No, they weren't. The killing of innocent people is never justified.
Yes, this. Although under this logic war would never be justified, there's something about dropping a bomb on innocent civilians that irks me. During wartime, there's always going to be deaths of innocent civilians, but people don't go into war with the intent to harm civilian populations (unless its total war). The difference between dropping a bomb and going in with an invasion is that dropping the bomb is knowingly going to kill civilians, and to me that's the deep end of immoral.
I have to agree with this, though I don't think the option should be off the table if a dry-run of the atomic bombings on an underpopulated Pacific island failed to scare the Japanese into surrendering. While I oppose war, I also believe that we must win the fights that we
must fight. And WWII was definitely (at least the Pacific War) one of those wars.
