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I find Barack Obama’s visit to the atom bomb museum in Hiroshima very offensive. His going there was an implied apology for our use of the atomic bomb to end World War II. We were not the aggressors in World War II. It was Japan who pulled a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while their peace emissaries were in Washington. It was Japanese who forced the Bataan death march, and who cruelly tortured and starved hundreds of our young men they held prisoner. You think Abu Graib was bad? It was a birthday party compared to Japanese prison camps. I don’t have animosity to present day Japanese, but neither will I gloss over Japan’s past atrocities — which they have never apologized for!

After the war it was discovered Japan itself had been developing an atomic bomb and planned to use it on us. They had two A-bomb sites: in Tokyo — destroyed by fire bomb attacks on the city in March and April of 1945 — and in what is now North Korea. They had actually detonated an A-bomb on an island off the Korean coast.

Soviet troops fought over that area, and anything to do with manufacturing, including six scientists, was taken back to Russia.

Bad as the atom bomb was, experts say that using it to end the war resulted in less loss of life for both Americans and Japanese than a land invasion would have cost.

EVALYN FINNEY

Sandpoint