Certainly we had people who thought that Japanese were more apt to side with our foe due to their being Japanese and being easy to tell apart. However as it pertains bombing, which is the discussion here, we were indiscriminate towards both. We did try to steer clear from cultural targets such as avoiding Kyoto. We did not have the same view on Dresden as it had more strategic importance. And people forget we had restrictions on Germans in the country and interned a few thousand as well though not to the extent we did Japanese. Italians on the other hand we didn't take seriously --not even sure we labeled them enemy aliens

Kyoto was the traditional seat of Imperial power. Tokyo, called Edo back in the days the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military dictatorship, is the national capital because of that. A whole lot of the action that overthrew the Shogunate happened in Kyoto, so sparing it was in part to encourage the Emperor---in a position that for a very long time had little or no real power---to do exactly what he did then. If he'd tried it earlier, he would have been killed and replaced with a more pliable one. As others have noted, the final surrender was a rather close run thing....

Hard to believe it was anything but European vs Asian. Not right, but it was war. And the British didn't do it like we did; and the British leaked secrets like a sieve. There was a highly-placed Japanese in UK govt, who sent everything on his desk back to Japan. So war is heck.