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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992                   TAG: 9201280088
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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A-BOMB MEANT TO IMPRESS RUSSIA

THE ARTICLE Jan. 12 by J. Ronald Willoughby, "America, the bomb: Not guilty," is the most shallow-minded opinion I ever read on anything.

In the book "Russia at War," Alexander Werth, a correspondent for the Sunday Times and a commentator for the BBC, states that "if the bomb was dropped in a desperate hurry on Aug. 6, it must have been because Truman was determined to drop it before the Russians entered the war against Japan."

But that was not all: The bomb, as so clearly suggested by Truman, Byrnes, Stimson and others, was dropped very largely to impress Russia with America's great might. Ending the war in Japan was incidental (the end was clearly in sight anyway), but stopping the Russians in Asia and checking them in Eastern Europe was fundamental.

Werth also explained: "After causing a spell of anxiety and bewilderment, all the bomb did, in effect, was to create on the Russian side a feeling of anger and acute distrust vis-a-vis the West. Far from becoming more amenable, the Soviet government became more stubborn . . .

"It was scarcely a coincidence that, 10 days after Hiroshima, the Supreme Soviet should have instructed the Gosplan - the State Planning Commission - and the Council of People's Commissars to get busy on a new five-year plan. No breathing space was to be allowed to the Russian people; the great industrial and economic reconstruction of the country was to start immediately. And, together with it, the making of the Russian atom bomb."

I took this information from pages 1042 and 1044 of Werth's book.

ROBERT B. HUNDLEY

EAGLE ROCK

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