From Mr Denis Pethebridge SIR — In your leading article about nuclear arms (April 21), you repeat the myth that the two atomic bombs dropped in 1945 brought "World War Two to an abrupt but timely halt".
At the time. 1 was a prisoner of war of the Japanese and 1 believed this to be true; but we have since learnt that, in fact, the Japanese were putting out feelers for peace and that the destruction of the two great cities and their inhabitants was a little gesture to impress — and alarm — our Russian allies. Perhaps this was a war crime approaching the scale of the Holocaust.
Yours faithfully, DENIS PETHEBRIDGE Banbury, Oxon