Regarding Yoshio Shimoji's Feb. 27 letter, "Just say the U.S. wasn't innocent": Shimoji's view that the United States should admit it "committed atrocities comparable to, or even exceeding" those committed by the Japanese misses an extremely significant point: that the Americans bombed Japanese cities to eliminate Japan's ability to continue its war of aggression and, in the case of the atomic bombings, to bring the war to an end as soon as possible.
Neither the Americans nor any other of the Allies slaughtered civilian populations in cities they had under their control, as the Japanese Army did in Nanking, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila. I am not American and I am merely being objective here.
I have criticized American military and foreign policy foul-ups in the Readers in Council column before, but you cannot remotely compare what the Americans did to the gratuitously vicious rampages of the Imperial Japanese Army.
It is interesting that Shimoji includes the phrase "or even exceeding" in his letter, evidently trying for that position of (nonexistent) Japanese moral superiority.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.