To the Editor,

"A friend of mine in a B-29 dropped another load -- for luck!" So warbled Perry Como's thin, tremulous voice, his face wreathed in smiles.

Swooning over her idol, it surely didn't occur to my mother that Perry (and most Americans in 1945) were applauding the dropping of both "loads" --- over Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- as just plain delightful. Never mind that at least 200,000 innocents were incinerated in their kitchens and cribs -- we proud Americans were now safe and the war was over!

In his hit song, "Dig You Later in the USA," Perry (who had a glowing reputation for once stopping to change a stranger's flat tire) continued to rejoice:

"A hubba, hubba, hubba, haven't you heard? I got it from a guy who was in the know -- it was mighty smoky over Tokyo!" At this point in the movie "Doll Face," the female singer, dancing and dueting with Perry, pulls the corners of her eyes up, to resemble a Japanese person. Further, as the pilot flew away "he was heard to say, 'a hubba, hubba, hubba, yah yuk!'"

I like to think that people have evolved a bit since then, but where was the outcry during the genocide of the Tutsis, and when Syrian civilians suffered a similar fate? And, for that matter, did no one in 1945 mourn the Japanese? Still, I'm happy to see the whole world jumping aboard this time to aid the Ukrainians, as well as the Russian wounded, so perhaps we can see it as a sign of awakening.

Jo-Ann Langseth

Warwick