IN July 1945, as an 18 year old, I was in the Royal Navy at a Royal Marine camp in India preparing to invade Malaysia in the area of Port Dickson and Port Swetenham.

In August the two atom bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered and the war in the Far East was over.

Without this surrender hundreds of thousands of my generation (British, American and other nations) would not have survived. Our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren would not have been born.

It is easy, with hindsight, for the moralists to say the bombs should not have been used, but I am sure the right decision was made, with the knowledge available at that time, to defeat the vicious, cruel and fanatical enemy.

War is a dirty business but if you are in it you must use all the means available to you to win, to uphold the values you believe in and know to be right - be it Greek triremes at Salamis, the better long bows at Agincourt or the atom bombs.

The alternative of the enemy winning was unthinkable, at that time.

A L Dixon,

Coggan Way,

York.

Updated: 10:54 Wednesday, August 17, 2005