The bombing of Japan
I suspect Justin McCurry’s Hiroshima article (20 May) is a diplomatic piece before Obama’s visit. Highlighting the A-bomb death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without the perspective of civilian deaths from the worst Japanese offensives throughout Asia, German offensives in Russia, and the allied bombing offensives in Germany during the closing stages of the second world war, gives the impression that Japan alone suffered the greatest indignity.
At this developmentally early stage of the A-bomb it was no more destructive on civilians than conventional bombing; its efficiency of delivery was facilitated by the absence of a decimated Japanese air force.
Neither of the Japanese or US competing narratives McCurry mentions are very accurate; most historians now believe that within a few days of the Manchurian offensive (9 August) the Japanese felt far more threatened by the consequences for their society of a Soviet invasion than from the US atomic bombs; and any Japanese national with an unexpurgated knowledge of their own history of conquering the nations of south and east Asia would be hard pressed to expect an apology for the dropping of an atomic bomb.
If McCurry is correct in saying Hiroshima survivors want Obama to reaffirm his 2009 commitment to a world without nuclear weapons, then that would be a noble sentiment.
Gavin Harper
Christchurch, New Zealand
• Your story about the Hiroshima bombing says it “is credited with hastening the end of a war that would have killed far more American soldiers had the land battle moved to the main Japanese island of Honshu”. Maybe we should include in this “American narrative” what the US Strategic Bombing Survey reported – that, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bomb had not been dropped ... and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
Or what General Eisenhower later said was his “belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary ... and no longer mandatory to save American lives” (Mandate for Change, 1963).
Or what atomic bomb scientist Leo Szilard, in a meeting with Truman’s secretary of state James Byrnes, said: “Mr Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb ... in order to win the war .... Mr Byrnes’s ... view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe” (A Personal History of the Atomic Bomb, 1949).
Interestingly, Szilard stated that, “If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities ... we would have defined [it] ... as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.”
Maybe, rather than the last act of the second world war, the bomb was the opening shot of the cold war.
Walter Linder
New York City, US
Racism thrives in Australia
Terry Hewton has got it right (Reply, 20 May). We have indeed got our fair share of racism in Australia. That means Indigenous Australians, as well as refugees, have to put up with it. We also, unfortunately, have no bill of rights, no charter of rights and responsibilities (as Canada has) or human rights act (as our neighbour, New Zealand has).
The refugees coming here by boat get it worst. The major parties are playing a game of being tough on refugees. One of the latest casualties is Omid Masoumali, who burnt himself to death on Nauru, one of our foreign prison islands. His was a refugee from Iran, married, only 23 years old.
Omid means hope in Farsi. He was a genuine refugee. Even our own politicised process found him to be one. But the only hope left was in his name, and he took his own life.
Australia pretends that a few thousand refugees are some kind of threat, but takes almost 200,000 business migrants a year. The position of both major parties is a disgrace.
Readers of this wonderful paper could help us by thinking twice before buying Australian, and certainly before coming here. And if you decide against Australia because it is locking up innocent people, often for years, tell our government and the media why.
The higher the cost to the cruelty going on here, the sooner we will be able to change it.
Stephen Langford
Sydney, Australia
A question of terminology
Simon Tisdall (13 May) writes that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, plans to “change the constitution and create a Putin-style executive presidency”. Putin did not create the Russian executive presidency: Boris Yeltsin did.
We do not call its French counterpart an Hollande-style presidency; we call it a French-style presidency, or maybe a De Gaulle-style presidency, after its creator.
So: Russian-style presidency or Yeltsin-style presidency. This may seem pedantic, but Tisdall’s terminology suits the dominant fiction of Putin corrupting the democratic political system that was created by Yeltsin in the 1990s.
James Headley
Dunedin, New Zealand
Unfair to France
I have been a devoted subscriber of the Guardian Weekly for over 30 years. I have lived in France most of this time. In Suzanne Moore’s piece about social media (20 May), the blurred focus and lack of concentration induced by the constant digital existence that she mentions are well illustrated by the piece itself. We hop from digital dependency to a French labour law about employees’ privacy. This involves trying to protect people, who are often overloaded with work and underpaid, from being harassed 24 hours a day.
Then we move on to some blithe cliche about what the French idea of la dolce vita is (isn’t that Italian?), and rest assured, unlike Moore, there are many French (and Italian) people who achieve a quality of life relatively undisturbed by the digital invasion. However, the glib remark about the French police in Calais smashing refugees’ phones before they beat them is trashy, and I had to check I wasn’t reading a tabloid.
In these times of growing nationalism encouraging division and prejudice, we can do without this kind of cheap French bashing.
Fiona Cleland
Les Usières, France
Modern penny dreadfuls
Your fascinating article about the bad influence of “penny dreadfuls” and “trashy novels” on adolescents in the mid-1890s (20 May) reminded me of when I came across an essay in a copy of Blackwood’s Magazine, March 1895. It suggested ways to eradicate “juvenile delinquency”, which was believed to be caused by lack of education, and poor living and working conditions. No surprise there.
But the anonymous author makes no mention of the “non-moral” effects of penny dreadfuls, which no doubt just exacerbated this ancient and well-documented problem – just as violent and sensational video games and expensively mounted but trashy movies do today.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Briefly
• I appreciated your four-page report on the Hillsborough disaster very much (6 May). In these days of comparing tragedies, the distaste sometimes expressed at media coverage of deaths in western countries versus deaths in developing countries, it made me realise there is one element many of these events share. It is the people without power and influence, looked down on by those in control of society’s systems who view their human rights as something to be shuffled aside when upholding them threatens their cosy positions of perceived importance.
Gabby Whitworth
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
• Natalie Bennett (20 May) was a disappointment not because she isn’t a competent professional politician but because she took the Green party even further away from being a genuinely green party, as opposed to an escaped fragment of the Labour left. The result was to deprive the Green party of its distinctive reason for existing. It also disenfranchised millions of voters who care enough about the natural world to join Greenpeace and many others NGOs to represent their views. Small wonder, then, that it lost elections at all levels.
Patrick Curry
London, UK
• I was interested in the criticism noted in your review of Annie Dillard’s The Abundance that her work was sometimes considered “too religious” (29 April). Given that about 85% of the world fits under the broad heading of “religious”, would it be more relevant to note that nearly everything else you review could be seen to be “too secular”?
Ian Burn
Christchurch, New Zealand
• The English language evolved in Britain whereas it stagnated for 200 years when transported to America (20 May). Fay Schopen declares herself terribly British. Why, then, use “gotten” – a relic of the 17th century, still used in the US and acknowledged as an Americanism?
Alexandra Tavernier
Marcq-en-Baroeul, France
• I suggest your 20 May front cover headline, Trump reels in Republicans, should have had the word order altered slightly: Trump in, Republicans reel.
Frank Appleton
Edgewood, British Columbia, Canada
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