I am not too familiar with the articles of the Geneva Convention. But it was in place during World War II. As there are guidelines to follow regarding combatants, there are also guidelines to follow regarding non-combatants, which usually means women and children among others. I am not an expert in this, but I believe that it was generally understood that women and children were not to be harmed. (And that is one reason why American soldiers had so much trouble in Vietnam, when women and children might walk up to them with a hand grenade. These people had been considered non-combatants. The de facto rules of guerrilla warfare are different.)

http://www.dannen.com/decision/index.html
Atomic Bomb: Decision. These headings produce links of the texts they came from when you go to the link mentioned above (I have used red to emphasize portions of the text):


Somebody lied. Clearly, the Commander-In-Chief did not want civilians targeted. Clearly, his wishes were not followed.

It is terrorists who strike civilian targets; at least that is one criterion for defining a terrorist. So how does it become automatically right if the United States does it?
Otherwise, how was this action different from what happened on 9/11, considering that bin Laden and his ilk had made it plain that jihad had been declared against the United States, and that the CIA and FBI had already heard about plans to attack the United States?



Back to 1945. I am inclined to believe that Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, was a product of the military thinking and military ethics of his time. He said (again, I have used red for emphasis):


I have problems with the reasoning "Well, we did it, so it must have been necessary." When I asked for sources, I was hoping for Internet links. But that's okay.

Sorry, the fourth geneva convention, the first one to deal with the treatment of civilians during a time of war, was signed in 1949. Bombing civilians had been common practice for all warring nations throughout the entire war. Practiced on a large scale by Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada, The US, France, Japan, the USSR... all felt that tergeting civilian workers would reduce industrial effectiveness. It was used on a nearly daily basus by both USAF and RAF, just as before them by the Luftwaffe. Civilians had no legal protection from area bombing, and city bombing had been a commonplace fact for many years. In fact, Hiroshim and Nagasaki were chosen partly because they were two of the only major Japanese cities which had not ALREADY been heavily damaged or gutted by mass conventional bombing.



I treat that with a grain of salt. Everything I have ever read (as well as logic and US military practice) states that Truman knew full well that these were cities, full of people civilian and military, and the effect this bomb would likely have on them. He certainly knew about the fact that civilians lived in Tokyo, a city he had repeatedly ordered to be mass firebombed, in attacks that killed more people than either of the two atomic bombs.



That is ENTIRELY a modern definition of terrorism, ans has no place whatsoever in a discussion about events 60 years ago. As I have clearly stated, attacks on civilians were not only common but were the way wars were fought. There was no law against it, and there was no reason to assume the atomic bombs wouldbe any different.



I hope you are kidding. Are you genuinely equating the use of atomic weapons on Japan in 1945 with the September 11th trade centre bombings in 2001?


I am sure there were people opposed to the use of the bomb, there were people against the use of artillery in WWI, and against the bombing of private property in 1939. one of that alters the strategic necessity and conventional morality of the time. I say again, Of the time.


As an aside, I am an academic, I never source webpages. The Internet has no editorial content, anyone can put up anything they want regardless of authenticity or reality. I could right now create a webpage with all the 'proof' on it I can invent for anything under the sun. To write a book and have it published you need to have your facts right.

Yes, I do equate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, except that we killed more people, and Japan has been suffering from the effects of radioactivity for many decades now. Both were extremely inhumane and under the guise of some moral imperative, and known only by a small group of belligerent leaders relative to the rest of their country/Muslim faith.

Both the atomic bombings and the terrorist attacks might possibly have been avoided but for intelligence glitches and the unwillingness of parties involved to talk with each other. Both were undertaken with a complete disregard for the welfare of the people who were to die. Just because one action was wrapped in the American flag did not make it right.

Osama bin Laden does not lead a country, nor does he wear a uniform, but it is a very real war that he declared on the United States, and he has many followers. The attack on the World Trade Center was one of many salvos he ordered or approved against Americans.

You are an academician. I respect that. I hope that doesn't mean you disregard well-documented quotations found on the Net, especially since there are direct links to the documents and letters which can be read in their entirety from your computer screen, and the links I provided are used for educational purposes. (If you think that Truman was lying or being cynical with the American people, fine. I am not here to defend Truman.)

I also hope you respect the fact that while I am discussing the history and whether it was right or wrong to use the Atomic bombs on a belligerent nation whose diplomats had already approached Russia with the possibility of a surrender that still allowed the Emperor to remain Emperor, it does not mean that I am going to run to the library and check out all of these books to see your point of view. In addition, other members of AD like to read the links.

I was born in the 1950's when "duck and cover" was a common exercise for schoolchildren. Our government ran tests of the effects of radiation on the Northwest U.S. without the knowledge of the populace after exposing that populace from the air. Several years ago now Senator Ted Kennedy was arguing on the behalf of one or two persons who developed severe illness and died as a result of these tests, whose existence and data had been recently disclosed. I am sorry; I saw that on television many years ago, so I don't begin to know where I could find the source apart from contacting Senator Kennedy's staff. But among the links I have referenced here, it is documented that the detection of radiation levels was done at the Trinity test, for Pete's sake! So the scientists knew about the radioactivity and allowed our conquering soldiers to be exposed to it as well as the Japanese.

The fact that we are arguing about this in 2004 (and you are as much a product of modern thinking as I am) means that hindsight is not 20/20.

Government leaders have to face up to the fact that ultimately they will be judged for their activities, and half-baked reasons and the glossing over of the truth do not serve their causes well where there is needless subjection of civilians, whether foreign or domestic, to harm for the sake of expedience.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edited to include:

Like Ann Coulter has? Surely you don't believe everything you read because it is between two covers and has been published. Or do you mean just in academic subjects? Are there never circumstances where the author prevaricated but it wasn't discovered until years later (especially regarding history)?

Many of us, I am certain, have been to college. Personally, that is where I lwarned how to use the Internet and how to source webpages.

As far as needing "proof" to publish something in a book, one of the most fascinating exercises in poor logic that I ever saw was a mathematical proof that 1 = 2. It was in an Algebra text, and it was an exercise to show that if you don't understand what you are doing, you can reach the wrong conclusions.

If I want to share an article with you that I read in yesterday's newspaper, it is far easier for me to ask you to click on a link to it, than to ask you to go to your local newstand and order it. If I want to reference a book, the text of many of them is available on line.

I learned in college to evaluate my sources. One of the enjoyable things about America's Debate is the fact that anything that we put forth on these pages is apt to have its veracity challenged. If I'm on the wrong track, someone is always willing to jump in and emphatically tell me that I am wrong.

If you would like, why don't you start a poll here to ask the students and college professors who interact here whether or not they use the Internet as a source of information. I would suspect, that since it was started as a way to share information, that it is still be used for that purpose, even in academic circles.

Firstly, the source issue: I never claimed that books are infallable, I in fact own and have read many books which are very fallable, and contain errors both historical and interpretive. However, books still require a measure of editorial control. Webpages do not. I can invent, modify, play with any quote or source I choose, and there is nothing to stop me. If you do a websearch for the holocaust, you will probably find more pages from crackpots denying it ever happened, then you will information about the holocaust itself.

Of course the web has huge uses as a source of information, perhaps I overstated when I say I 'never' source webpages, but certainly I always prefer to source a book than a website.


Back to the issue at hand:

I am sorry Elspeth, if you are going to look at the atomic bombings with an entirely 2004 mentality, why stop there? Why not condemn the use of WMD by all parties in the first world war, or the use of plague ridden cattle in 14th century seige tactics?

If you say that you personally dont like how the US used the bomb based on your current world view and morality, thats fine, power to you.

But to try and question the decision of people sixty years ago using morality which did not at the time exist is silly.

As I have already stated, war against cililians, in particular in cities was common practice and an acepted tool of war, used by every major belligerant in the second world war. The Fourth geneva convention regarding targeting civilians would not be written until 1949.

You have not managed to justify any substantial difference in morality between the use of the atomic bombs and the use of mass conventional bombing, which was far more widely used, and far more frequently (weekly in the last months of the war) and killed far more people.

A lot of what people think they know about morality now was alien to people at the time. As an example, taking and shooting hostages in a town in response to acts of sabotage or partisans was actually competely legal according to the hague conventions, as long as the hostages were all adult males. This is just one example of an action the conventional morality, and rules of warfare deemed quite acceptable, which is not at all today. The common morality, supported by precident and the rules of warfare, had no problem with the use of the atomic bomb against the targets that were chosen. The fact that you may disaprove of this act 60 years later does not alter the realities of the time.

Comparing the act with that of Osama Bin Laden is absurd. By that logic, the US was FAR worse than Bin Laden due to the civilians cilled by conventional bombing in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or this latest Gulf War 2.0. So are most other states in the world. Perspective and temporal situation are critical for a moral assessmnt of any situation, without them you have no hope of understanding the past.

In war victory must be achieved at any and all costs. The Japanese were probably more disturbed then the nazi's. If you can tell me Japan could have been made to surrender w/o the US suffering another single casualty then I would be in your corner. You cant however. The drop saved lives on both sides. I dont believe the Japanese were so close to surrender. In fact they launched a coup trying to stop the surrender after we dropped the bombs. The US didnt start the war. The US wasnt the menace. We were not the evil ones. Japan was. Japan was vile and horrific and if we had the means we should have dropped December 8th 1941 on Tokyo.

So you're stating that situational ethics trump longstanding knowledge of right and wrong. I have twice quoted the opinion of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. I guess his perspective, to your mind, was an anomaly, a fluke.

War is a dirty business. In it you find out who is honorable and brave, who is cowardly and cruel. Thank you for reinforcing the perception that the United States is no better than any other country or regime in this regard.



Thank you for that information. Now why do you suppose that targeting civilians was included in the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention? I dunno--maybe because it was seen as WRONG? That's just my guess; I'm not an historian.
Maybe there were people who had misgivings about it during the Second World War.



First of all, I prefer the term "sensibility" to "mentality" when describing my viewpoint, but it wasn't my post.

I'm not condemning the use of WMDs in World War I because that is not the subject of this thread--introducing atomic warfare at the cost of Japanese civilians in World War II is.

As far as the use of plague-ridden cattle in the 14th Century, that goes along the same lines as distributing blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians on this continent not quite so long ago. As I said, war reveals honor and cruelty, bravery and cowardice. Take a wild guess as to how I would characterize these practices.



Conventional bombing at the time did not impart radioactivity (it does now with the use of depleted uranium in the bombs). Scientists were aware of radioactivity from the Trinity test. Many of these same people risked incurring the ire of the powers by petitioning the President to not use the bombs directly on the population of Japan. (Again, this demonstrates that the morality of the time did take into consideration that non-combatants such as women and children should not be harmed.)

Mass conventional bombing was the order of the day. Atomic warfare was not.
Was mass conventional bombing effective in bringing the enemy to its knees? If it was, why use the atomic bombs?

I do not think that anyone here has definitively demonstrated that it was necessary to use the atomic bombs, either. If the outcome of the war was in question, then it might have been considered necessary.

No, I am saying that your current views of right and wrong are NOT necessarily "longstanding views on right or wrong". You cannot simply impose your personal morality upon allof history. The implications of civilians in warfare is as old as mankind, and it was universally accepted by all combative nations during the Second World War that mass bombing of cities was a n effective and necessary aspect of the war. That is not to say that people liked it, certainly not, there were those who did speak out against it, just as there were those who spoke out against pretty much anything. That does not change its military necessity at the time. You cannot retroactively revise the morality of the time, no matter how much you disapprove of certain actions 60 years later.

The opinions of the the Chairman of the JCS is interesting, but notably he did nothing to stop the bombings, perhaps because he realised that while unfortunate, it was a military necessity. If I quoted you a dozen people from the time who believed that mass bombings were valuable and essential to the war effort, would that matter to you?



Quite right. Historically, the United States is no better or worse than any other belligerent in the second world war.



Yes, indeed. This came out of the realization that the atomic bomb changed the nature of warfare, in particular if it could be mass deployed by several nations. Of course, as I have said repeatedly, this all happened years AFTER the bomb was dropped. So clearly there is nothing legally wrong with the decision. If it was so widely loathed as you make out, was was this clause not included in earlier clauses of the geneva conventions? People cannot be held criminal for acts that are only made illegal years after they are done. There is no question that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unfortunate and bloody, but so is war. Despite your moral revisionism, there was no commonly held moral or legal reason not to drop the bombs at the time.



Sorry, once again you need to check your historical facts. People knew of primary radiation, ie, that there would be a radiation burst from the warhead going off. This was never considered a problem because the range of the initial radiation burst was less than that of the warhead itself, thus anyone irradiated would also be killed by the blast. There was NO knowledge at all of secondary radiation, such things as fallout and durable radioactivity were a complete surprise to everyone. Thus they could not have used that fact in a decision on whether or not to use the bomb.


Really? The petition you cited earlier mentions nothing at all about morality or civilians, it says they signed a petition because they were afraid of an arms race and the changing nature of war.



Actually, yes I did. I invite you to go back and read my posts, there is really little question about the situation of the Japanese cabinet and their lack of intention to surrender. If you can find any fault with my earlier posts on the topic, I invite you to try and discuss them...

(I have highlighted certain portions in red for emphasis, as usual.)

There were two petitions, first off. Perhaps this will clarify my statement:
http://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-03.html


There were two petitions: http://www.dannen.com/decision/index.html



I mentioned the concern of the scientists about radioactivity after the Trinity Test:


While they did not know about how long radiation would stick around, they did know that the effects would be felt 20 miles away. I am sure that this factored in to the decision of some of these scientists to petition the President discouraging its use.

There was a fairly common perception of right and wrong even in the dark times of World War II, at least among the scientists, perhaps as a result of Judeo-Christian teachings, which are very old. At any rate, they were not silent, but signed petitions expressing concern about the morality of the bombing as well as the beginning of a terrible arms race. This is part of the Oak Ridge Petition Cover Letter:


So there might actually be more to my position regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than a "2004 mentality." There are people who are concerned with what is right and wrong in EVERY generation. Getting their opinions out for the rest of the country was not possible at the time. The truth is that nobody really knows if the citizens of this country would have been for or against the atomic bombings if they had known what the scientists knew.

Vermillion,

Save yourself the trouble. PE's position on this is inflexible. Estimates of invasion casualties (Allied military, Japanse military and civilian) based on the battle for Okinawa that run into the millions don't matter. Estimates of the massive starvation that would have occurred had the war gone on for even as little as a week longer don't matter. (The Army Air Force planned on taking out all the railroad bridges in Japan starting around the 10th of August, which would have utterly devastated their ability to feed their people.) Estimates, based on the Red Army's rampage through Germany, of the likely horrendous civilian casualties, rape, etc had the Soviet's invaded Northern Japan in early 1946 don't matter. The fact that the Imperial Cabinet was deadlocked on surrender, even with the clear and convincing "demonstration" of the destruction of TWO CITIES, don't matter.

All that matters is that the development, use, and possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.

So, save yourself the trouble.

The decision to drop the Bomb, based on the information available to American leadership at the time, was the correct one. Furthermore, based on information that we have now, it is still the correct one.

Since you said it, Bikerdad, it must be true--except that I see a lot of suppositions, would haves, could haves, in your post. I took the trouble to cite my sources. Would you please do the same, if only for the sake of other readers.

But you are right in this regard: I will not be convinced, ever, that using nukes on Japanese civilians was the right thing to do.

At the time, the American people did not know anything about the plan, so they could not form an opinion. So people embraced the rationalizations (and that's what they are) provided by the government to justify the quick and dirty end to the war, the deaths of thousands of innocent people notwithstanding.

(And today, while the old nukes are decaying in their silos, our government is taking money that could go for education, health care, the creation of jobs, the repair of infrastructure, etc., and having new nukes developed. What a concept. "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time...")

I would like to comment in here as well.



To the contrary. It has shown that the bombing of civilians made these people to see themselves as victims of the aggressive enemy, which fueled the nations spirit, strengthening their acceptance of the leadership. German cities were bombed for about 4 years and there was no will to surrender.
The other side of the city bombings as well as the use of Atomic Bombs in Japan is that the horror of these events will remain decades in the collective memory of the people. There is a strong anti-American sentiment rooted in the (former) East-German population (Dresden is located in former Eastern Germany).
Japanese people literally hate Americans. They will never forgive the Americans for using these horrible weapons against civilians, unregardless how much Americans justify the use of these weapons to end the war. I think you should not forget that.



Another thing: Not many Americans know that, but there is certain evidence, that the Nazis tested a German atomic bomb in April 1945 in Jonastal (Thüringen). There are a lot of speculations, because the research in this project was one of Nazi-Germanys best kept secrets. Notes of the advancing American troops give hints of unknown research in gigantic underground facilities. Interestingly enough, many of the documents that actually describe the activities in the Jonastal are still kept top secret.
POWs claim to have seen the construction of V3 rockets, an advanced prototype of a successor to the infamous V2 rocket, the first man-made object reaching space.
German scientists who participated in this research were said to be killed by the end of the war, it has turned out that some of them were brought to the States to help with their atomic bomb research.
We can only be glad that the war in Europe ended by that time, can you believe what would have happened if the Nazis would have had this powerful weapon in their hands?

More to this here: In English:
http://ssp-exploration.de/the_jonastal_project.htmhttp://ssp-exploration.de/the_jonastal_project.htm

In German:
http://ssp-exploration.de/Das-Jonastal-Projekt.htm
http://webarchiv-server.de/pin/archiv00/2000ob34.htm

Paladin, last time we had this dance, I posted my sources. You haven't changed your tune one iota, so, the assessment that you an ideologue on this subject is a reasonable one, and one that I stand by.

Just one reminder:

While American scholarship has undercut the US moral position, Japanese historical research has bolstered it. The Japanese scholarship, by historians such as Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto, notes that Japanese wartime leaders who favoured surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized on the bombing as a new argument to force surrender.

"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavour to end the war," Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.

...

"The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war," Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary in 1945, said later.

...

One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on August 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he "confessed" that the US had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo "in the next few days". The war minister informed the cabinet of this grim news - but still adamantly opposed surrender. In the aftermath of the atomic bombing, the emperor and peace faction finally insisted on surrender and prevailed.

Why the nuclear attack on Japan was right

Hence, my statements:

-and-

-------------------------------------------



Gee, I wonder what I would say to placate a conquering force and keep a few yen coming in to feed my family--something like, "You know, you Americans were so right to nuke us. We were on such a self-destructive course; we needed you to bomb the hell out of us and set us straight." Yeah, that's the (meal) ticket...

Oh, and thanks for the link.

As Napoleon Bonaparte said long ago, history is written by the conquerors.

Are the people who died in the Naplam bombing of Tokoyo any less dead than the people who died at Hiroshima, is the slower death by burning by napalm any more merciful than the instant death of an atomic bomb.

War is horrible, and total war is even more horrible because it means killing everyone in your path. It was Japan who wanted Total war, they showed no mercy to anyone, they killed and slaughterd with joy all over Asia, they murdered POW, civilians, children, women, elderly, they showed no mercy and they got none so everyone needs to stop complaining. America could have won the war without dropping the Atomic Bombs, but why should they prolong the war, risk more American lives to spare these barbarians of the time.

I don't seem to recall any Anti War protesters in Hiroshima or Nagasaki or any where else in Japan, I don't recall any revolt to bring down the War mongering government. I do recall at totally dedicated Japan who declared their intent on World Conquest. I do recall it all ended when we dropped the bombs.

And we showed them, didn't we, by being every bit as murderous as they were, that their barbarism was wrong, eh?

And now we have a world that doesn't practice barbarism because everybody learned that lesson, right?

How do you know that there weren't protests for peace in Japan at the time? And if there were not, could it be because they were considered anti-Japanese, like anti-war protesters here have been considered anti-American? Perhaps they were being held in detention somewhere, I don't know. Do you suppose Japan might have had a sedition act in place?

But innocent civilians, mothers and their children, little boys and old men, did not have to be immolated in order to win the war against Japan.

If humanity's best answer to the barbarism of its fellow members is being barbaric to them in return, we haven't learned much, have we?

A handy definition of an ideologue:

By "ideology," I mean a hermetically sealed worldview, one that filters out all and only disconfirming data. Ideologues, by definition, are closed-minded and dogmatic. They have no reality-testing mechanism. Evidence and argument of the sort philosophers and scientists take for granted have no effect on them. Indeed, the very standards of evidence and argument they employ are calculated to reduce their cognitive dissonance and (as a result) reinforce their worldview. Nothing is allowed to count against doctrine.

The Logic of Ideology

Ideology is a self-contained, self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating system of belief, feeling, desire, and value. The following passage by two philosophers sheds light on the phenomenon:

[There] are two typical ways in which a belief can be maintained in the face of intellectual difficulties. If a theory is defended by these devices:

1. not allowing any evidence to count against the theory, i.e., always finding some way of explaining away putative counterevidence; or

2. answering criticism by analysing the motivations of the critic in terms of the theory itself One Philosopher's take on Ideologues

PERSONAL ATTACK REMOVED

I think this is an absolutely dishonest statement. Paladin Elspeth, like myself, is a pacifist. Since when is sticking to your principles dismissable as close-mindedness? If you said that raping little girls was never acceptable, would I say you are merely being close-minded? In the context of the way you are using this - as a weapon to stifle debate and insult people - I certainly could. I could use this argument against you in practically every thread you've ever posted in. It's not like you are joining these debates and conceding any of your points, bikerdad.

At what point are the ends not justified by the means? Is there a line? What if the war could have been ended by US soldiers slitting the throats of a thousand five-year-old kids in Raleigh, North Carolina - would that make such an act justified? If you kill my child, am I justified in killing yours? I would argue that your child, having nothing to do with anything, beyond being related to you, is an innocent, and your murdering my child does not give me justification to murder your child. When a murderer kills a husband and wife, we punish the murderer, we don't also punish his wife.

It seems to me that Paladin's beliefs are formed by paying attention to the 'red' words in a certain guidebook for human affairs - and yet when she applies these principles to the current debate, your response is to insult her? But then I suppose that those of us who disagree with your conclusions are closed-minded, indoctrinated ideologues.

I am sorry, but this is completely false. We know exactly the state of the German atomic program, both due to the fact that it was captured intact, and the fact that the entire staff of the program proved very willing to speak to the allies once captured.

Not only did Germany not have an atomic bomb, but they were nowhere near an atomic bomb. They had in fact not managed yet to create a sustained atomic reaction, which was good for them. It was good for them becauise their maths were way of, and they had devised no way to control the reaction, the result would have been a blue flash and the irradiation of most of Germany's atomic scientists.

Forgetting the lack of scientific progress, Germany also had not devised (let alone constructed) a functuioning firing mechanism, nor did they have suficient fissile materiel. Given no war, no German victory, and the same level of funding, nazi Germany would probably have the bomb by around 1970.

Next, the V3 was not a rocket at all, it was a huge heavy emplacement gun meant to shell the UK, the barrell was fixed and had rocket assist chambers along the sides, it was never fired being destroyed by allied bombing, and wouldhave had a very limited effect even if it had worked.

As for a theoretical sucessor to the V-2, a two stage rocket existed on paper, but basic tests had not even begun on its feasability, let alone actual planning or construction.


Back to the Bomb debate:

I have no problem personally with PE's ideals, in fact I applaud them. What I object to is her applying her 2004 ideals anachronsticaly, as if they had any relevance whatsoever in 1945. I further do not agree with Bikerdad's statements regarding PE, with one caveat: PE has stated that there is no way she could ever be convinced of anything but her opinion on this matter, regardless of the facts. That does seem to be a sadly closed mind. I have no problem with srongly held opinions, I have a strongly held opinion on this matter, but to dismiss the possibility of anything else is questionable, at best.

With regards to specifics:
PE maintains that the people of the US were never polled on the US of the Bomb, so we will never know their reaction. Actually, thats not true. Once the bomb had been dropped, there were letters, articles, huge print space in every imaginable kind of journal or newspaper to them, and the response was overwhelmingly positive.

PE also maintains that there is some kind of difference between the use of the atomic bombs, and the use of mass conventional bombing which was FAR more destructive in terms of both property and loss of life. There is none, in particular given what was known at the time.

PE says the dropping of the bomb could never be considered legitimate, but it has been clearly demonstrated that Japan would not have surrendered without their use, so the odds are that far more people would have died before the war ended. She has as of yet presented no alternative to the leaders of the time.



Reality rears its ugly head: There were no anti-war protests in Japan, in fact when surender was announced there was civil unrest, riots and suicides by people who wanted to continue fighting no matter the cost. Even with the bombs and the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria, a full 30% of the high officer corps staged a coup against the emperor to keep the war going, they narrowly failed.

Nobody is claiming the bombs were nice or pleasant, I agree wholeheartedly that it was a tragic event, which caused the loss of many lives, something always to be avoided. But the fact that it was sad does not make it wrong, given the circumstances, and in this case the circumstances are everything.

Close. What I was maintaining was since we already had that kind of destructive force at our disposal, why use the bombs? I am also maintaining that in extension, the effects of the atomic bombs are still being felt, now by virtually every country in the world that can make a bomb. That's my 2004 take on it, to be sure. It was not necessary to introduce the atomic bombs in order to win the war against Japan, and it was not necessary to target civilian population centers.



And that is where you and I diverge on our opinions. I do not believe that circumstances are the sole or only important determinant of what is right.

When we abandon the moral principles on which our civilization is founded, we do it to our peril. Where the Golden Rule is ignored, eye for an eye abounds, and the vengence escalates.

Buddhist teachings convey the notion that every action we undertake influences others, that nothing we do takes place in a vacuum.

But it was the scientists who were working on the Manhattan project who were saying that the implications of using the atomic bombs were so problematic to the human race that they outweighed the benefit of using the atomic bombs to bring a quick end to the war.

They saw the big picture of a world scrambling to develop this kind of power in order not to feel at risk of attack. Considering that this was the Second World War, this was a very realistic concern. When every country and its neighbor has nuclear capabilities, it only takes one shortsighted or megalomaniacal leader and his cronies to wreak massive destruction without concern for more than the immediate consequences.

No, you're right, ordinary Japanese people didn't have a whole lot to say about what their government did. That's a big problem for any country, when ordinary people cannot get through to their leaders and effect change.

And that's why I am staying in this argument. I might not be able to change your mind, but it is important to continue to question the wisdom of ever introducing atomic warfare to the world and, more importantly, to discourage future use of atomic warfare.

The far-reaching consequences of our "expedient" actions will be the problems facing our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. They will want to know why we chose the quick, dirty solution and left them with the mess of trying to keep peace, clean the environment, and not blow each other up because somebody didn't blink on cue.

I am forced to reject your gender steriotyping in this case, and I cannot imagine that gender or the supposed "way that girls think differently from boys" had anything at all to do with the decision to drop the bombs.

The concern, as you pointed out and quoted, of the manhattan scientists was of a world where other nations had access to the bomb. However that has nothing at all to do with the fact that they were dropped on Hiroshima. BEFORE those two bombs were dropped, four other countries in the world had active bomb programs, and some of those programs were aided by information smuggled to them by many of the same manhattan project scientists.

Had the bombs not been dropped the history of the cold war and atomic proliferation would have not changed an iota, they were already well underway.

Thus, without putting too fine a point on it, the manhattan scientsists were completely wrong with this protest, and some of them in fact took direct presonal action to promote atomic proliferation.

Atomic warfare was not introduced by the detonation of two bombs over Japan, it existed years earlier.

I agree that the Golden rule is, and should be, paramount, but you have to remember this incident did not happen in a vaccum. This followed six years of brutal warfare, including some of the worst excessess and cruelties inflicted in human history. Once you have been threatened, then attacked by an imperial power, once you have watchedit rape and masacre China, and brutalise and kill POWs, perhaps the golden rule takes on a darker shade? Japan did unto the US and the world... now they pay the price for their decisions. I dont personally accept the revenge argument, but I use it to illustrate that once again, circumstance is everything.

As I said, we know that the war was not going to end easily or soon without the bombs, so what alternative would you have proposed? Many more people were ging to die: some US some Chinese, some Russian some British, some australians, mostly Japanese including many civilians had the bombs NOT been dropped.

Does your morality in this event really allow you to justify allowing more people to die to make a moral point (that did not exist at the time anyways)?

Sorry Vermillion, I guess my note to you that I edited the post came too late.

What I was trying to get at was thinking with both hemispheres of the brain, and I was not doing a good job describing it, so I scrapped it.

Still, I believe that the practice of situational ethics robs us of seeing what the outcome would be if we waged a war based on how we would feel if it were happening to our own people.

Using only the amount of force needed to back the enemy down and then negotiating to effect a surrender or at least a cessation of hostilites is by far harder. Finding the flyswatter to swat the fly might take a little longer than crushing it with the sledgehammer on the bench next to you. But we aren't talking about insects; we are talking about human souls and lives that encompass the same things that our lives do.

To not take that into consideration is to deny the humanity of your enemy, and the only way there will ever be peace on earth is when we finally manage to wipe each other out.

Atomic warfare was not needed to win the war against Japan. The deaths of the innocents were not justified; they were rationalized.

I believe that, all things considered, the US's use of the Atomic bombs prevented millions of deaths in the unfought World War III, which seemed quite inevitable to Harry S Truman in 1945.

Had the US NOT used these weapons, Stalin almost certainly would have used them during the opening salvo of WW3, or during one of the numerous smaller territorial wars that did, indeed, follow. Stalin was an unbridled madman who was only kept in check by the real probability of total annihilation.

Recall the Cuban Missile Crisis. That situation would have been wholly different had the US not shown its will in actually using nuclear weapons two decades earlier.

The bomb's necessity for ending Japan's final stand during WW2 is questionable, but to me, the number of lives saved by cowing other dictators justifies its use (in hindsight or foresight).

I sympathize with your position on this, Amlord - I really do. But I disagree. For one thing, you can only speculate that our use of the bombs prevented such things from happening. You can make educated guesses, certainly, but they are, finally, guesses.

This subject really reminds me of Bill Cuttings' philosophy from Gangs of New York. He told Amsterdam that he ruled through fear - through the 'spectacle of fearsome acts.' In other words, his position of power was made safer by his willingness to commit acts of brutal violence.

Is this the principle by which we live? I know that I do not. I would rather die through my lack of willingness to be brutal, than to survive by being brutal myself.

Even if you are right - that our dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki prevented many millions of deaths - I am vastly uncomfortable with justifying the act, and even less comfortable justifying the accompanying principle. Partly, this is because I think it is dangerous to create a separation between our principles on the personal level, and our principles on the national level. I simply can't form the requisite mental break, to say that, while I cannot fathom the idea of taking innocent life myself, I can condone it as being necessary on a national or international level.

Allow me an imaginary example to illustrate my point:

John Smith is a bad man. He has killed 3 people in cold blood. The police suspect him, but they don't have enough for a case. Detective Bill Jones knows it was Smith; furthermore, Smith displays all the signs of being a serial killer. Jones starts trailing Smith, and finds out that Smith has a wife and three kids. Jones confronts Smith, and tells him to stop killing people. The next week, alas, Smith kills someone else. Jones, desperate to prevent future killings, sneaks into Smith's house in the dead of night. First, he strangles Smith's 2 year old daughter in her bed. Then he cuts the throats of the twin 10 year old sons. Finally, he pulls out his gun, wakes up Smith and his wife. Jones has his gun trained on Smith. "Tomorrow morning you are going to go down to the police station and give yourself up." He then shifts his gun slightly, and shoots Smith's wife, two shots, right in the knees. The next day, Smith shows up at the police station, confesses, and gets life in prison.

Is Jones justified? Arguably, he has saved the lives of whatever future innocent people Smith may murder. Was his method acceptable? If not, then why is it acceptable to murder a thousand mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, on the larger scale, in a war? Or a hundred thousand? At what point is it acceptable, or not?

I'm not trying to paint those who support something like the atomic bombing as bloodthirsty savages - I know that for most of you, you recognize that it was tragic - but you feel it was sadly necessary. You may see yourself as a 'realist' for thinking this way, and me as some head-in-the-clouds utopian. But I am not, and I think it is a misappropriation to label your stance as the only realistic one. My principle is based on the real world - what I see around me, what behaviour is acceptable to me, what measures are thinkable to me, in my life, and in the lives of the people around me - I see wars and the power games of rich and powerful rulers to be the abstraction here.

To me, justifying the use of nuclear weapons, or firebombing cities, for that matter, is proving Stalin's old saying - a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

The fact is that the good guys won. In war, the goal is to kill as many of the bad guys, while losing as few of your guys as possible. The atomic bomb was the perfect weapon for this. If we had invaded mainland Japan conservative estimates say we would have lost over one hundred thousand men. I believe our men would have turned against Japanese civilians due to these types of losses and taken it out on them. The militant Japanese government, led by Hirohito and Tojo were the architects of their own destruction, and they brought down the atom bomb on their own people. Where was the outcry after Nanking, after Bataan, Corregidor? I am always amazed at how AMerica's perceived atrocities are harped on, yet the exponentially greater horrors of communism, fascism are conviently forgotten

I am not commenting about the atrocities committed at Nanking, Corregidor, and Bataan because that is not the subject of this thread. But if it will make you feel better, yes, the Japanese were absolute tyrants and brutes in the way they conducted their warfare during World War II. They had concluded that their enemies were sub-human, so they could do what they wanted, including to women and children.

Having said that, what do you call it when the "good guys" deliberately commit two mass killings on civilian population centers? Good guy stuff?

How can we very well condemn other nations for developing or trying to develop weapons that are utterly devastating and aimed at our population centers? Isn't that what we did? We set the example for the world, didn't we, when we dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You might argue that the US was attacked by Japan first, so we had the moral high ground to fight them the way we did. Okay. Do we still have the moral high ground now that we pre-emptively attacked and invaded Iraq? We did it first this time.

Quarkhead said it so much better than I could. At what point do we abandon our own personal code of morality and justify a national "morality" that is so opposed to our own? Whatever happened to the idea of a "measured response" in war, and not firing the first shot?

Israel and the Palestinians, the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, and so many other hotbeds of hatred and conflict are such precisely because neither side has been willing to abandon the self-defeating concept of wreaking vengeance on the other side and escalating the violence each time it happens. If they did, there would be a possibility for peace, an end to the violence and hatred.

Evidently this is not a popular sentiment, but somebody has to bring it up. It's like the Looney Toons cartoon where Sylvester and the bulldog keep getting out larger mallets with which to hit each other. As we continue to escalate the violence, we decrease the chance that our children and grandchildren will be able to achieve peace, either.

No, I do not hate the United States, no way. It is my home, and the home of my children. It is filled with wonderful people, and we have a lot to be thankful for.

But when we conduct warfare, there are times when our country is no better than anyone else's, unless we hold our forces to a higher standard of behavior. That is not a popular notion as evidenced by so many on this board who expressed willingness for our forces to abandon the articles of the Geneva convention in a separate thread.

I'll bet you the other side, whoever they are, think they're the "good guys," too.

I so much agree with Paladin and Quarkhead in this.

But:

It seems that it is always easy to stick to your ideals until they are challenged.
Example:
If someone would harm your family, say he would rape your 13 year old daughter, and he would get away with it, wouldn't you retaliate or take revenge? It is a totally human response, and we cannot blame people if they behave that way, because most people would do the same.
I have always found it easy to say that he will ultimately be punished for his crimes and that I could never forgive him. But how sure am I that my will to stick to my principles is strong enough to not give in to the hatred and pain that I feel when something like this really happens to me.
Think about it and be honest.

I know the comparison is flawed as all comparisons are. But to take the step to forgive someone elses atrocities committed against you is so much harder than we think.

Okay. If someone perpetrated this crime, I would be enraged. I would be all over the police like ugly on an ape so they would see to it that every measure was used to make sure the brute did not get away with it. Barring help from the police, I would use as much funds as I could scrape up to get a private detective's help, and I would enlist the help of any friends we have to tail the person and take pictures of him. I would write the newspapers, my Congressman and Senators; I would contact Dateline NBC to see that the man was dogged until he slipped up or new evidence was found.

But there is one more thing that I would do, and it is actually much more important, and I would be a fool to neglect this in favor of my seemingly all-important pursuit of justice:

I need to comfort my daughter and do my utmost to help her know that she is loved and she has a future regardless of what was done to her. My sense of vengeance is less important than my daughter's well-being.

Some people mistake vengeance for love. The time I devote to my daughter shows her my love for her more than seeking vengeance against her assailant.

She is the most important person to me in the world, so my time is rightfully hers.

That is the best focus. While it is important to bring criminals to justice, it is even more important to provide comfort and love to those who are wronged. In such a sad circumstance, putting the feelings of the victim above my own feelings for revenge is the better course.

We are human. We do the right things for the wrong reasons and vice versa. But that does not mean that we cannot grow and gain insight into our existence which is supposed to be above that of a beast.

I hope we didn't slip too far away from the discussion with this, so I'll try to get back to the topic.

I totally agree with you that you have to back down from the spiral of violence, comfort the victims of suicide bombers and their families. It is true that someone has to take the first step to make negotiations and peace possible, I am just saying that despite the honorable way to be the smarter one who backs down for the sake of his people, it lies in the human nature to punish the ones that do your kind wrong and it is so hard to overcome this need for revenge.

But would you act accordingly as a politician having these truly noble ideals?
Example:
It is never justified to count lifes against lifes. To make that kind of decision you have to think that not all life is worth saving. But I think so. Therefore I disbelief that you can act as a state as you would as an individual. As a leading politician you have the responsibility to guarantee the safety of the lifes of YOUR people over the lifes of others.
Ultimately, you have to decide if you want to spare your soldier's deaths and the grief of their families by taking the lifes of your enemy, his soldiers and his families. How do you explain to your own people who have voted you into office that you are willing to risk hundreds of thousands of your soldiers lifes to spare the lifes of hundreds of thousands of your enemy's civilian population? It is considered to be immoral to kill civilians, but your voters will think that it is immoral to not do everything to protect your men.
The difference to an individual is that you yourself almost never have this kind of responsibility and therefore never have to make this kind of choice because however you choose, their blood is on your hand, regardless of who started what and I have the opinion that to kill people is always wrong.

In wartime, it is impossible to avoid killing, but if it is possible to avoid killing innocent people, then measures should be taken to avoid it, even if the enemy has not taken those measures. That is what gives one side the moral high ground.

Blind vengeance perpetuates hatred among the conquered survivors. They never forget. The cycle continues. The conquering army knows that atrocities serve as a motive for conquered people to try to destroy them. The greater the cruelty, the greater the hatred.

My argument is that 1) the United States already had plenty of conventional bombs to destroy Japan, so introducing atomic warfare was unnecessary, and 2) it was not necessary to immolate thousands of civilians.

As a politician during the second world war, I would not have known anything about it unless I were the President or among the key people. Scientists in the Manhattan Project delivered two petitions to President Truman stating that they were concerned about the brutality of such weapons, and that dropping the atomic bombs would plunge the world into an arms race.

I would hope that as a high-ranking politician at the time, I would give serious consideration to what the developers of the atomic bomb had to say.

Hang on here: Your two points are COMPLETELY mutually exclusive.

Think about it: The US has had a great deal of success incinerating Japanese cities with conventional and incendiary bombs, so Atomic Bombs should not be necessary, then say it is not necessary to immolate thousands of civilians? But they are incinerated either way, conventionally or using atomics, and despite your protestations you have not been able to demonsrate any significant difference of impacy, except for secondary raditation effects, which few people understood or could have predicted at the time.

So make up your mind, you cannot be against the atomic bombins, and yet for the mass conventional Bombings perpetrated by every major combattant in WWII (Germany, Japan, Italy, China, The US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France, etc).

Conventional raids against Japan killed far more people, even in single raids, than the atomic bombs, and though secondary radiation (which was =not predicted or known) did injure many, I would surmise that far ore bore the scars of flash and heat burns from incendiaries which were dropped over Japanese cities in the millions.

My point is, it was morally wrong to deliberately target civilian populations with the atomic bombs. In no way do I condone the conventional bombing of civilian populations, either.

I see no contradiction.

I have a bit of a selfish reason for thinking the bomb was a good idea. I may not be here.

My father was stationed in the Philippines waiting for the go ahead to start the mainland invasion. I’ve seen estimates that ranged from 100K to 1M in losses, either way one loss was one too many if there was another option.

It saddens me to see the tremendous loss of lives, especially innocent civilians and I absolutely abhor the horrors of war. But before Pearl Harbor and our entry into the war, like most soldiers who would have lost lives, my father was just a citizen also. And although it’s only a theory, I would speculate based on the brutality of the Japanese army that if they had the bomb they would have used it as well (look at the civilians killed on Wake Island when they initially captured it). Barbaric is an understatement.

It’s not unlike our current situation. In the minds of many you and I are blamed for our government’s short sightedness in foreign diplomacy and those innocents in the twin towers paid the price. Unfortunately in the minds of many all citizens are ultimately held responsible for the acts of their government, I’m not saying its right, its just the way it is.

I’ve read arguments that we should have invaded and used traditional weaponry, remember this was before ‘smart bombs’ and other laser guided artillery. Even when used properly traditional weaponry would have still caused civilian losses. Although I can’t find statistics on how many civilian losses were estimated through a land invasion, you can rest assured it would have been high.

And here’s one of the things I like most about our country. You’ve got an enemy that provoked a war, brutalized our troops and civilians, yet we didn’t turn our backs on them. Post WWII we assisted in rebuilding their infrastructure and gave millions of dollars to use at their discretion. We also assisted them in becoming the 2nd most powerful economy in the world and now we have an ally that shares our quest for freedom.

I think that qualifies as turning the other cheek and taking a higher moral ground.

Ok, now that we have cleared that up, you oppose bombing of civilians as a whole, not specifically the atomic bombings at all, which are simply a different methodology of acting on a well established pattern by all nations involved in the war.

So, now we deal with this with two points:

1) Regardless of what you may or may not think now, bombing of civilians was an accepted strategy of war during the Second World War. There were no laws or treaties against it (those being created well after the war in 1949) and it was understood that it was one of the most effective ways of bringing the war to the enemy, disrupting their economy and putting pressure on morale and leadership.
After the war, it as discovered that civilian bombing had little effect on morale, but that was not known during the war.

Thus, one can only judge the act of a time with the morality of the time, and the morality of 1939-1945 was that civilian bombing was an acceptable and in fact necessary part of modern warfare.

2) Even if the above was not the case, you will have to deal with the question of alternatives. Japan, without being bombed from the air, could only have been forced to surrender by invasion. Even with massive conventional bombing the japanese were not going to surrender, they almost did not surrender after the two atomic bombs and the Invasion of manchuria by the USSR.

Thus, if you can present me with any practical alternatives I would be happy to hear them, bombing or invasion. Though the estimates of numbers of casualties from invasion of the home island tend to be wildly exaggerated, there is no question that the number of civilian dead would certainly have exceeded the dead rom the two atomic bombs, probably by a wide margin.

Thus, again we come back to alternatives: Unless you can suggest a third alternative, you are essentially arguing that in order to save the civilians of two towns, we should have invaded and killed far more civilians.

Arguments of morality cannot be held in a vacuum, they must be faced with the circumstances of the time and place. I agree that the killing of civilians in wartime is terrible, but in this situation, civilians were going to die, either by invasion, or by the bomb. Unquestionably, more would have died from invasion. So what decision do you make?

It's not that complicated. 1) I'd have a snowball's chance in hell stopping the bombing of enemy civilian populations in World War II, and 2) I might have a snowball's chance in Florida arguing against the use of the atomic bombs. Ever so slightly better odds.

And the atomic bombs are what this thread is all about. I honestly do not believe that it was necessary to use them. There were already more than enough weapons of mass destruction in this war.

(confused)

But two posts ago you just said you oppose all mass bombing of civilians. You have not been able to make a case why the atomic bombs were substantively different in impact or effect on the population they bombed. Barring secondary radiation, which was unexpected and unknown, there is no difference to the people being bombed.

So the argument of "there were plenty of other ways to bomb these people to death" is hypocritical, since that seems to be what you oppose.

If the military restricted its bombing runs to military and weapons and fuel installations, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

You do seem confused. Because I said that there are plenty of other ways to bomb these people, it does not constitute it receiving my Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

I'm saying it is wrong, wrong, wrong to bomb civilian populations. But if you're going to do it anyway, you have an arsenal at your disposal; why do you need atomic bombs to do it? Plain and simple.

You have criminals in a prison cell. They have been condemned to die. So you experiment on them before their time with very damaging chemicals, potentially as brutal as they are fatal. What does the ACLU say? That it's unnecessarily cruel and unusual punishment. There's law against that. You are subjecting them to something above and beyond what is prescribed by law.

Joseph Mengele (sp?) used to do that with Jewish prisoners. Because they were going to die anyway, does that justify what he did to them?

And that is how I see it.

Let me just interject a WW2 reality: I read once where out of every 2000 bombs dropped from planes, only 1 would hit the target. In that type of environment, you try for the biggest destruction radius that you can, because every bombing run could mean that you could lose a bomber or any of its crew.

The point of war is to "win", not to save civilian enemy. Civilians on the Japanese mainland were going to die from our bombing runs. We viewed ALL Japanese as potential enemies, not just the ones in uniform. Those that weren't in uniform were just as likely to be producing munitions, etc., for their troops. As such, you can't expect that those in charge would be overly concerned with killing those you refer to as "civilians".

The idea of accurate bombing is only a recent one with the invention of the Global Positioning systems. Trying to insist that we should have been more accurate or more discriminating in a war from 50 years ago is like trying to insist that Sherman shouldn't have burned Atlanta on his way out of town.

Why the use of the Atomic Bomb was morally wrong [imo]:

1) By using it, many civilians died instantaneously without having a chance to flee (as it was possible by conventional bombardment)

2) By using it, the world stumbled into the Atomic Age, an era in which all mankind can be eliminated by pressing one button.

3) By using it, we stumbled into the nuclear arms race. If the US wouldn't have used it, how would Stalin have known a technology like that exists?

4) By using it, the world has witnessed the use of a weapon with such destructive potential for the first time, thus justifying the use of this weapon ever again. If the weapon would have not been used, it might have been possible that the enormous power of the weapon would have prevented other countries from using it the first time.

I know some arguments are a little idealistic, so what? This is only speculation.

PS:
---spelling is almost right (Josef Mengele)
Some prisoners were used for forced labour. Those prisoners wouldn't neccessarily have died in the Concentration Camps, he experimented on them causing death because he wanted to gain medical knowledge for the "good of mankind".

The area of effect of 200+ B-29s dropping firebombs is essentially the same or greater than the atomic bombs in question. The vast majority of those in the target area are going to die, and few will have an opportunity to flee. As a contrarian here, I ask, which is more humane? Instant atomization, or dying in a conventional firestorm?

The world "stumbled" into the Atomic Age with the start of development of atomic weapons, not with their use.

We told him, before we used it. Furthermore, the Soviet scientific community was already aware of the potential for atomic weapons, and there's no reason to believe that Stalin would have ignored the potential, especially given what was learned from captured German research. The presence of Soviet spies within the US research community would have confirmed the Bomb's existence, even without our telling Stalin.

Conversely, it could be argued that precisely because it has been used, folks are far more leary to use it again. This reality is the reason chemical weapons have not been used by a major power against another major power since World War One. The essence of Mutual Assured Destruction prevented the use of chemical agents. The Axis AND the Allies had substantial stocks of chemical munitions, yet none were used.

Iran vs Iraq, two major regional forces, used chemical weapons in their 1980-88 war. (not sure about the exact time though)

Two reasons why they weren't used in WW2:
1) The war was fought differently, the Blitzkrieg prevented the use of chemicals for the troop advancement was so fast that it would have harmed their own people rather than the enemy.

2) Hitler feared that if he would use chemical weapons the British would use their biological weaponry which was much more advanced.


Usually the cities have a warning system when an air raid is imminent. The population is warned and can run for shelter. One plane carrying the A-Bomb would not trigger the warning system.


The era of gunpowder started when it was used as a weapon, not when it was invented hundreds of years earlier by Chinese.

This is precisely the reasoning used in deciding to use the A-bombs--it would actually save millions of lives, both American and Japanese. Estimates of casualties from an invasion of Japan were in the millions, many of them Japanese civilians. While the A-bomb might cause tens of thousands of casaulties in a single blow, it was hoped that their use would persuade Japan to end the war earlier, thus saving millions more. Or, to put it another way, would not using these weapons, and instead having to prolong the war for months longer, killing millions more, have been the moral thing to do?

The reason the British, the Germans, the Japanese and the Americans were working on a atomic project was to build a bomb, not fireworks or a nuclear power plant. The nuclear race was on, and the USSR would have joined it, regardless if we had dropped the bombs.

In the massive conventional firebombings of WWII, what killed people was the creation of a firestorm, when the air essentially caught fire. The creation of a firestorm could be dione in as little as 10 minutes, and it could engulf an area of several dozen square miles, there was no capacity to run or get away. Worse, the firestorm caused gale force winds at its base drawing debruis, materiel and even people nto the flames. Dont kid yourself, mass conventional bombing is in every way as lethal destructive and almost as instant as an atomic bomb of the era.



As I said previously, PRIOR to the bomb being dropped, 5 nations other than the US had active atomic weapons programs. The Genie was out of the bottle long before the bomb was dropped, not dropping it would have made no difference whatsoever to the deveopment of atomic weapons in Britain, France and the USSR. Stalin knew about the technology long beforehand, and was already constructing his own bomb program long befoe the bomb was dropped. In fact, he knew about it before he was told at yalta (which was before the bombing) through espionage.




Seeing as it has never been used again, I would argue just the opposite. The effects of the bomb became known ato the public after it was dropped, and in fact to this day the effects of atomic weapons are routinely exaggerated in the public mind. The dropping of the bomb may well have saved the world from it ever being used again.

If your only point is that the use of the atomic bomb was wrong based on the moral view of it being wrong to bomb civilian populations that is one thing, but much of your argument has been based on the fact that there were other conventional ways to have brought the war in Japan to a close. This seems a bit contradictory since much of the hard military targets were already exhausted and Japan was still not willing to surrender. I am assuming that you have studied the situation and the reasons for the use of the atomic weapons, so I remain curious to read a logical plan the allies could have followed that would have resulted in fewer civilian casualties. It is one thing so simply be a critic or a blind supporter, but to present a reasonable and somewhat detailed alternative adds credibility to your argument.



I think the answer to this question is really simple. It has been answered many times in this thread. If we take away the morality of bombing civilians out of this debate for a minute all we are left with is the method in which one can do the greatest damage with the fewest potential casualties and risk. On the one hand hundreds of planes would need to fly many missions dropping many bombs over many miles. The fact that the planes used often crashed on take off means we need to take this into consideration. The sheer loss of life over a few months is dramatic compared to a few planes to scout weather conditions and one plane to actually drop the bomb. It really does not take a lot of logical thinking to determine that the best option is the one that was employed. You are right it is very plain and very simple when the morality of the situation is taken out of the equation.



I am not sure what the purpose of these comments was, but I feel there is little if any relevance to the topic at hand. You are also pointing to the ACLU and using once again 2004 logic and trying to apply it to those who lived in the 40’s The ACLU was quite young during this period and even still on a personal note I could care less what they have to say about anything. I do not need them to try and dictate to me what is right and what is wrong.

There is a difference between pre meditated torture and the dropping of the A-bombs. Anyone who thinks there is no distinction essentially is implying that Truman and many others were in the same league as Hitler and Mengele. This is simply not a logical thought process.

It is the morality of the situation. If we did not bomb the hell out of them, they would have died anyway. This sounds to me like someone thinks that ultimately we were doing the Japanese a favor by killing so many of them outright. Sorry, if you kill my mother sooner than later, you are still killing my mother.

That is my point. The atomic bombs did not kill my mother. My mother was not Japanese. But how many mothers were killed? I struggle with the concept that we are taught to treat others the way we would want to be treated, except on a national level.

While you do not feel any particular moral compunction regarding the situation we are discussing, I do.



Do you deny that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an experiment? The bombs had never been dropped on people before. The military was testing Little Boy and Fat Man to see which one would do the most damage. It was an experiment, at the expense of the Japanese people. And it was pre-meditated.

In the realm of military and economic capacity, neither Iran nor Iraq is, or has been for more than 2,000 years, a "major power." The major powers of the 20th Century are the United States, United Kingdom, unified Germany, France, Russia/Soviet Union, Japan, China, Italy and until WW1, Turkey and Austria. Spain's status as a "major power" tenuous as it was, convincingly came to an end with the Spanish-American War. China's status up until the 1960s is questionable, as their ability to project power much beyond their own borders was minimal, and even today rests almost entirely upon their modest nuclear arsenal and their huge population, rather than a substantial military effectiveness.

History, and the nature of chemical warfare do not support this claim. Much of the direct combat was decidely not "blitzkrieg", but rather modest maneuver warfare. Examples include virtually the entire Italian campaign, almost all combat in Southeast Asia, and the Balkans/Greece, etc. Even much of the Normandy Campaign and Eastern Front underwent fairly static periods, ranging from several weeks (Normandy pre-breakout) to several years (Wehrmacht Army Group North, i.e. the Leningrad [St. Petersburg] campaign). Furthermore, the potential of chemical weapons utilized against industrial targets is significant, and completely avoids the potential of overrun.

Oh? Cite your sources.

What shelter? It was Japan's ill-fortune to have cities that were tinderboxes, with few buildings that could withstand fire, and few shelters.

If it is the morality that is the issue you have with the deaths of innocent civilians, then I for one would like to hear how you, had you been in charge, would have ended the war. I mean taking the moral high ground when you are not in the drivers seat is a really fun and noble thing to do, but what would you have done differently. Again I assume that you know the situation well enough that you must have seen an acceptable alternative. If not then your appeal to morality is not based on logic. If you can not present a better alternative even with the perfect 20/20 that hindsight usually provides then it is possible that this was the best option. Speculation 60 years after is always a tough concept to push forward with any degree of credibility no matter how many quotes from the joint chiefs you document.



I understand your point and I am not saying that treating others the way we want to be treated is not a noble ideal. The reality in this case is that the civilian population were not operating in a manner in which they cared how the civilians of there enemies were being treated either. It was not a moral they had or subscribed to. Neither did the US at the time, thus it is a moot point and only becomes significant when you look at the situation with the moral views of today.



I do deny that they were a premeditated experiment with the main purpose to see how much suffering they could unleash or with the purpose of destroying an entire race. Did the military want to know the extent of the damage ultimately caused? Of course they did. This is a clear indication that they really did not know the extent of damage that would be caused. One could argue that they should not have tested it on the Japanese, but then the same argument can be used for every new weapon of war devised by man. With new warfare weaponry comes some sort of evaluation on the enemy. Otherwise there can be no tactical doctrine created for the use of such. This was no different than the invention of the machine gun, tank, flame thrower, grenade and so many other conventional weapons. They have all been used on their enemies to measure effect. Do you consider that each of these inventions and their evaluations to be torture? And yes they have all been used on unwilling participants. Personally I find the notion that the dropping of the A-bomb was a barbaric, criminal, or inhumane act ludicrous. There is simply no comparison between this act and the acts of the Russian forces that invaded Germany. There is no comparison with the Holocaust or the human experiments that went on. To argue that the bomb was just as bad is like saying any civilian death was an act of barbarism etc.

Close, but not quite true.

Hitler did not deploy chemical weapons in WWII for several reasons. The first, and probably most important is that he was unaware of the fact that he had a national monopoly on Second generation chemical weapons: Sarin, a nerve gas. He assumed that the US and the UK had this weapon too, and given the clear ability of both of those nations to bomb the Reich, while (by 1942) Hitler had limited ability to bomb the Uk and none to bomb the US, it was clearly in Germany's best interest to avoid the deployment of chemical weapons. Though he may have been mistaken about the Allies having nerve gas, he did know for sure that the allies had massive stockpiles of first and advanced first generation chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, phosgene and diphosgene, lewisite and chlorene.

The second, and probably secondary reason, is that Hitler hated gas warfare. he had been gassed during WWI and expressed a horror of that kind of warfare, saying such weapons should never be used on humans. (Obviously, he did not see jews as being humans...)

The naescent biological weapon capacity of the UK, which was quite small, had nothing to do with the decision, at the time biological warfare was still in its relative infancy.

http://hem.passagen.se/jan.olofsson/biowar...ry/history.html



http://home.comcast.net/~kknowlto/book5.htm




Yeah, true. Should have added this one.

But lets get back to the original question because we are way off topic.