&gt; Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.<p>Right or wrong, the &quot;indiscriminate slaughter&quot; of civilians was the norm in WWII. In that sense, there was nothing unusual about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<p>As many as 200,000 civilians died in the firebombing of Tokyo, which would be as much or more than both atomic bombings combined. [1] If firebombing civilians was considered acceptable at the time, it is hard to understand why the atomic bombings would have any kind of different moral quality. Indeed, from the accounts of both the atomic bombings and firebombings I have read, I would very much prefer to die in an atomic bombing, which in many respects seems almost merciful in comparison. As many as 900,000 Japanese civilians died in conventional bombings. [2] The emphasis on the atomic bombings has always seemed strange to me: what is the difference between killing 200,000 civilians in a horrific firebombing and killing 200,000 civilians with nuclear bombs? Why so much questioning of two bombings and not the countless others that killed many more?<p>The horror of the atomic bomb was not that we killed 200,000 civilians, it was that it took only two bombs to do it rather than many. There was no new lack of moral concern for civilians. Civilians had no <i>direct</i> reason to fear atomic bombs more than conventional bombings: with the near-wholesale destruction of Japanese anti-bomber defenses, they were going to be just as dead. Atomic bombs were a <i>strategic</i> threat analogous to your enemy suddenly gaining huge reinforcements. And this strategic threat (though it hardly mattered to Japan) quickly escalated: go to the Nuclear Secrets nukemap [3] and compare the atomic bombs dropped on Japan with the megaton bombs developed by the US and USSR.<p>(I don&#x27;t mean to place undue emphasis on the US bombings of Japan, either: again, the killing of civilians was a norm in WWII.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Air_raids_on_Japan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Air_raids_on_Japan</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nuclearsecrecy.com&#x2F;nukemap&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nuclearsecrecy.com&#x2F;nukemap&#x2F;</a>