Yeah the firebombings were awful, but at least they contributed to the fight against the Japanese empire. The war machine was already dead when the atomic bombs were dropped. Pretty big difference, no?

Edit: I take it the downvotes mean disagreement. If people are really discussing the history of this, then it should be common knowledge by now that the land invasion excuse was baseless propaganda. The US knew the empire was crumbling due to internal power conflicts and was rushing to test the bombs while there was still a war. After the first one the empire couldn't even organize itself to offer a surrender, which the US knew because it could hear the chatter.

The still prevalent propaganda around the end of the theater doesn't bode well for understanding the start of it and how to prevent another. People still believe Pearl Harbor happened unprovoked, out of nowhere. As if an embattled empire would travel across the ocean with no purpose other than to make one more enemy. Maybe I'm playing gatekeeper, but my bar for basic conversation quality regarding the Pacific theater in WWII is that the consensus history predates Pearl Harbor. Because if you think Pearl Harbor was attacked due to foreign insanity, rather than a desperate attempt to restore oil supply lines from their American embargoes, then you have an issue with xenophobia and a propagandized brain. How can we discuss whether America acted appropriately in provoking Japan to draw the US into the war, if our revisionist history erases that context?