THE ATOM BOMB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26904, 16 October 1948, Page 8

THE ATOM BOMB

Sir,—ln a recent issue you published a British scientists’ view of the atom bomb and its effect on the conquest of Japan by the American forces. Professor Blackett claims that if the .atom bomb had not been successfully manufactured by the Americans in New Mexico in July. 1945, the American land forces would have been no nearer Japan proper than Iwo Jima and Okinawa in August, and that to the Soviet armies would have fallen the prize of Japan. The professor also lauds the decisive effect of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as practically ending the war. In this I think history shows him to be wrong. Russia only came' in at the last moment in the Japanese war, when she considered Japan to be already licked, and after over-running Manchuria would have found it very difficult to get to Japan proper without a navy or landing craft of the modern type. Further, the best American authorities, both army and naval, are convinced that Japan was already beaten and ready for surrender before the atom bombs were dropped. Japan’s mercantile navy had been destroyed by American submarines and aircraft, and daily and nightly her big cities were being bombed unmercifully by Super-Fortresses and other bombers. Thus it was not the atom bomb that won the war for America, but the combined army, navy and air forces working together under a co-ordinated plan made by the men who initiated unrestricted underwater war, with “no holds barred ” on Japan’s mercantile marine and navy.. It is to be hoped the Western nations will not again pursue a will-o-the-wisp and neglect preparedness for war in face of the present ominous situation.—l am. etc., D. G. A. Balclutha.