If war broke out tomorrow....

[A Black Falcon]

Racism plays a huge factor here. Remember, this is the '40s. America didn't just hate the Germans and Japanese... watch some '40s Looney Tunes cartoons. They are instructive. Or political cartoons.

The Germans, and Hitler, are mocked. Hitler generally looks like a fool and they regularly humiliate him. The Germans are stupid and silly but not sinister or something...

The Japanese? Almost subhuman. Very sterotyped looks. This conformed with the time -- Americans were quite racist against non-whites. Before the war it was common to insult the Japanese Empire and believe that they had nothing like modern technology -- those people aren't like us and aren't as good as us and could never be as good as us... it was almost unconcious racism and even some people who had said things against racism were racist against Asians sometimes (like Dr. Seuss -- in WW2 he was a political cartoonist and made several that were racist against the Japanese...). And American soldiers thought of them as not really human... probably makes it easier to kill them, but it breeds a high level of racism.

Now of course the Japanese thought they were superior to us as well and thought they had much better will and stuff and the soft Americans would lose because we are so weak and unwilling to fight, but when you talk about that remember that we were the same towards them. And I am sure that that affected Truman's decision. As I said, had they finished the A-Bomb before Germany fell and they thought they could keep the Soviets out of Eastern Germany by using it (because I suspect that in Japan the anti-Soviet effect was one of the prime reasons for using the bomb), would they have used it? I bet not. Germans are white.