ON August 6 several local people went to Aldermaston, the centre of Britain's nuclear weapons establishment, to mark the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.
To forestall any assertions that the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb was decisive in ending the war against the Japanese allow me to give the information that the Japanese had already agreed to end the war on June 20, 1945, a full six weeks before the devastation of Hiroshima. Sir Winston Churchill said: "It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell."
President Truman wanted to demonstrate to the Soviets the terrible power they would be dealing with once the war was over.
Fifty five years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we need to invest in real security - homes, food, jobs, education, health and equal access to resources in the world - to make sure that coming generations never know another Hiroshima. The Government must honour the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and scrap Trident and refuse to support the new Star Wars initiatives in the US.
MONICA ELABOR, Croft Road, Evesham.
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