The July 8 letters of Shaun O'Dwyer and Andrew Murphy praising former Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma's remarks reported in the July 1 article "A-bombings 'couldn't be helped' " miss the point. It is plausible for U.S. politicians to claim that dropping the A-bombs "could not be helped" and was necessary to end the war. But Kyuma was speaking as head of the military in Japan, the same military that did nothing to bring the war to an end in spite of the inevitability of defeat following the Battle of Midway in 1942.
There was no sense of urgency on the part of the top military leaders to face reality and surrender because the only ones suffering were poor patsy citizens and the foot soldiers at the front. It is the same with most wars. Leaders in the United States don't care if the Iraq war drags on as most of the American soldiers getting killed are not the kind of people they play tiddlywinks with at their posh country clubs.
Speaking as the head of Japan's military, it was ingenuous for Kyuma to say "it could not be helped." The war itself could have been stopped much earlier if the Japanese generalissimos had cared less about their own careers and twisted sense of Bushido, and more about the normal citizenry and foot soldiers of Japan.
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