Lets look at the American atrocities on Japan

Even in those times, the only warring parties that did not drop bombs on their enemies were those that did not even have planes.

US bombers did not intentionally "bombed civilians including children". Civilian deaths were certainly regrettable, but unless you confine the bombing to only strictly military targets, they were unavoidable. Of crucial importance to winning any war is to destroy the enemy's productive capacity. In bombing any industrial area, by definition there would have been civilian deaths.

The above was especially relevant for Japan at the time of WWII. While Japan had great advances in military science and huge volumes of armament production, the rest of Japan's industries were actually fairly backward and generally small-scale. This meant instead of industrial production being concentrated in certain areas, factories were scattered all over the place, mixed with ordinary people's homes. It was impossible to hit one and not the other, especially for the B-29 bombers flying at heights that Japanese fighters could not even reach.

more people than that died. people died from radiation sickness and newborn babies died from horrible birth defects. The atom bombs weren't sneak attacks. we dumped millions of flyers on Japan warning the bombs were coming

I just saw the film for the first time yesterday, hence joining this discussion late...

My take is a very personal one. My grandfather fixed tanks from Normandy to Berlin in WW2, he had 3 brothers. The oldest, a marine pilot, parished flying in a training mission. The other two were younger, but had begun military service in 1945.

Guess where their next orders would take them- to join the invasion force of mainland Japan.

No bomb is ever just, no bomb is ever good, but as far as my personal standpoint, if my grandfather and his brothers had been part of an invasion force my family's lineage may have ended there.

How many more families wouldn't exist today if we had invaded Japan? Would Japan exist today?

Taking into account the millions Japan and Germany alone destroyed, if they had the atom bomb they would have no hesitation in using it. The fact that we are able to sit here today and have this talk makes me happy to be free.

Thank you to all service men and women for making that possible.

Let's see. Japanese killed 10 million in China. Is that enough for ya? How about the brutal treatment of comfort women. How about vivisection? Is that enough for ya? How about brutal treatment of POWs? How about cannibalism? How many more millions killed in Indochina, Philippines, etc, etc.? Those atomic bomb saved lives.

Even the late, great NYC Mayor Ed Koch, a lifelong liberal Democrat and World War II U.S. Army veteran, who served as an infantryman in Europe during the war, said that President Harry Truman was ABSOLUTELY correct in authorizing the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, in order to save hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen and also Japanese civilians in the long and bloody fighting that would have occurred if the Allies had had to invade Japan.

The unbelievable losses suffered by U.S Marines and Sailors at Okinawa, Iwo Jima and other Pacific islands at the hands of Japanese soldiers and Kamikaze pilots convinced President Truman that it was the right thing to do to drop the atomic bombs on the Japanese. I just wish that we had a sage, decisive and level-headed POTUS like Harry Truman in the White House today instead of the arrogant, narcissistic, and oh-so-incompetent poseur currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.