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...and let us not forget that the Japanese military was killing MILLIONS in China, including millions of civilians. China was our ally. The USA had every right and reason to do all in its power to end by the earliest possible date the insane depravities the Japanese military was inflicting daily in China. Similarly, the Nazis and their allies were killing countless millions on the Eastern Front, including millions of civilians. The US and UK had every right and reason to seek to end THAT series of depravities at the earliest possible date. The revisionists of history never even bother to discuss the staggering scale of the atrocities we were trying to END when they indict the USA and UK. I'm not saying such moral balancing has an easy or obvious answer, but most of the time the dilemma is not even presented -- the revisionists write as though the Allies could have won WWII just as soon without the urban bombing, when in fact the war would almost certainly have gone on another year or two or more and cost millions more lives in the ALLIED countries. THAT is never taken into account by the revisionists.

"I'm not saying such moral balancing has an easy or obvious answer, but most of the time the dilemma is not even presented"

Actually, I DO think the moral answer is rather easy and obvious, though the human toll is catastrophic either way. But the leaders of the Allies were faced with such dire choices because of the depravity of the aggressive war launched by Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, and pals: either we kill up to 1 million now by bombing the hell out of their war machine cities, etc. or they kill another 5, 10, 15 million pursuing their war aims. I don't think any US leader could have gone to the public after a bloodfest invasion of Japan and said "well, we could have ended the war a year or two earlier with far less loss of life, even just on the Japanese side, but we weren't willing to use strategic bombers against Japan."

and let us not forget that the Japanese military was killing MILLIONS in China, including millions of civilians. China was our ally. The USA had every right and reason to do all in its power to end by the earliest possible date the insane depravities the Japanese military was inflicting daily in China.

All of this is true. But we don't even have to stretch that far. The lives of American boys are valuable, too - they're not pieces of wood to be fed into the sawmill. If the enemy breaks the rules (not engraved in stone, but conditioned upon reciprocity), he should not expect us to abide by them. And Japan broke the rules, repeatedly and without a second thought. Given the millions of civilians and POW's they tortured to death and summarily executed throughout Asia, I think the Japanese should be thankful that it was Uncle Sam, and formerly Japanese-occupied East Asia that decided the fate of postwar Japan.