Editor,

This is in response to the ill-informed Coupeville writer who suggested in his Aug. 8 letter to the editor that the United States should “apologize” for dropping the two nuclear bombs on Japan, which led immediately to the end of WWII.

I shall not rehash the reasoning behind the action so eloquently put in the two responses by Fred Wilmot and Chuck Clark, but ask the apologetic writer if he was on the landing force in “Operation Downfall,” poised to invade Japan.

I think not, nor was any relative of his in that position. I think not yet again.

I, as a young boy of 12, had my beloved uncle, Sam Rich — yes, Uncle Sam — deployed on a landing ship tank as a machinist mate chief waiting as part of planned invasion of Japan.

Sam, who died in 1995, was like a father who raised me during my teenage years.

Fortunately, he returned alive, but with wounds received when his ship was blown up while beached in the Marshall Islands. He never reported those injuries, which would have earned him the Purple Heart, but continued to fight on another LST.

He was a true patriot fighting for the lives of the “apologetic” and true patriots alike.

Never once in letters back home did he complain about conditions.

Maybe the Coupeville writer should apologize to me, Mr. Clark and Mr. Wilmot for his outlandish, distasteful letter, but I for one won’t be holding my breath. He’s just lucky he never related his feelings of apology to my uncle’s face.

God bless our fighting men and women and their devoted families everywhere.

I apologize to them for the ill-informed writer’s letter.

No military person wants war, let’s make that crystal clear.

Fred Stilwell, CDR USN (ret)

Oak Harbor