ABSTRACT
The realists who made the decision to use atomic weapons in Japan in 1945 were concerned almost exclusively with saving American lives. In a strict application of the just war tradition, the targeting committee, the Interim Committee, and its scientific advisory panel cannot be absolved of blame by using the principle of double effect. If Harry S. Truman really believed that destroying traditional military targets that happened to be located in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the aim of the bombing, his intentions would survive the first level of scrutiny under the just war tradition. If Truman merely pretended that harming civilians was not his goal, or hypocritically averted his moral vision from a plan to benefit from the harm to civilians rather than the damage to the military targets-he too is guilty of deliberately harming noncombatants under the just war tradition.
