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Great series. "Atomic" should be "nuclear," but the usage is too entrenched by this point.

The actual use of nuclear weapons by the US against Japan was shaped in part by the moral erosion implicit in the bombing campaigns against both Germany and Japan. The great firebombing raids of 1944 and 1945 against Japan, in particular, were decisive.

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Thank you. As you may have seen, I address the collapse of our moral standards during the war and the indicriminant bombing campaigns in the next articles in this series.

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There wasn't much self-scrutiny about it here during the war, but there was in the UK, about the night-time carpet bombing campaign of the RAF against Germany. The US at least made some effort at daylight precision bombing with the famous Norden bombsight. OTOH, the case of Japan was the opposite: almost no air defenses to overcome, and cities made of wood, ready to burn with incendiaries.

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