If Pearl Harbor hadn’t of happened, neither of them would have happened.  

Nagasaki is harder though not impossible to defend.

Hiroshima on the other hand? Yeah. Understandable and perhaps justifiable (though *just* may be too a strong of a word for me, I’m not sure there is any *just* in war,. *Justifiable* vs just seems less certain). 

Without it, we likely need a D-Day like landing in Japan sacrificing a bunch of American lives, who hadn’t entered the war until Pearl Harbor.

And all of this debate ignores something else.

The fire bombing of Tokyo likely killed more people & did more destruction. And the US  intentionally targeted the wooden structures with the intent that the napalm would ignite it all (which it did) creating a conflagration. The wooden structures were in the residential area of Tokyo which, unsurprisingly, resulted in mass civilian casualties.

Everyone brings up dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But how do you feel about fire bombing Tokyo? 

To me, that’s harder to wrap my head around. Hiroshima at least had a large concentration of military and munitions facilities.