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This is in response to Steve Lewis' letter regarding "the bombs America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki" ("Hiroshima Day," Public Forum, Aug. 12).
I would like to remind Mr. Lewis that there would never have been a Hiroshima or Nagasaki if there hadn't been a sneak attack by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941.
Mr. Lewis probably never lived in a country run by tyrannical despots who could knock on your door at midnight and cart you away to a concentration camp.
Our family came from Germany and we were 30 miles from the Russian front in March, 1945. We knew terror, starvation, depravation and walked out of our town before the Russians came so that we wouldn't be killed or thrown in their infamous gulags.
America has been responsible for giving freedom to more than 60 million people all over the world. It was the Allies and especially the American military that set us free from the evil of Hitler and other despots.
Mr. Lewis wants us to "look back ... the most tragic line in the hardest chapter in human history." May I suggest that we look back at the hardest chapters in human history by looking at what Stalin, Hitler and Imperial Japan did.
Ursula Diemer
Salt Lake City