this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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Those certainly were appalling and destructive events. But why give them some special status over other bombing raids like the March 9 fire bombing of Tokyo, which also killed over 100,000 people in one night? Dropping 1 bomb vs. dropping 1,600 tons of conventional bombs in 3 hours?
200k people were vaporized by atomic bombs in an utterly indiscriminate manner. This is inclusive of babies, little infants literally melted in a second. The radiation persisted decades after the blast.
We give it a special status despite conventional warfare still being capable of greater numbers, because of how exceedingly cruel and indiscriminate it is.
Historians described it as an 'ethical shock' and I agree with the term. If the yanks did not elect to exclusively melt civilians with their demonstration history might look at it differently.