In war only the losers are guilty of crimes against humanity

RENEWED attempts to justify the atom bombing of two Japanese cities, sixty years ago this month, have a lot in common with the Holocaust deniers.

Like those who try to play down, excuse, or partly deny the mass murder of Jews and others by the Nazis, defenders of President Harry Truman’s decision to annihilate so many innocent civilians in Japan seek to excuse it on the grounds that it happened in the context of a brutal war.

They point to Japanese atrocities against civilians in south-east Asia and the Pacific, and to mortality rates in Japanese POW camps, and use these wrongs to cloak the atom bombings with the mantle of righteousness.