Critics of using the atomic bombs would stand on firmer moral ground if they also protested the incineration of those cities. Their horror at the barbarity of Little Boy and Fat Man would hit harder if it included the killing of so many more hundreds of thousands of civilians by conventional weapons — and acknowledgment that it was certain to continue under the command of the passionately committed Curtis LeMay, the Air Force general who'd promised to beat Japan back to the Dark Ages. (On the eve of the March firebombing of Tokyo that killed nearly two hundred thousand, the general wired a
...more
