I read Ray Perkins’s “My Turn” (Monitor Opinion, Aug. 3). It made me very angry. He stated the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “needlessly and immorally exterminated nearly 200,000 Japanese civilians.” Needlessly? Maybe he didn’t have a father in the Army in the Pacific, island-hopping toward Japan. A reliable estimate predicted unprecedented loss of American lives attempting to end a war the Japanese started. Do you think my mother was concerned for the Japanese lives that might be lost? She just wanted her husband home.

DONALD L. JOHNSON

Wolfeboro