BOTH Brian Quail and Margaret Forbes (Letters, January 14) write very clear arguments against nuclear armaments, citing the bombing of two Japanese cities which encouraged the end of Japan fighting in the Second World War.

I suggest however that had Japan not been forced to surrender to the Americans and instead, we in the West had stood back and let Russia do the final act of war, it would have been a massacre. Apart from any other fact, Russia was unlikely to have forgiven Japan in 1945 for the Russo-Japanese war of 40 years earlier.

The rather honourable end to the war in the Pacific which was the surrender signing aboard the USS Missouri is not something I could possibly imagine if Russia was responsible for the final ending of the war. Additionally we only have to consider their actions in taking Berlin to imagine what they would have done in invading Japan.

I am certain that the post-war rebuilding of Japan would not have happened if Russia had been the sole occupying nation.We would have seen asset stripping on a massive scale and the population reduced to serfdom. The rising sun emblem on the flag replaced with the hammer and sickle.

The fact that nuclear bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki does not seem to me the most relevant argument on this issue as by that stage in the war many more Japanese workers could have been killed continuing the US strategic saturation bombing with high explosives. In the Second World War at least as many living in Japan were killed by conventional bombs as nuclear. I am convinced, however, that the nuclear bombing provided a much-needed shock to Japan and on balance it may well have saved many lives.

Bill Brown,

46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie.

WILLIAM Scott (Letters, January 9) is completely correct. Nevertheless, I can’t think his comments would suffer from minor amplification.

Japan instituted a nuclear programme in the mid-1930s, the main objective being a weapon, using fission and chain reaction. By early in the war, they were working on the separation of Uranium 235. We were merely fortunate that “ours” was ready first.

Given Japan’s thoroughly well known conduct in all theatres and aspects of the Second World War, is it really fanciful conjecture to imagine that they wouldn’t have used it on us? Presumably then, we should have refrained and meekly offered ourselves for a slaughter of similar magnitude?

Germany of course also had a nuclear programme (Norway – deuterium and so on) but fortunately had been subdued before the development (and V2) had come to fruition.

I loathe war and all that’s concomitant with it and I find cold-blooded weapons research disgusting. I weep for the men and women who were killed (60 million in the Second World War) or maimed and their families, but I have never heard an argument for pacifism that would hold water.

Mike Pattison,

Ardchoil, Rowardennan, Glasgow