300 to 1 is disproportionate warfare

[kjones]

191. Got a whole bookcase of them.

And you are right, the government was divided. Did that preclude their
reaching a consensus? Well, we'll never know, we nuked them as soon as
we could.

I mean, you can just read source materials like Truman's or other US
military leaders logs and journals and see that their concerns are with the
Russians, not the Japanese. The decisions were made based on the expected
power structures that would exist after the war. The Japanese themselves had
nothing left to amount to a navy or airforce. No oil supplies, no or dwindling other material resources. Inevitable surrender was not in question. Nuking a country on the cusp of surrender, when a few weeks and open lines of communication would end the war and no invasion is likely needed...well, I would hope it would leave more of a sour taste in your mouth than it apparently does. We weren't worried about ending the war though, we were worried about ending it....before Russia got a bigger piece of the pie.

And again, all this other stuff aside...Civilians. We should not kill civilians. There's no excuse for killing civilians. It's not hard to understand, you just don't do it. Again, can you not imagine what your position would be if Japan or Germany had nuked a major us city?

"No, President Truman did what he had to do to save our soldiers. Had he really wanted to destroy and kill innocent lives, he would have dropped the bombs on Tokyo."

Besides the fact that Tokyo was already firebombed to the hell before the nuclear bombs were ready, the US wanted to use the bomb on undamaged population centers (a focus on "urban" is mentioned).
"He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualification: (1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are unlikely to be attacked by next August."
http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html

And the US was certainly concerned with making an international spectacle with the bomb:
"A. It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released."
Note that "psychological effect" refers to number of (primarily) civilian deaths.