I REFER to the letter from Ryu Iwase headlined, 'Atom bomb sends wrong message' (South China Morning Post, December 7), expressing disgust at the proposed US commemorative stamp (now cancelled) with the caption 'Atomic bombs hasten war's end August 1945'. This is a statement of fact. Facts and the truth about the war still upset the Japanese so much that their Government even 50 years after will still not give a full apology or compensation to its victims as Germany has done, and even the American and Canadian governments have done for the Japanese they interned in that war. Ryu Iwase and others should read the new paperback edition of Jack Edwards', Banzai You Bastards, which includes the preface for the Japanese edition published last year. He details the massacre order in Japanese and English given as early as August 1, 1944, 'to annihilate all prisoners and leave no traces'. This cold-blooded order stated it should be done by 'mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of them as the situation dictates'. He points out in his preface that a Japanese physicist Yoshio Nishine was working on a cyclotron and experiments for separation of bomb grade uranium in April 1941, eight months before Pearl Harbour. He refers to Admiral Onishi Takijiro, who set up the Navy Divine Wind Special Attack (kamikaze) squadrons and points out that the use of these squadrons was made official policy by the Supreme Council on January 18, 1945. There can be no doubt if Japan had completed an atomic bomb by then, those kamikaze squadrons would have used it. The US Postal Service should have issued the stamp. At the end of last week, President Clinton agreed to withdraw it, because it had upset people like Ryu Iwase and the Japanese Government. They should remember that these bombs did hasten the end of the war, saved the prisoners and the lives of millions on both sides who would have perished if the war had continued and if Japan had been invaded. Of course it also saved Hirohito's life. Tokyo did not have the 'A' bomb and he although head of the Supreme Council, was never tried.
