Hiroshima and Nagasaki

With the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. DIRECTLY targeted civilians.  They also directly targeted civilians with the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden.  The Japanese and German GOVERNMENTS committed many atrocities, but that in no way makes it moral or right for the U.S. to murder civilians in those countries.

You can make all the arguments you want about how murdering these civilians brought an early end to the war.  This does not change the fact that civilian men, women, and children were murdered.  When other people do this, we call them terrorists.  That label applies equally here.

Just because they were polite doesn't mean they thought you were their equal.  the didn't.

They're peaceful NOW.  Before 1945 it was a purely military culture.  you do realize shit happened before you were born, right?  You do understand that Japan was ruled by the military until we destroyed their military, right? 

Let's repeat that for the slow folks:  Japan was a military society and culture until we dismantled their military after the war.  A war started by the Japanese to keep us from interfereing in their conquest and dominance of East Asia.  The subjugated peoples were treated like animals because the culture of Japan taught that if it ain't Jap, it's crap.  They had to be stopped.

They invaded China, the Phillipines, and other East asian nations.  While there, they committed atrocity after atrocity until we nuked them.  They still try to deny it ever happened.

Japan was just as bad as Germany in their treatment of conquered peoples during the war.  Denying that is revisionist bullshit.  That sort of behaviour by the soldiers doesn't happen in a vacuum.  The Japanese, just like the Germans in Russia, thought of the conquered as subhuman and treated them as such.

Here's what Truman had to weigh in his decision:

1.  US public sick of war, sick of dead Americans.
2.  Japanese always fought to the last, no reason to think it would be any different on the fucking mainland of Japan.
3.  Soviets were about to invade Japan from the north, and communism couldn't be allowed to spread.
4.  Millions of dead Americans if we invaded mainland Japan, and as an American that's bad.
5.  might be able to end it by dropping a couple bombs!?!  DO IT!

btw, had the Japanese military had its way, we actually would have had to kill a majority of the people of Japan, tens of millions in all likelyhood.  The military thought it better for ALL to die than suffer the humiliation of defeat and surrender.  It took their god/emporer to tell them to quit, and the military tried to keep that from happening but (thankfully) faild AFTER we nuked them twice.  That is historical fact.

As a bonus side effect of the nuking, nobody has been nuked since.  yet.