Letters, Nov. 19, 1945

  • "Admiration & Gratitude"

    Sirs:

    Through the three and a half years of misery, ghastliness and humiliation which is the lot of a prisoner of war in Japanese hands, I had clung to life with the hope of a return to a world I understood, but my imagination never rose to a conception of the heights of the reception which the American Army gave us.

    It started on the 26th of August when our P.O.W. camp of 509 British, Dutch and a few Americans in the center of Japan's Northern Island was visited by four torpedo bombers from the U.S.S.Hancock. . . . They bombed us with food, tobacco, candy, TIME and LIFE, in sailor's kitbags addressed "To the men we have not forgotten." . . . The amazing cordiality, informality and fantastic speed with which we were clothed, fed, deloused, bathed, injected, inoculated and whizzed down here by Liberators and air transports, on occasion with nurses, was an epic of dynamic friendliness finding a way through.

    May I express my admiration and gratitude to a country which produces in its rank & file such an innate sense of human decency that it can handle military formality and extend a generous friendliness even to strangers. . . .

    (PvT.) DAVID MARSHALL Straits Settlements Volunteer Force Perth, Australia

    Monstrous Crime

    Sirs:

    I have just seen the statement in your Oct. 15 issue, referring to the 34 U.S. clergymen who sent a protest to President Truman against the horror of the atomic bomb. You say this statement "seemed to imply that its use might have been excusable to 'save ourselves in an extremity of desperation.' "

    No such implication was intended or contained in the protest issued by myself and my colleagues. We denounced the use of the bomb under whatsoever circumstances as a hideous atrocity and an outrage upon every principle of ethics and religion. Our nation stands disgraced before the world as the perpetrator of this monstrous crime.

    JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

    Minister

    The Community Church of New York New York City

    "Secret"

    Sirs:

    We can't hold our tongues any longer. . . . If we intend to keep the "secret" of the bomb, in the face of almost universal opposition from scientists, then we must expect distrust and eventual aggression from nations claiming to be fearful for their own safety. . . . If, however, we give the "secret" to an international control commission, we i) show the Russians (against whom, after all, this secrecy is being directed) that we are ready to trust them, i) give a strong impetus for success of the United Nations Organization, 3) furnish a strong moral persuader to other nations to follow our example in cosmopolitan behavior, and 4) lose nothing which we won't lose shortly in any event, if we haven't already done so. . . .

    This all seems so clear and logical to us. Does it sound "idealistic" to you?

    R. C. COGSWELL

    Captain, A.U.S. C. R. HENDERSON

    Captain, A.U.S.

    C. W. DENKO ist Lieutenant, A.U.S. (S/SGT.) W. E. GRUNDY Chicago

    Swivel-Soldiers

    Sirs:

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