MARGARET Forbes writes a passionate and sincerely-felt letter (May 21) condemning the US use of nuclear weapons against Japan in August 1945. She quotes Douglas MacArthur as saying that "in August 1945 Japan was ready to surrender if the terms of surrender had been altered from unconditional surrender”. It is correct to say that certain factions within Japan were attempting to open up negotiations with the allies, but it is important to know some of the elements that were to be included in these new surrender terms.

The Japanese military command was seeking terms that would allow Japan to retain large parts of the empire it had carved out for itself in China, Manchuria and Korea. In addition to this they were demanding that there was to be no occupation and no war crime trials. The Emperor was among those who wished the war to end, but he was a prisoner to the Japanese constitution that demanded a consensus of opinion from the army, navy and civilian members of his government.

In 1960 when General MacArthur informed former president Hoover "that he believed that negotiations would have avoided the slaughter at Hiroshima and Nagasaki" it should be remembered that he was acting with hindsight and that there was no love lost between himself and President Truman – who had sacked him in 1951 for comments he made concerning the war in Korea. MacArthur’s solution to end the war was to invade Japan. This invasion, Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet, could have cost up to 350,000 Allied casualties. These figures were based on the casualties suffered during the invasion of Okinawa. In Okinawa 25 per cent of the civilian population perished.

General Curtis LeMay believed, again in hindsight, that a continuation of the fire bombing and mining campaign would have ended the war. Yet this would have resulted in many civilian casualties through bombing and starvation. In addition to these civilian casualties would have been many allied prisoners of war held in slave labour camps in Japan. How long would this course of action lasted is difficult to say, but it is significant to note that this was abandoned in favour of the armies plan for invasion.

Little is also said about Japanese experiments in the use of biological weapons. Since 1938 Japan had set up unit 731 in Harbin in Manchuria. Here they experimented on Chinese POWs in the preparation of weapons to spread plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera. In 1940 and 1941 these weapons were used in China and plans were in place to use these weapons against American forces in the Philippines, India and even Australia.

I do not condemn America for the use of nuclear weapons in 1945. I place their use in the context that the allies found themselves in when faced with a nation that placed death as an honourable alternative to surrender and that had galvanised its population to accept this doctrine.

On August 14 when the Emperor agreed to accept unconditional surrender there was an attempted coup by members of the officer corps whose aim was to prevent the radio broadcast. It is fortunate they failed, even so many of the Japanese military refused to surrender and Kamikaze flights persisted after the surrender.

Joe Hughes,

38 Gair Crescent, Pather, Wishaw.

MARGARET Forbes argues that the atomic bombs should not have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the Japanese Government were suing for peace. While it is perfectly correct that the Japanese had launched a number of diplomatic initiatives to seek terms under which they might surrender, the Allies has decided at the Casablanca conference in 1943 that the end point of the war would be the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.

Having achieved this with Nazi Germany less than three months earlier, they would have sought nothing less in the Far East, their resolve probably being strengthened as they became aware of the brutal treatments regularly handed out to prisoners-of-war and the civilian populations of the occupied nations by the Japanese conquerors.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union had entered the war against Japan in early August, and was making rapid progress. President Truman had a rather less benign view of Stalin's intentions than that possessed by his recently deceased predecessor, President Roosevelt, and was desperate to bring the war to a speedy halt, in order to minimise the amount of territory that the Soviet Union would gain

Lastly, I don't think that the Russians had decided to obtain atomic weapons simply because they became aware of the destructive power unleashed upon Japan. Research into nuclear explosives was well underway in Russia before this point, aided by the flow of material from the Manhattan Project passed on secretly by British and US communist sympathisers, which continued into the post-war period.

Christopher W Ide,

25 Riverside Road, Waterfoot, East Renfrewshire.