Letters to the Editor – 12/24/14
Bad votes
Great column by Patrick Buchanan on H.R. 758, the House bill condemning Russia that, as the headline noted, was based on lies. I find it interesting, and not in a good way, that both Hawaii representatives, Colleen Hanabusa and Tulsi Gabbard, voted for this ridiculous piece of “legislation.” Get your facts straight, ladies.
John Lee
Honolulu
Keep Constitution
Re: Bob Jones’ column “Is It Time For A Constitution Rewrite?” — any such effort will be a slippery slope. Ask any 10 people, no matter how wise or educated on constitutional law they may be, and you’ll get 11 answers to any given question. The Constitution is not perfect but, like our judicial system, on balance it’s better than anything else that’s out there.
Martin D. Schiller
Honolulu
One more bomb
Letter writer Ron Amemiya is right and wrong. He states that the U.S. had a total of only three atomic bombs in August of 1945. Actually, there were four. In addition to the test model of the Fat Man (plutonium-fueled) bomb that was tested at White Sands, N.M., on July 16, 1945, the U.S. had three additional operational, ready-to-deliver bombs. They included the Little Boy (uranium-fueled) bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima, and two Fat Man-type bombs, one of which was dropped on Nagasaki. The other was on alert in Utah. This third operational bomb was ordered to be sent to Tinian by Gen. Curtis LeMay, after the Hiroshima attack failed to elicit a prompt surrender from Japan. I believe a key part, probably the plutonium core, got as far as San Francisco when Japan surrendered after the Nagasaki attack. There were several fully built-up casings for plutonium bombs already on Tinian at that time and additional fuel cores were under assembly in the U.S. when the war ended.
Jack M. Schmidt Jr.
Kailua
Japan v. Russia?
After reading Don Chapman’s stories about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Honolulu’s sister -ties relationship with Nagaoka, I have another theory about why Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy — Mr. Chapman wrote that Germany hoped Japan would cause America to fight another war in the Pacific. My interpretation is that Germany expected Japan to attack Russia (as Mr. Chapman writes, they had gone to war a few decades earlier) and therefore force Russia into a two-front war, which Hitler firmly had to win, knowing full well that Stalin had ambitions, if not plans, to attack Germany. Germany did not expect Japan to attack the USA. When Germany’s hands were bound by the Axis pact and forced to declare war on the USA, it knew full well that the U.S. industrial might would be most difficult to conquer. They figured right.
Gerhard Hamm
Waialae Iki
dchapman@midweek.com
