|
When the Japanese slaughtered an entire army of Australian soldiers who surrendered, when they invaded and raped much of China after they provoked a war with a fake sabotage, when they wouldn't have hesitated to use the same power against their aggressors, that is when use of such weapons is sanctioned.
Without it ending more or less that day in 1945, I highly doubt any less than 150,000 would have died (Pacifier, I don't know where your figure crept up to twice that). That figure is by no means a large amount in WW2, in fact, 100,000 civilians were killed in the firebombings of Tokyo. Much of England and Germany was literally flattened by bombing fleets.
Japan had a strong hold on the pacific islands. It was only a few australian soldiers defending a road through PNG that kept them from invading Australia, that's how close it came. It would have taken years to flush them out had the war continued, with far more losses on all sides. The US had the opportunity to end the war, with almost certain finality. They had no idea at the time the full extent of the collateral damage, as again, it's the only time the nuke was deployed offensively. As for the choice between dropping one or two, well, one would have very probably ended the war. Two? Guaranteed it beyond almost every shadow of a doubt.
Women and children were the most killed, naturally. The men were out fighting the Allies, and if anyone wishes to overlook the war crimes that were undertaken by the Japanese, well, you're not worth my time.
Criticism against something that's wrong is one thing. Against a measure used to end a war, that's another.
__________________
"'There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person,' says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex."
-- From an IGN game review.
|