Re: “,” May 27 news story.
I believe if people had more knowledge of the effects of the A-bomb, they would better understand the significance of President Obama’s trip to Hiroshima.
My father, who was a naval officer in World War II, was sent to Honolulu after the bombings. When I was a young girl, he took me to a museum there that honored the lives lost in the Pearl Harbor attack. He wanted me to understand the horrific sacrifices our brave soldiers and civilians made for our freedom.
I went on an Asian tour as a college student, which included Hiroshima. I was afraid they would hate us there. Instead, the mayor met us at the train station with flowers, and the people were very kind to us. I saw survivors, and some reminded me of melted wax figures. They looked sad and broken, and it broke my heart. As Secretary of State John Kerry has said, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was “gut-wrenching.”
Reading your article, I was shocked that so many Americans would favor using nuclear bombs under any circumstance. If they saw what I saw, I believe they would change their minds.
Lora Carlile, Greenwood Village
This letter was published in the June 5 edition.
Re: “Obama in Hiroshima; Quiet visit to key sites,” May 28 news story.
President Obama’s flowery words to the Japanese people went over the line when he said he looked forward to the day when “Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.”
The “start of our own moral awakening”? Obama is saying that America, and its greatest generation, were morally asleep when the Japanese refused to surrender, when they promised to fight to the last man, when the casualties among American GIs alone would be over 1 million! Every American, particularly our youngest generation, should know the horrors of war as waged by the Japanese, and should be proud of President Truman’s heroic decision to stop the slaughter. No, America was not morally asleep, President Obama is.
Anthony T. Accetta, Denver
This letter was published in the June 5 edition.
Re: “,” May 27 letter to the editor.
The unwarranted hatred of our president by the right wing knows no bounds. Letter-writer Robert A. Vogel criticized our president for “apologizing” to Japan for the bombing of Hiroshima. President Obama paid respects to an ally with whom we once fought a very ugly war which ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs. No apologies were given; rather, respect was being paid to the hundreds of thousands killed in the attack.
Gary Gaudin, Thornton
This letter was published in the June 5 edition.
Letter-writer Robert A. Vogel’s objections to President Obama offering an “olive branch” by visiting Hiroshima is a display of American exceptionalism at its ugliest. If there’s ever a reason to apologize, it would be the wiping out of 100,000 innocent citizens.
Laura Wegscheid, Denver
This letter was published in the June 5 edition.
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