board77

This was mentioned in the Al-Zarqawi thread.

Do you believe that the use of atomic bombs on Japanese Cities by the allied forces in WWII was justified?

I think history has justified it regardless of whether morality has or not.

Although, the comparison of the bombing that allegedly killed Zarqawi and two innocents to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just lame hyperbole.

Let's indescriminantly kill a whole town. That's what the bad guys do.

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Do you believe that the use of atomic bombs on Japanese Cities by the allied forces in WWII was justified?

By todays standards no.

By the standards that existed back then and the nature of who we were fighting...yes.

oldtoby wrote:

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Do you believe that the use of atomic bombs on Japanese Cities by the allied forces in WWII was justified?

By todays standards no.

By the standards that existed back then and the nature of who we were fighting...yes.

And the second point is the relevant one.

To those who don't agree - how else could we have ended the war as quickly and with as little loss of life, military and civilian, on both sides?

By demonstrating the power of the bomb off-shore with threats on cities afterward? There's an idea.

But we can do what-ifs through eternity. What happened, happened. Doesn't matter except in the sense that we can learn from it and know better what to do for the future. That's what history is all about - recording stuff so we can learn from it. Too bad most people are ignorant of history, which is why it tends to repeat itself.

OE wrote:

By demonstrating the power of the bomb off-shore with threats on cities afterward? There's an idea.

We nuked one whole city and they did not surrender. Why would they have surrendered if we had have dropped the bomb offshore? They would have had every reason to think that we were simply bluffing or spineless.

I have to agree with L_M's last point. Perhaps war, in some people's mind, is a display of force (kind of like a weight-lifting competition), but that's not reality. It took two bombs to get the Japanese to surrender. That right there is significant when discussing other methods of getting them to surrender.

Lidless, do you believe that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime on the Allied part?

A little known fact is that the emperor was prepared to surrender, but military leaders were not (death before dishonor, Samurai stuff). They even had a nice coup de-atat planned and ready to go.

Maybe you guys are right, maybe I'm right. But again - it's already been done. Nothing to do about it except learn something from it and perhaps make better decisions in the future.

OE wrote:

A little known fact is that the emperor was prepared to surrender, but military leaders were not (death before dishonor, Samurai stuff). They even had a nice coup de-atat planned and ready to go.

The fact that the military de-facto Government was ready to overthrow the divine Emperor to continue the war is telling IMHO. Had they been successful, I wonder how many atomic bombs it would have taken to induce them to surrender.

I wonder though, since the people listened to the emperor (despite him having no significant power).

I also have a problem with Dresden. Both involve invoking terror and not much else. Terrorism, in other words. As I said, it's just not right, no matter how you cut it. Perhaps the age of chivalry and of honor is dead these days.

Alas the Hague Convention at the time did not cover the illegality of aerial bombing (it was written just a couple of years after the Wright Brothers), and dealt only with the protection of the wounded and the sick on the battlefield and in naval warfare, hospital ships, the laws and customs of war and the protection of prisoners of war.

So legally it was OK, but morally, I have a problem with it. Even Churchill, who initially authorized it, had a problem with the bombing afterwards, although much of his concern was from a post-war practical nature.

It was a different time and there was a different mentality on both sides.
A point to note is the 80/20 firebombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities killed & wounded more civilians than either of the two nukes did.
(80/20: 80% Incendary bombs to start fires, 20% timed fragmentation bombs to kill firefighters)

I am on the side of "justified" here. I have seen the same topic on other boards, and the replies have been interesting, to say the least.

Noone asked if the decision was "moral." The question was "justified."

Yes, here is why.

Other alternatives would have taken far longer, probably have caused even MORE civilian death and destruction, and certainly involved higher military death rates on both sides. As some have noted, the Japanese military commanders simply could not comprehend a decision of surrender - they were willing to have every single Japanese fight until the death, even if it meant attacking soldiers with homemade bombs and garden implements.

By demonstrating the sheer efficiency and horror of an atomic bomb, it taught the entire world a lesson about how truly dangerous such things are. I fully believe that if two had not been used on Japan to end WWII, one surely would have been deployed in the Cold War that became fact soon afterwards. One only wonders what could have resulted from THAT scenario, when such weapons were in the hands of both the "East" and the "West."

If nothing else, it woke up the world to the fact that we now had the power to wipe ourselves off of the face of the earth and NOONE would ultimately win. I think that was a lesson that we could only learn from by experience. Much as the concentration camps that existed under the Nazis, yes, the lessons were harsh and horrible. But, humans for the most part simply refuse to learn by any other means. I do not hold out that we are born noble and graced by God's goodness. If left to our own devices, mankind is greedy, self serving, and when push comes to shove, often all too willing to enter into depravity to achieve some self serving end result. The more we can learn from the horrors and tragedies of our species' worst mistakes and acts of depravity and destruction, the better.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible episodes, but they were also highly educational. Not only the Japanese were taught a lesson on those few tragic days. The US itself I think realized what a monster it had on its hands. Now, we still need to do some growing up of our own. I fear the day that we get taught such a harsh lesson ourselves.

I wonder would you feel the same way if that "lesson" had been taught on American soil? If the Bomb had been developed and deployed by Germany or Japan instead of America.

The war would have been just as foreshortened, but with a victory for Axis.

Alatar wrote:

I wonder would you feel the same way if that "lesson" had been taught on American soil? If the Bomb had been developed and deployed by Germany or Japan instead of America.

The war would have been just as foreshortened, but with a victory for Axis.

Assuming that the Axis was in a strong enough position to win the war by conventional means eventually, then yes, the effect in that regard would have been the same.

In human terms, though, it would have been very different. An Axis victory would have bought incredible suffering to millions of people and allowed many atrocities to continue. The use of the atomic bomb by the allies prevented many evils. A similar use by the Axis would have allowed them.

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I wonder would you feel the same way if that "lesson" had been taught on American soil? If the Bomb had been developed and deployed by Germany or Japan instead of America.

I'd say the lesson would still be the same. The lesson wasn't just "we have a big bomb," it was "now humanity can destroy itself for good."

I think we'd have considerably less people in this world if the Axis won.

If the Axis were winning, I would have no problem with the bomb being dropped, for the reasons he states.

I'm not so sure the numbers add up in actual history, though.

Lidless wrote:

If the Axis were winning, I would have no problem with the bomb being dropped, for the reasons he states.

By them or us?

By us, strange as it might seem.

I am a complex person.