While it is difficult to sympathise with a brutal enemy, and the Japanese military were undoubtedly brutal (or rather, the samurai officer class were and the rank and file had to do as they were told or get shot), two wrongs do not make a right and if you cross the line between military and civilian targets you have defied the basic laws of war, that’s it and you cannot justify it. By his action, Truman showed that he was no more civilised than Hitler or Stalin, just as Churchill did with his bombing of Dresden.
If we agree that Truman was right, we may also have to agree to sympathise with Hitler or Stalin who used any methods to achieve their objectives regardless of the international laws of war. The Germans did it and so did the Japanese and that is why the international community today overall sympathises with the Allied rather than the Axis cause. While the atomic bombing may have made the end of the war against Japan shorter and overall reduced the number of lives lost, deliberating targeting civilians en masse to obtain a military objective through intimidation is not acceptable. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were against the Hague Convention as well as the historic international (customary) laws of wars, known collectively as jus cogens. Under the international laws of war as manifest in the Hague Convention of 1907, it was not permissible to target civilians in warfare although it is accepted that it may be difficult to avoid civilian loss of life as collateral damage against military targets.
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