I think it’s possible to deplore both the war crimes committed by the Japanese and the war crimes committed by the Americans. I don’t see the need to compare on

I think it’s possible to deplore both the war crimes committed by the Japanese and the war crimes committed by the Americans. I don’t see the need to compare one to the other, to pretend to solve some impossible utilitarian equation that demonstrates either dropping the bomb was right or dropping the bomb was wrong. Too much discourse on this topic depends on whatever happened in those counterfactual timelines that in any case we can only imagine and cannot observe. The important thing, which gets lost in the endless unresolvable discourse on blame and responsibility and ethics, is not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.