This underscores the point that I have been trying to make throughout the thread: the civilians were always considered fair game.
Whenever the subject of Japan and the Bomb comes up, there seems to be an element of the population that is incapable of considering even the idea that the Americans could have behaved viciously in order to achieve certain ends. Nobody wants to believe Steven Ambrose's "Citizen Soldier" or Norman Rockwell's "Homecoming G.I." were capable of any wrongdoing.
(It was only those "Japs" and "Krauts" who behaved badly dontcha know, the Americans were as pure as the fresh-fallen snow.)
1. We didn’t start the war.
2. We didn’t engage is systemic war atrocities, as did the Japanese, towards us and their neighbors. Wake Island. Execution of missionaries. Comfort women.
3. We gave the civilian population warning. They baked out of their own pride. If Japan had the same capability, there is nothing in their culture or history that suggests they would do in kind.
4. Heavy industry and their workers, were equally legitimate targets as military dispositions.
5. Japan knew they couldn’t win. But they were willing to continue the misery for everyone.
6. We spared Tokyo so that there would be a government post-war in order to rebuild. And then we rebuilt their economy, later super-charging it via the Korean War.
They got what they deserved. FAFO at the nuclear level.