Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[Kurgan]

Was it right? No. It goes against the principles of Just War Theory (which I subscribe to).

 

Indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction targetted at civilian population centers are unacceptable, even if they have the potential to "win" a war (such an acceptance would logically also sanction other forms of state "terrorism").

 

That perhaps the pilot(s) dropping the actual bombs or those supporting their dropping didn't fully realize the scope of the long-term suffering they would cause (how could they have?) does not lessen the evil nature of the act.

 

War may be hell, but human beings are still moral agents, even in war, and so their actions still can be judged according to moral principles. Recognizing the fact that in war much morality is tossed out the window in favor of expediency (or simply because it isn't as monitored and actively punished as in peacetime) is not the same as condoning such behavior (giving soldiers, generals and presidents carte blanch in wartime) or acceptance of moral relativism.

 

I could go into more detail if/when I have time, but I presume my opinions on the matter are already well known...

[toms]

It does leave open the door for other people to go with the "make the biggest, most terrible atrocity possible in the hope the enemy will surrender".

[Totenkopf]

Interesting. TK, I give you credit for having pluck. However, your sense of history is skewed. I also can't help but wonder how on the one hand you seem to intimate that if you don't want to get hurt you don't go to war, but then seem to scream when the pain is applied. The sad fact is that no matter what kind of bombing you did in Japan, many people would have died b/c of the density of the population. It's only about the size of California and had a population of around 75-90 million or so at that time. It's a fact that more people died in the fire bombings of Tokyo than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War is ugly and it's debatable in total war just how innocent civilians really are. Japan was mobilized across the age spectrum, so many people were little more than REMFs in the war effort (that would have been more or less true in the allied countries as well). Is the real upset from the fact that so many people died in the bombings or is it the nature of the bombs themselves that really disturb you?

 

As to the opinions of people like Eisenhower and Nimitz, they were only that. Both men realized that Japan was defeated in the field, but that did not mean that they were ready to surrender. It literally took two A bombs to force the emperor's hand to press the military government to finally cave and accept surrender. Even as Japan was going down on the mat, they still were prepared to inflict ugly losses on any operation mounted by the allies. The Americans found many hidden suicide weapons throughout Japan after the surrender. Had Hirohito demanded their lives, they'dve gladly died. Battles like Okinawa, with over 150000 Japanese casualties and something like 37000 US dead and wounded were an omen of how costly an invasion would have proven. On top of which, had we merely embargoed/blockaded Japan, a larger number of civilians would have perished from starvation and other diseases. The atomic bombings were basically the better of two bad choices. As ED basically pointed out, once the enemy has accepted his defeat, THEN the healing and rebuilding can begin.

 

As to your contention about NY and Iran, that begs a question. Has the US attacked Iran first militarily with nukes? If so, the Iranians would have the right to strike back with whatever they could. Would it be wise for them to do so? No. Simply because we would turn Iran into a liquid glass cauldron. If Iran were to launch a nuclear Pearl Harbor vs NY, then that would not only be wrong, but foolish as well for the reason already stated.

 

What is the bigger atrocity in war: to strike with a weapon so horrible as to end a conflict or to drag out the struggle, killing many more people, such that you can claim some kind of moral highground?

 

Chances are that had the Emperor in fact had a big enough set to force his military leadership to surrender sooner, he could've spared his people greater suffering. You can't start a war and then try to sue for favorable terms b/c you don't like that you've lost. The world just doesn't work that way.

[Datheus]

I don't really differentiate between the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bombing of London and Dresden. So what if it was a nuclear bomb? They rate nuclear bombs as if they were huge piles of TNT. An explosion is an explosion.

 

And war is war. I'm sorry if you're surprised that innocent lives were lost in the largest war this world has ever seen. Roughly 33% of the casulties in the entire war were civilians--even in Russia. (http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob62.html) Listen, when you bomb strategic points, that involves roads, power plants, and factories.

 

If you intend to deprive the Japanese military of water, electricity, and food, maybe you would like to tell me how you intend to supply it to the Japanese civilians.

[Mace MacLeod]

TK, here's some reading for you in your spare time, just so you have a general idea who the US and western allies were fighting in the pacific theatre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_nanking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

 

The political, military and social context of A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in no way resembles this world situation today in any way, shape or form. First, a conventional military invasion of the Japanese Home Islands would have resulted in far more civilian casualties than the bombings. Japan was prepared to fight down to the last man, woman and child to defend the Emperor, and defeat was still considered unthinkable right up to the very end. Projected US casualties were 500,000 to 1,000,000 for an invasion. Totenkoph mentions Okinawa--this is a very small taste of what awaited an army trying to invade Japan. General Ushijima knew that his men on Okinawa were doomed and that it was only a matter of time before they were wiped out, but that didn't stop them from fighting to the last and taking as many Americans with them as possible.

 

Secondly, the A-bomb blasts were also an announcement to the USSR, who the western allies knew weren't going to be friends for long after the fall of Berlin and Tokyo. Stalin is right up there with Hitler in the "All-time Horrible People" list, and where the western armies actually did liberate conquered countries and territories, the Soviets just kept the areas for themselves. Nowhere was this more true than Poland, which was the country the UK, France et al declared war on Germany to save, remember? How many more millions of people died in the Soviet Union? We'll probably never know.

 

Finally, while I do feel sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I also feel sympathy for the millions of Chinese, Philipino, Malasian, Burmese, Korean and Thai civilians slaughtered by Imperial Japan. And TK, if you think that American detention camps were inhumane, maybe you should talk to a few of my family members who were captured and thrown into Japanese POW camps. Oh wait, you can't talk to them, because they were beaten, starved and tortured to death. Seriously, you need to read a few history books to remind yourself just who we were fighting and why.

[TK-8252]

"Because our enemy was so bad, we get to do bad things as well."

[Totenkopf]

TK, beyond maybe playing devil's advocate, what exactly is your point? Perhaps you should enlighten us on how the war war should have been concluded and why you think it could have REALISTICALLY worked that way.

[TK-8252]

TK, beyond maybe playing devil's advocate, what exactly is your point? Perhaps you should enlighten us on how the war war should have been concluded and why you think it could have REALISTICALLY worked that way.

 

We didn't need to get involved in the first place. If Japan or Germany showed up with troops on our shores, yeah, we'd crush them there. But forcing American citizens to fight overseas against their will (draft) is not freedom.

[Totenkopf]

Oh, I forgot that the US must have attacked PH with copies of Japanese weapons to drag us into the war. You also seem to forget that a great number of Americans actually volunteered to join the war and didn't wait around for a draft board to "violate their freedom". I think you're confusing WW2 with perhaps Vietnam or other postwar conflicts (perhaps "Bush's war"?). WW2 didn't provide us with the luxury of sticking our head in the sand and hoping everything just blew over.

 

Also, you still don't explain how the war could have been realistically concluded w/o the dropping of the 2 Abombs, or at least some heavy lost of life via other means. I will take it that you realize that the US is not an autarky (ie completely self sufficient in natural resources) and sometimes has to defend it's interests beyond it's physical borders.

[TK-8252]

Oh, I forgot that the US must have attacked PH with copies of Japanese weapons to drag us into the war. You also seem to forget that a great number of Americans actually volunteered to join the war and didn't wait around for a draft board to "violate their freedom". I think you're confusing WW2 with perhaps Vietnam or other postwar conflicts (perhaps "Bush's war"?). WW2 didn't provide us with the luxury of sticking our head in the sand and hoping everything just blew over.

 

If WWII could have been fought without a draft, that'd have been great - but I don't think we could have done so.

 

Also, you still don't explain how the war could have been realistically concluded w/o the dropping of the 2 Abombs, or at least some heavy lost of life via other means.

 

We didn't have to do anything. They would have either surrendered on their own, or wouldn't have been able to attack us anyway, and would crumble away under the strain put on their country.

 

I will take it that you realize that the US is not an autarky (ie completely self sufficient in natural resources) and sometimes has to defend it's interests beyond it's physical borders.

 

Protecting our interests didn't include the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children.

[Totenkopf]

I suppose you're right. We could have just sat by while the Soviets took over Japan. If the concept of a draft seems to frighten you so, or at least strike you as almost unforgivably unjust, you probably ought to emigrate to Scandanavia or Switzerland.

 

C'mon, seriously, all your telling us is that you don't like the draft and that somehow people should've been magically spared at war's end. You still don't say how the Japanese would've surrendered and even stated that we could have embargoed Japan in 1945, but allowed them food and medicines. How would that have induced them to surrender? How would we have prevented them from trying to regroup and launch a slew of suicide weapons vs the fleet that would've had to enforce AND carry out the terms of said embargo? Also, considereing the strain placed on the USSR at the beginning of the war, perhaps you can explain how they kept on till the end even in the face of 25 million casualties. Japan might have eventually collapsed under it's own weight, but not before the Soviets would have invaded it. How many Japanese sholud've died to satisfy one's sense of moral superiority about not using an atomic weapon? Sadly, it took the prospect of almost complete annihilation to bring the Japanese around.

 

Unfortunately, you're quite wrong there. Slaughtering innocents, as you put it, is one of the ugly aspects of war that is almost always unavoidable. It also tends to serve as one of the reasons people try to use every diplomatic trick in the book before they go to war to get what they want. Hitler would have been quite happy to take Europe by diplomacy if he could have pulled that off. But staggering human loss is also the main reason WW3 never happened. If not for nukes, there would have been almost nothing to stop the USSR from overrunning Europe within a decade of the war's end.

[Q]

We didn't need to get involved in the first place.

Yeah, we did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_Attack

Up until that time the majority of Americans wanted to stay out of the war (isolationism).

 

As for using nuclear weapons on Japan: no, the civilians didn't "deserve it," but the military installations in those cities did. This was just one of many very inhumane acts carried out by both sides in the bloodiest, most ruthless conflict the world has ever seen. It was seen at the time as a way to swiftly end the war with no more American lives being lost. I doubt that at that time Truman, or any other American for that matter, really gave a rat's ass about the civilian deaths these bombs would cause, given the fact that by that stage in the war the ruthless flattening of entire cities by massive air strikes had become the norm. EmpDev has already correctly pointed out that the firebombing of Tokyo alone killed as many people as nuking Hiroshima did, and it was just one of several Japanese cities that got the same treatment.

 

After four years of total war on two fronts, America was sick of war and Japan had shown no outward signs of giving up. Your idea of a total blockade is admirable, but unrealistic given the fact that it was already being done. The US Navy had adopted Germany's methods in the use of submarines. They were sinking every Japanese merchant or naval vessel that was in the waters around Japan, and had been for at least the past year.

 

The Japanese were cut off and starving, but they wouldn't surrender. Based on experience gained through four years of total war the US military leadership had every reason to believe that they would never surrender. As thay saw it, there there was only option: a bloody invasion with millions, yes millions of casualties on both sides, which they were completely willing to and were planning to undertake when the nukes suddenly became available. To them it was a no-brainer. Either invade at the cost of several hundred thousand American lives or nuke two cities and kill a couple hundred thousand Japanese in a way little different than they'd been doing for the past year, and with little or no loss of American lives. It was probably the easiest decision Truman ever made.

 

Was it brutal? Yes, but so was everything else that happened in that war. It pales in comparison to the stuff that Germany and Japan did. He who tries to remain a saint while waging war loses. There is no question in my mind that if the Germans or Japanese had developed these weapons first, they would have used them to take over the world. The US used them to end the war, and probably also as a message to that ruthless bastard Stalin that he'd better behave himself.

 

Your humanitarianism is admirable, but ultimately I think the use of the bomb saved more lives than it took.

[TK-8252]

Yeah, we did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_Attack

Up until that time the majority of Americans wanted to stay out of the war (isolationism).

 

Pearl Harbor was a result of the U.S. choosing to ally ourselves with Britain and the Allies, and cut off trade with Japan. Had we stayed neutral we might not have gotten attacked.

 

The Japanese were cut off and starving, but they wouldn't surrender.

 

But why not? A number of professionals have voiced their opinion (as I have quoted previously in the thread) that they regretted the atomic bombings, because they DID think that Japan was on the path of surrendering.

 

And if they didn't surrender, why right away bomb a bunch of civilians? Why not detonate the bomb over an unpopulated part of Japan, just to show the rest of the world that we have the bomb, but not slaughter innocents in the process...

 

Either invade at the cost of several hundred thousand American lives or nuke two cities and kill a couple hundred thousand Japanese in a way little different than they'd been doing for the past year, and with little or no loss of American lives.

 

Why did we have to do anything? Was Japan prepared to come and invade the U.S. and take it over? If not, then we would be on an offensive campaign, not a defensive one.

[Emperor Devon]

Pearl Harbor was a result of the U.S. choosing to ally ourselves with Britain and the Allies, and cut off trade with Japan. Had we stayed neutral we might not have gotten attacked.

 

You are overlooking some aspects of the war.

 

But why not? A number of professionals have voiced their opinion (as I have quoted previously in the thread) that they regretted the atomic bombings, because they DID think that Japan was on the path of surrendering.

 

I'm beating around the bush with this. They were not surrendering. Life in some parts of Japan was truly horrible for years, and they put up with it. They were sending planes on suicide missions, and at an increasing rate. Is that a sign of wanting to surrender?

 

And if they didn't surrender, why right away bomb a bunch of civilians? Why not detonate the bomb over an unpopulated part of Japan, just to show the rest of the world that we have the bomb, but not slaughter innocents in the process...

 

That would have been as effective as Osama crashing an empty plane into a corn field in Nebraska. While at it, why just detonate the bomb in the U.S. and show the world a video?

 

Why did we have to do anything? Was Japan prepared to come and invade the U.S. and take it over? If not, then we would be on an offensive campaign, not a defensive one.

 

So we shouldn't have brought the third most evil nation on Earth at that time to justice? All the atrocities Japan had committed which rivaled that of the Nazis? If you leave countries alone during war, they rebuild their militaries. Giving an opportunity like that would have been foolish in the extreme.

 

From what I've noticed in your posts, you seem to be overlooking how evil how Japan was during that time. They were the ones who invaded countries without provocation, tortured people, burned cities, were responsible for thousands of deaths in Asia, and other war crimes I can list if you want. Is there a reason you seem to be overlooking this?

[Totenkopf]

So, TK, the US is now not allowed to adjust it's trade policies b/c some other country might find them inconveient? You do realize that being "on the path of surrendering" isn't the same as actually doing it? Your repeated attempts to cite pointless civillian deaths is misplaced. As has been pointed out to you, these targets all had military and economic reasons (supporting Japan's war effort) and Japan was too densely populated to avoid such casualties if we chose to do so anyway. Hawaii and PH were part of the US. Offensive campaigns are not bad in and of themselves. I think you must be trying to delineate between wars of conquest and those forced on you by others. The US fought both offensive and defensive campaigns throughout the war in both the Pacific and European theatres. Frankly, and with all due respect, you need to read up on the natures of both the Imperial Japanese government and the Nazi regime and their goals if you're to better understand the issue at hand. Sorry if that sounds harsh to you.