So I think we're speaking the same language.
I don't view the dropping of those bombs as a punishment, or a deserved comeuppance. Nothing like that. I read Hiroshima by John Hersey when I was a child (probably way too young) and I was struck by two things; the nigh-indescribable horror of the bombs, and the determination of the Japanese civilians to fight to the last. By capturing the sentiments and the things the survivors saw, he captures some of that 'to the last' element that we saw in Midway and Okinawa, Saipan, etc.
There was a man who lived next door to one of the survivors, and his neighborhood safety committee needed to construct fire breaks. They asked him to tear down his house, and he was complying, ripping it down board by board. His own home. (The survivor was watching him through her home's window, and essentially saw him as the bomb exploded, killing the man.)
The most interesting and shocking takeaway from the book, for me, was not the bombs themselves, but the Japanese people's reaction. They reacted more profoundly to hearing their Emperor's voice over the radio announcing the surrender, than they did to the wholesale annihilation of two previously undamaged cities. Even the Tokyo raid, which killed more people than either atomic bomb, just made them mad.
It was a horrible thing, and it was ALSO done for other reasons, like testing a new toy, revenge, to scare the soviets, you name it. Our motives were unclean. But ultimately, it also saved Japanese lives. Different lives. The people of those cities might have all lived.
Others would have died, and in greater numbers, however.
So, I view it less as hegemonic revenge, and more as 'right thing for the wrong reasons', and 'least bad alternative' in an existential fight.
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