>But it's not something that was clearly, undisputably wrong.
>Yeah, perhaps negotiations would've yielded something,
>particularly if the Emperor had been allowed to remain in
>power.

Hirohito retained a figurhead
position within the government,
instead of being tried for war
crimes. Moreover, most of the
20,000 Japanese tried for war
crimes were never punished.

This proves that the U.S., Britain,
and the Soviet Union could've cared
less about Chinese and Korean victims
of Japanese fascism.

>But that might've just led to Japan rebuilding their
>military might, not unlike Germany between the two World
>Wars.

Speculation about the future
does not warrant the use of
nucleur conflagration.

>The war needed to be ended, and Japan, though
>desperate, would not have given up until the very bitter
>end, imo.

Your opinion is inconsistent
with the facts. By highlight-
ing articles and editorials
from 1945, researchers Mohan
and Tree showed that Japan
was close to surrendering.
Papers such as the Times,
Christian Century and News-
week reported that the Jap-
anese were in a bleak situ-
ation and clarification of
the surrender terms was all
that was needed to ensure a
Japanese surrender (149).
Even Truman's advisors such
as Joseph Grew and Henry St-
imson argued that the surre-
nder terms should be modifi-
ed in order to bring a quick
end to the war.

>And a conventional invasion and bombing campaign
>would've ultimately yielded more loss of life on both sides,
>this I believe even more strongly.

Growing evidence indicates that
an invasion may have been unec-
cesary considering there were
other option that could've been
explored.

Japan's deteriorating military
capacity capacity convinced Act-
ing Secretary of State Joseph
Grew that the Japanese would be
open to a negotiated peace which
included the allow retention of
the Japanese Emperor. Grew sought
to persuade Truman of his views
on May 28, three weeks after V-E
Day.

The Grew strategy, which had env-
isioned a successful American dip-
lomatic effort to end the war by
an offer and acceptance of a "con-
ditional surrender" (the same con-
dition that became the accepted ba-
sis for surrender in August) by the
end of July, was subsequently consi-
dered by several people to have had
more than an outside possibility of
success. Among those who thought so
in retrospect, in addition to Grew
himself, were Hanson Baldwin, milit-
ary analyst for The New York Times,
and Robert J.C. Butow, author of Ja-
pan's Decision to Surrender. Especi-
ally significant was the view expre-
ssed by Secretary of War Stimson, as
stated in his autobiography, co-auth-
ored with McGeorge Bundy. "It is pos-
sible," said Bundy, "in the light of
the final surrender, that a clearer
and earlier exposition of American
willingness to retain the Emperor wo-
uld have produced an earlier ending
to the war. . . ."

>The bottom
>line is, this was a war where civilians were legit targets
>too, that was the de facto rule.

At the beginning of World War II,
the bombing of civilians was reg-
arded as a barbaric act. As the
war continued, however, all sides
abandoned previous restraints. But
international law has always disti-
nguished between civilians and comb-
atants. Legal context to the decision,
from a variety of international treaties
and the 1996 World Court opinion.

>And the Holocaust is on an entirely different level,

Of course it is... It was committed
by the enemy and not us.