re: #142 sagehen

You mean like the Chinese and Malaysians and various other Asians who were being eviscerated by the tens of thousands every day, until the Japanese emperor surrendered unconditionally and told his troops to not do that anymore because they had to come home?

I’m not in the right place right now to respond to this comment, so I merely want to say that I apologize if it seemed that I was minimizing what the Japanese actions during the war were. My intent - again - was merely to highlight that it is distasteful to me to look at the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki solely in terms of Allied troop lives saved instead of including the difference in casualties in terms of both Japanese civilians and all those saved by the surrender of the Japanese troops. The decision to drop the bomb saved very many lives, I am sure; I am equally sure that the decision was made based solely on Allied troop losses and not out of any humanitarian basis for either the thousands being killed in Asia by Japanese troops or for the lives of Japanese civilians who had little to no say in the war machine, as much as I wish both of those factors may have played a role in it.