The nation of Japan brought war to us. They attacked our military forces without warning or regard for our capacity for retaliation.

They used war as a means of forcing policy on the United States. Because of their actions in China, Manchuria, etc. (especially incidents like the Rape of Nanking) the US embargoed raw materials of war to Japan. The United States as a "free country" decided we would not supply steel and oil to Japan as they used it to further a war "they started" against their innocent neighbors. Their actions in Asia were no different from the worst of Nazi Germany in Europe.

Japan decided to knock out the US military capacity in their area so that they could "force" their terms on our country.

In addition to the Dec. 7 attacks on the naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Japan attacked US forces in the Phillipines. This resulted in the defeat of the rather small contingent of US ground forces. The remaining US, British and Phillipine soldiers then began the Bataan Death March and benchmarked the greatest crimes ever committed against US soldiers at that point in history.

The Japanese continued a war of aggression without regard to the rules of war and the Geneva Accord. They tortured and executed American and British POWs without regard. They commmitted unspeakable attrocities against civilian populations against men, women and children alike. They conducted biological warfare experiments on defeated civilian populations in Manchuria and and POWs in captivity.

To this day, the Japanese government has yet to own up to their actions. They frequently deny and dispute known facts. They have never been sufficiently held accountable by any international tribunal in the way Nazi war criminals were.

Indeed the US government went out of their way to protect many Japanese war criminals and gave those involved in bio experiments immunity in exchange for the collected data. Especially troubling is the number of Japanese war criminals who went on to positions of prominence in post war Japan. The most disgraceful example is a Japanese officer who had a member of the Doolittle raid tortured and executed and then actually ate his liver for dinner. This officer went on the become a wealthy member of the postwar Japanese Diet (an ironic name for the governing body of Japan) and was more or less appointed to that position by US forces who fully knew of his history.

Remember this the next time the Japanese cry about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As devastating as these atomic attacks were, without even factoring in the millions of US and Japanese lives saved as a result, it still is far short of suitable punishment for the nation that began and waged war against the world without regard for others.

No other country in the world was more deserving.

BTT

As a kid, I used to see the former right of way where the rails had been that were ripped uup and shipped off to Japan only to return as bombs and shells that fell on our guys.

To this day, the internment seems to me to make perfect sense, even if it was unfair. The a-bomb? No problem, considering the alternative.
Think they would have used it if they'd had it?  Damn right!