Remember - if you ever knew - that even after the *second* bomb was dropped, the Japanese government was evenly divided about surrender.

And when the Emperor announced his decision to end the war, a group of Japanese military officers actually tried the unthinkable - a coup to overthrow the government in order to keep the war going until all Japanese could experience the glory of fighting to the death.

Planned or not, had the war not ended when it did, Stalin's army would have invaded Japan in early September, before our own planned invasion. Picture that! And picture a Stalinist Japan during the height of the Cold War!

Two wrongs don't make a right, but in judging the reality of the situation, remember - if you ever knew about - the "Rape of Nanking,"
when the Japanese military killed 150,000 Chinese civilians, maybe more, just to show them who was boss. The Japanese were also the only army in WWII to use poison gas and germ warfare in battle (again, in China).

By the way, it is *not* true that thefire bombing of Hamburg and/or Dresden killed more people than the attacks on Japan. Even David Irving, the pro-German writer who did more to disseminate the "100,000 killed" at Dresden myth in the 1960s, long ago renounced this figure - which, along with even larger "estimates," appears to have originated as Soviet/East German disinformation.

War is indeed HELL and the HELL should be mitigated whenever possible. But second-guessing decisions made in 1945 by an American President trying to end, immediately, the most destructive war in human history against one of the rottenest militarist regimes in history is a waste of time and effort.

Everyone has a horror story from World War II. Compared to the records of Germany, Japan, and, yes, the USSR, those of Britain and the US are justly commendable.