https://theweek.com/articles/623559/how-justify-war-crime-hiroshima
However, the hundreds of thousands of civilians who died in Japan were not just collateral damage — their deaths were the goal. You don't need a degree in moral philosophy to recognize that deliberately murdering countless innocent civilians is a war crime.
That's the point of the claim on the whole article. That the killing of the civilians was the goal. There are a ton of articles, books and other information out there as to the reason why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as counterforce (military) targets and not countervalue (population). Many of them are from groups/publications that are not known for being US apologists. I believe the factors the targeting committee were to focus on:
- The range of the aircraft which would carry the bomb.
- The desirability of visual bombing in order to insure the most effective use of the bomb.
- Probable weather conditions in the target areas.
- Importance of having one primary and two secondary targets for each mission, so that if weather conditions prohibited bombing the target there would be at least two alternates.
- Selection of targets to produce the greatest military effect on the Japanese people and thereby most effectively shorten the war.
- The morale effect upon the enemy.
These led in turn to the following:
- Since the atomic bomb was expected to produce its greatest amount of damage by primary blast effect, and next greatest by fires, the targets should contain a large percentage of closely-built frame buildings and other construction that would be most susceptible to damage by blast and fire.
- The maximum blast effect of the bomb was calculated to extend over an area of approximately 1 mile in radius; therefore the selected targets should contain a densely built-up area of at least this size.
- The selected targets should have a high military strategic value.
- The first target should be relatively untouched by previous bombing, in order that the effect of a single atomic bomb could be determined.
Describing the proposal for a national park to mark the attacks as "a very strange decision", Hiromichi Moteki, secretary general of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, said "This was absolutely a war crime".
Crazy site at
http://www.sdh-fact.com/
Look to other...odd...but well-researched opinions of the group that has part of its mission (
http://www.sdh-fact.com/mission-statement/ ) to remedy the lies told by the vast Chinese propaganda machine claiming all kinds of Japanese atrocities in the run up to WWII. I didn't read all the items linked at the site but, from those I read (and the linking editing), my guess is the Society is a Japanese nationalist organization and not a historical one.
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/3032-anscombe-mr-trumans-degreepdf
This one is harder to pin down on anything other than Truman is a doodoohead. The rest is philosophical angel counting. (Probably appropriate for an Ethics paper.) I think the basis for the peace is at hand theory:
In 1945, at the Potsdam conference in July, Stalin informed the American and British statesmen that he had received two requests from the Japanese to act as a mediator with a view to ending the war. He had refused.
Even the author acknowledged it was the Japanese who did not agree with unconditional surrender as it would give us power over their emperor, so any outreach was killed by them.
It seems to be generally agreed that the Japanese were desperate enough to have accepted the Declaration but for their loyalty to the Emperor: the "terms" would certainly have permitted the allies to get rid of him if they chose. The Japanese refused the Declaration. In consequence, the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The decision to use them on people was Mr. Truman's.
I know there are other articles, just as I know I can post any number coming to a generally different conclusion. One thing I do know, however, is that we are looking at it through the eyes where Japan is made up of old people, weird people, Gundam and Hello Kitty cuteness, rather than what the culture allowed around the time of the War.
Nazis: "Let's kill all the Jews!"
Around WWII Japanese: "Hold my sake."
on all sides