> "At this stage of the war, the lack of modern weaponry and ammunition meant that most were armed with swords or even bamboo spears." So basically defenseless

> "At this stage of the war, the lack of modern weaponry and ammunition meant that most were armed with swords or even bamboo spears." So basically defenseless. I understand that your opinion is that at the time they did not think of themselves as defenseless but this actually doesnt matter to me in the moral claims. The fact is that they were defenseless and we nuked them twice. We nuke them because we wanted to test these weapons and AFAIK the USA kept these cities from bombing raids in order to test the effectiveness of the weapons. Also the Japanese being 'too long' to surrender because they were not a well organized fighting force by that time. I think it was days before they even understood what happened in Hiroshima. and to address your edit: The irony is that we actually gave them what they wanted. The wanted to keep the emperor and we caved.