There’s no question Truman’s opening of the Nuclear Age, and resultant Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) era commenced. Talk of genocide must consider, as noted, the Rape of Nanking by Japanese soldiers, brutal treatment by Japanese soldiers of American POW’s (especially red haired caucasians) and credible intelligence that Japan planned to murder American POW’s as the US approached mainland Japan. Certainly the internment of civilian Japanese Americans by FDR was racially motivated. On a personal level, my father was stationed aboard a US Navy vessel at Okinawa after he survived the Normandy D Day Invasion at Omaha Beach. Quite possibly I wouldn’t be here if Truman hadn’t used these terrible weapons and the steppingstone island by island drawn out battles continued. War poster artwork in US during WW II show racist caricatures of Japanese soldiers. So to wage battle against a country whose residents looked different than us was certainly a racial factor. Japan wiped out the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. A sneak attack on an unsuspecting nation that cost thousands of American lives. Japan reaped the whirlwind it sowed. It’s unconscionable that Japan allowed its own population to suffer such devastation from the atom bombs. It was the correct decision by the US to force the war to a close.
