After four decades, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project finally admitted this in 1985:
During one such conversation Groves said that, of course, the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets. (Whatever his exact words, his real meaning was clear.) […] Until then I had thought that our work was to prevent [an Axis] victory, and now I was told that the weapon [that] we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim. […] When it became evident, toward the end of 1944, that the [Axis] had abandoned their bomb project, […] I asked for permission to leave and return to Britain.
It is good to see somebody acknowledging some of the Empire of Japan’s violence against civilians, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Most of the victims of the bombings were civilians who had no direct involvement in their government’s atrocities, and we’ve seen from the Axis’s reprisals how counterproductive it was to use the local civilians as whipping boys, so punishing them for ‘their’ military’s atrocities is not only grossly unfair but wasteful.
See here for more.
It is good to see somebody acknowledging some of the Empire of Japan’s violence against civilians, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Most of the victims of the bombings were civilians who had no direct involvement in their government’s atrocities, and we’ve seen from the Axis’s reprisals how counterproductive it was to use the local civilians as whipping boys, so punishing them for ‘their’ military’s atrocities is not only grossly unfair but wasteful.