And even though a totalitarian government claims to have subsumed all its citizens' human identities into a collective known as the Total Nation engaging in Total War, it was not and could not be so. Human beings have an intrinsic dignity conferred by God, not the State (not even a "God-Emperor"); and, in the practical sense, the people still spent their time living their lives: the gardener gardens, the mother mothers, the nurse nurses, and the just man, as Hopkins says, justices -- in this case, makes a distinction between those who are criminal and those who are just normal people acting normally.
Granted that a great many civilians get killed en passant when their live in a crowded city made of paper and wood, in the midst of many targettable assets, collateral deaths do not constitute murder and do not constitute the intrinsic moral objection.
Let me repeat: "Destroying Point C" in your scenario is not murder, and desroying MANY Point C's in Hiroshima is not murder, even if a great number of civilians die in a foreseeable but unintended way. I am glad you gave me the chance to clarify that.
What is damnable is the indiscriminate intent. And intent is determined by choices. Choosing to develop an intrinsically indiscriminate means of mass destruction, and then choosing to use it in a city=target manner, means that Point C is no longer the target. Thje city as such, together with its inhabitants, is the target.
This Constitutional Rights Foundation article (Link) contends that area bombing in the WWII European theater was a British RAF thing.
"When the United States entered the war in Europe, its Army Air Corps had better fighter-plane support and bombsights than the RAF. It could maintain its longstanding policy of daytime precision bombing. The Americans believed that the most effective way to destroy the enemy's ability to continue the war was to strike specific targets like aircraft factories and oil refineries."
He contends that area-bombing per se wasn't really adopted by the US until Curtis LeMay chose to emphasize it in the war against Japan.
The author cites:
Crane, Conrad C. Bombs, Cities, and Civilians. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Werrell, Kenneth P. Blankets of Fire, U.S. Bombers Over Japan During World War II. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
The bottom line is, the military forces have the obligation to obliterate enemy military targets employing the best precision targeting available to shield civilian lives to the greatest extent practicable at the time. It's a line that can be blurry, but even a blurry line has some cases which are borderline, but other cases which are clearly way off to one side or the other. The decision to develop and use intrinsically indiscriminate weapons, is the decision to say "T'hell with innocent and guilty, t'hell with right and wrong, t'hell with good and evil" and destroy everybody in sight, along with the line itself.
It's for decisions of that category that Hideki Tōjō was rightly arrested, sentenced to death, and hanged on 23 December 1948.
I would strongly support the the traditional U.S. Army Air Corps policy as against the indiscriminate Curtis LeMay and RAF policy, as did Ancombe.
Which brings me to my second point: Anscombe was most certainly not a pacifist. She identified pacifism as one of the main ideological errors which prevents a rational discussion of the just use of lethal force.
I believe that the Japanese forfeited the distinctions which underlay just war theory niceties such as noncombatants, civilians, innocents, or whatever other word you might choose, because of the political ideals of the regime and the kind of war they fought. God may have viewed some of them as innocents; the President of the United States does not have such a luxury. Further, the Japanese leadership was warned, albeit obliquely, of what may lay in store for them if they continued the conflict, but it was a warning that was ignored. Finally, Truman's sworn obligations were to the lives of his countrymen, not to theories of jus bello.
Anscombe always claimed that she was not a pacifist, but her actions show differently. She loudly and openly opposed confronting Hitler, because it didn't quite fit in with her theory of how a war should be conducted. She had a remarkably subtle mind, but she was a very stupid woman. Fortunately, the war was conducted by Churchill, and not an Oxford professor of philosophy.
I think that's about all I have to say on the subject. You may have the last word.