failed to declare a "no first use" of nuclear weapons in a conflict.

And, we continue to perpetuate the belief that our security depends on weapons that can result in the extinction of civilization as we know it.

Recognizing that the years since 1945 have not brought us the national security and international stability hoped for, we must demand that our government propose the following at the upcoming 50th United Nations General Assembly:

That Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which commits to nuclear disarmament and complete world disarmament) be implemented in full.

End the debate. No more Hiroshimas.

Bernice Fischer

Los Altos