Why the scare quotes? It is still debated, and the fanaticism of the Japanese resistance (for instance, in Okinawa) makes a fairly compelling case that a land-based invasion of Japan would be extremely costly for both the invaders and the civilian population.
> Or spray them with agent orange?
It's pretty terrible as a weapon of mass destruction. Don't you think that if the US had wanted to annihilate the population of North Vietnam, they would have employed something a bit more direct?
Comparatively, I don't see the general disregard for civilian casualties exhibited by the Saudis in their ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen as a sign that they intend to wipe out the population wholesale.
> Or just help Suharto get rid of some millions and let him do the footwork?
Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely not condoning the US foreign policy. But I don't see the US involvement in the mass killings conducted by Suharto as something racially motivated against Asians. It was a case of "the only good communist/leftist sympathizer is a dead one".
It also completely ignores the historical context - events like the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, or actions of the Khmer Rouge were still casting a shadow over what people thought would happen if these countries were taken over by Communists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War_(1...
The US government did a lot of things to affect the way communism was viewed in the US, so I suspect there may have been some official spin involved here.
Its basically unknowable, lest we find some memoir of somebody who was present claiming one way or another, especially confounding is the fact that the meeting was planned before the bombings
Only as much as needed to clean-up a predetermined decision for a show of power for the post-war era to fit the official narrative.
(And even if it was "that a land-based invasion of Japan would be extremely costly for both the invaders and the civilian population" still wouldn't justify nuking civilians. War crimes are not excused when they make one win more cheaply).
>It's pretty terrible as a weapon of mass destruction. Don't you think that if the US had wanted to annihilate the population of North Vietnam, they would have employed something a bit more direct?
Why would they want to annihilate them? They wanted to win the war. So fucking their livelihood and health over AND still getting to use the hypocritical defense of "see, we weren't meaning to annihilate them" works even better when you need to maintain face.
If anything of the kind was done on their own soil of course, they'll still be screaming bloody murder for all eternity (like Pearl Harbor, even though they purposefully provoked Japan for months before it acted).
War crimes are not, in themselves, "programs of systematic and indiscriminate extermination" as claimed by OP, unless they are part of a wider policy. I'd argue if the US had the intention to conduct such a policy, the results would have been very different (as can be deduced by looking at successful genocides).
> Why would they want to annihilate them? They wanted to win the war.
Exactly.
> If anything of the kind was done on their own soil of course, they'll still be screaming bloody murder for all eternity (like Pearl Harbor, even though they purposefully provoked Japan for months before it acted).
I agree that Pearl Harbor needs to be seen in the wider perspective of the US-Japan relationship. And yes, most countries are a lot better at forgetting slights against them than the offenses they themselves committed (ironically enough, both protagonists of the conflict are an excellent example of this problem).
It seems to me that you are arguing that the US disregard the human cost of their foreign policy and have little regard for "collateral damage", not that they have been engaged in some bizarre extermination program of Asians, which is what OP was suggesting.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_Japan_by_pop...
That logic completely ignores historical events like the mass starvation under Mao during the Great Leap Forward, the crimes of the Japanese during WW2 (the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731, comfort women etc), and millions killed in the post WW2 independence conflicts (partition of India etc).
Putting the blame on the US alone is some seriously inaccurate historical revisionism.
How is that categorically different than the firebombing of Germany?
Why bother when you can just drop some atomic bombs to test on them (to "make them surrender")? Or spray them with agent orange? Or just help Suharto get rid of some millions and let him do the footwork?
>The US occupation of Japan was remarkably benign, for a country concerned with "systematic and indiscriminate extermination"
Or course it was. As was their post-war dealings of West Germany. It helps that there was a large competitor eyeing both regions, so they had to make friends quickly...