I knew most of but not all of this piteous story.

In nearly all cases I am a pacifist. It is my belief that pretty well all great generals and conductors of war are to a greater or lesser degree psychopaths.

That said, Fascism waged war on the world and had to be defeated. Non-violence is good to the point that someone jumps on you in a dark alley and starts beating you to death.

After the years and tens of millions of deaths from the prolonged stalemate in World War 1, it might or might not be be that intense violence for a short time lead to fewer overall deaths.

The issue for me is that Japan attempted to surrender twice under only the condition that the Emperor only not go on trial, and Truman refused to negotiate at all.

After Nagasaki, he accepted their unconditional surrender, but then did not try the Emperor. Oliver Stone's "Untold History of the United States" makes the strong case that this was deliberate, because Truman wanted to show the Russians what an atom bomb could do.

If so, that was one of the great war crimes of modern history, up there with the bombing of Laos and Cambodia or the Rape of Iraq.