I MUST respond to "Traveller" (Your Letters, August 22).

Does he/she honestly think that the same people who have shown compassion for innocent men, women and children for the last 55 years would not also have compassion for those prisoners so horrifically treated by the Japanese? In fact we have a member whose father died in one of those camps.

There were 150,000 men, women and children killed instantly by that one bomb on Hiroshima and, only three days later, more than 60,000 perished instantly in Nagasaki. In addition, people have been dying ever since from its effects. Only last year there were an estimated 2,741 deaths.

I sympathise with the ex-prisoners-of-war who are not only entitled to an apology but to massive compensation for themselves and for their next of kin. I must, however, correct an understandable misconception on their part.

The two bombs did nothing to shorten the war: in fact they probably lengthened it by about six weeks. The Japanese were already preparing for surrender. No less personages than Louis Mountbatten, Eisenhower and Winston Churchill have since admitted this, while Montgomery admitted it was a mistake.

For the information of "Traveller", I am 77 and was serving in South East Asia when I heard the news. I was horrified at the threshold which had been crossed.

J. HOMEWOOD,

Prestwich and Whitefield CND.