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1. We dropped leaflets on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki well in advanced, notifying both cities would be destroyed. That isn’t murder.

You could tell yourself whatever you want; we would have executed any Japanese leader who had the bomb dropped on an American city, leaflets or not. Dropping leaflets in advance doesn't give anyone carte blanche to target a population center.

And these were just two cities; the campaign against cities up and down the Japanese islands took place over some six months' time. But everyone gets hung up on these two, because they think that these were somehow unique in that they were population centers being targeted for the first time. (They weren't.)

The plan from the beginning was always to get heavy bombers within reach of Japan and then let them go to town (without any concern about who might be killed); the annual August discussion about the Bomb is nothing more than a sideshow for those who don't know the background.

Do an internet search on the M69 incendiary bomb, and how it was chosen to be used as the primary weapon for the B29 raids; you'll learn about the Japanese and German village we built in Utah for the purpose of testing which was the best incendiary to use to burn a Japanese house down. (The M69 won the contest.)

The testing was done in 1942, some three years before Enola Gay took off that August morning.

(Once you know the background, you're not going to care a bit about any semantics about leaflets or casualty estimates; at the end of the day, the men giving the orders and the men in the planes really didn't give a schitt.)

I think Col. Tibbets said it best. “I saw the POWs”. Tell it to the Chinese that were used as bayonet practice by the Japs. Tell it to the people including American POWs that were in the Unit 731 camp. Tell it to the Aussie and American nurses who were slaughtered. Tell it to the men that were in the Bataan Death March. Tell it to the Philippine civilians and Soldiers that were slaughtered by the Japs. The Japanese got off easy. The Chinese, the Filipinos, the Aussie and American POWs not so much.

We didn’t target a population center. We targeted the military targets, giving advanced notice so that the Japanese people would leave. That is a FACT.

You hypothetical is irrelevant. You are arguing from a position that didn’t happen. The US showed an amazing amount of grace by not dropping one on Tokyo to take out then entire C2.

We are never going to see eye to eye on this.