What is your take on the A-bomb droppings on Japan?

[caravel]

Whatever you like to call it, massacre, genocide, mass murder or a "war crime", it's still the killing of over 200,000 innocent men women and children - not military targets, not collateral damage, but civillian people deliberately targeted. They were not directly responsible for the actions of their ruling classes.

[TinCow]

Whatever you like to call it, massacre, genocide, mass murder or a "war crime", it's still the killing of over 200,000 innocent men women and children - not military targets, not collateral damage, but civillian people deliberately targeted. They were not directly responsible for the actions of their ruling classes.

That depends on how you determine responsibility. The mass-mobilization required for modern warfare often results in a total war economy. In many major wars, a very large number of civilians are employed in making weapons and otherwise supplying the military with resources. This makes them legitimate targets as far as most nations are concerned.

One of the things that has always bothered me about Hiroshima/Nagasaki is that they are treated as special circumstances that are somehow worse than conventional bombings. The March '45 conventional bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, yet there is far more outrage directed against the Nagasaki event than the Tokyo event. It doesn't make sense to me.

[al Roumi]

That depends on how you determine responsibility. The mass-mobilization required for modern warfare often results in a total war economy. In many major wars, a very large number of civilians are employed in making weapons and otherwise supplying the military with resources. This makes them legitimate targets as far as most nations are concerned.

Before assigning blame, it would be only fair to at least examine how much choice the average inhabitant of Nagasaki, Hiroshima or Tokyo (as you rightly go on to say) had in their contribution to the war effort.

An interesting modern reflection of your logic is Al-Qaida's assertion that US and allied civilians deserve 9/11 and other atrocities as they have voted in their governments and supposedly have more say in the decisions made by them!

One of the things that has always bothered me about Hiroshima/Nagasaki is that they are treated as special circumstances that are somehow worse than conventional bombings. The March '45 conventional bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, yet there is far more outrage directed against the Nagasaki event than the Tokyo event. It doesn't make sense to me.

I agree with this, but I guess it's the ghastly novelty and scale of what the 2 bombs did, compared to the tons of (conventional) munitions dropped on e.g. Dresden and Tokyo.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That depends on how you determine responsibility. The mass-mobilization required for modern warfare often results in a total war economy. In many major wars, a very large number of civilians are employed in making weapons and otherwise supplying the military with resources. This makes them legitimate targets as far as most nations are concerned.

This is the problem.

[Vuk]

In my opinion the US of A's and Britain's bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan were terrorism and mass murder. While it doesn't make us as bad as Nazis and Imperialist Japan, it makes our leaders at that time pretty close. Not just Dresden, but Tokyo, and tons of cities in Europe were bombed with the intent of killing large amounts of the population and instilling fear and an unwillingness to fight. We barely touched the industrial zones most times, and production always shot up afterward. We destroyed their history, their culture, their lives, and their morale. We took it from waging a war on Hitler to terrorizing and massacring the French and German population, as well as many Central Europeans. Dresden, like with the A-bombings was done to demonstrate to the world (and Russia in particular I think) what could be done with a strategic bombing campaign. I don't think that it reflects badly on the American and British people (who I have no doubt would not have let it happen if they had known the motivations and methods) who had no choice in the matter, but on the (liberals coincidently) corrupt political and military leaders who planned and authorized it.
I think it serves as a good lessen as to why people in free countries around the world should be a lot more vigilant, and a lot more careful of whom they elect.

[caravel]

That depends on how you determine responsibility. The mass-mobilization required for modern warfare often results in a total war economy. In many major wars, a very large number of civilians are employed in making weapons and otherwise supplying the military with resources. This makes them legitimate targets as far as most nations are concerned.

One of the things that has always bothered me about Hiroshima/Nagasaki is that they are treated as special circumstances that are somehow worse than conventional bombings. The March '45 conventional bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, yet there is far more outrage directed against the Nagasaki event than the Tokyo event. It doesn't make sense to me.

Nice textbook response, but when applied to real life it doesn't really hold up - but maybe that's me being soft and not really liking nukes or anyone being nuked. As far as the arms manufacture/supply goes, conventional bombings would have taken out any arms factories without causing 200,000+ civilian casualties (most of which probably weren't involved in arms manufacture). This was not a targeted strike against military installations but an immoral and unjustifiable attack on the people of Japan themselves (the psychological warfare of carpet bombing taken to another level). It's what the US like to call "terrorism" nowadays and certainly would call terrorism if it was carried out against them.

There are also the long term effects of Nuclear attack to consider. This is what really makes it much worse than most other kinds of conventional bombing as it affects civilian people for many generations to come.

[Ser Clegane]

What would have been the best alternative to end the war with less civilian* casualties, in your opinion?

*actually in times of drafts we also might take military casualties into account as well.

[Fisherking]

The bombs also need to be looked at in the light of Japanese barbarity, during the war.

The world knew of the Rape of Nanking, though perhaps not how bad it truly was. But that was only one of many massacres. Massacres of civilians.

Most people know of the atrocious treatment of military POWs but their treatment of the civilian population was worse if only because they were unarmed noncombatants.

They were also conducting biological warfare in China, using bubonic pelage as a military weapon.

The Japanese civilian population was also feared as a military threat. Stories of the rape murder and cannibalization of military prisoners by the civilian population had leaked out. Those reports were proven true.

Add to that slavery and enforced prostitution of civilians.

Given the choice of a protracted land battle with such people and the use of a terror weapon to end the war, what do you think you would have done.

[miotas]

"They did it too" or "At least we aren't as bad as them" is a bad reason to target civilians. Dropping it on a military base, or at the very least, waiting long enough for a response after Hiroshima would have made more sense.

[Fisherking]

"They did it too" or "At least we aren't as bad as them" is a bad reason to target civilians. Dropping it on a military base, or at the very least, waiting long enough for a response after Hiroshima would have made more sense.

That is a very nice idea but do you understand the difference between your moral outrage and historical context?

It is an interesting paradox that the easier it is to kill people the less moral be becomes.

The bombs were dropped to end a very vicious conflict in which millions had died and millions more expected to die.

While the citizens of the two cities may have been guiltless, the world held a sense of National Guilt with regard to the crimes of Japan.

You cannot measure it in the light of hindsight and postwar morality. It was a product of the times.

Even today we cannot prevent atrocities and the killing of civilians.

[CountArach]

The bombs also need to be looked at in the light of Japanese barbarity, during the war.

The world knew of the Rape of Nanking, though perhaps not how bad it truly was. But that was only one of many massacres. Massacres of civilians.

Most people know of the atrocious treatment of military POWs but their treatment of the civilian population was worse if only because they were unarmed noncombatants.

They were also conducting biological warfare in China, using bubonic pelage as a military weapon.

The Japanese civilian population was also feared as a military threat. Stories of the rape murder and cannibalization of military prisoners by the civilian population had leaked out. Those reports were proven true.

Add to that slavery and enforced prostitution of civilians.

Given the choice of a protracted land battle with such people and the use of a terror weapon to end the war, what do you think you would have done.

Answering terror with terror is not the way to fight against these things though, so I think that argument is flawed from the outset.

[Fisherking]

Answering terror with terror is not the way to fight against these things though, so I think that argument is flawed from the outset.

I am not trying to justify my actions you know. I am just trying to put the decision within the context of the times.

[Kralizec]

Should the allies have behaved decently, even if their opponents didn't? Yes. Was it realistic to expect they would?

Some of you however are trying to suggest that it was a cold-blooded decision, akin to plotting a premeditated murder while enjoying a good bottle of wine by the fireplace. It's easy to yell from the top of the hindsight tower (located just next to the ivory tower) that it was wrong and ineffective besides, and that the Blitz, the V-weapons or the torture of civilians and US servicemen in the Philipines didn't justify anything. But I don't pretend to have acted in a more enlightened way in that position, unlike some of you.

[al Roumi]

I wasn't trying to justify anything that happened. It just happened to be easier to bomb a general location. It doesn't make any sense because the Brits went through the Blitz without surrendering. Dresden itself had little military industry to begin with, and its destruction seemed to have had the poorest explanations.

I agree and its not at all clear to me why bombing is still seen as a viable or even effective strategy -even as a morale weapon. I'm sure that at best, it has had mixed results -either protracting and intensifying a conflict or subduing it (as presumably intended).

The bombs also need to be looked at in the light of Japanese barbarity, during the war.

Oh yes: "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", isn't that a great dictum with a glorious record of real-world applications.

[Franconicus]

In the beginning of WW2, after the bombardment of Warzaw and Rotterdam, Roosevelt released a statement to the Axis government stating that bombing of cities was a war crime. I think he was right!

Of course, Germany and Japan were the first to do this in WW2, but I always thought that it was a strange thing that the western democracies, fighting for human rights, build the fundament of their strategy on strategic bombing, which ment mainly the bombing and destruction of civilians.

Hiroshima was nothing else, only bigger scale. In fact, the Americans had difficulties to find target cities, where they could drop the bomb. Tokyo was already completly burned down.

From a military point of view, I do not think that Hiroshima was necessary. Japan had already lost its navy, its airforce, the army was weakened, the industrial production low, import of recsources cut off. The same time, the allies send more and more troops from the European to the pacific theatre.

I think that a simple blockade would have done it. Maybe a couple of weeks more ...

When the Americans started to develop the new bomb, the goal was not to creat a new, terrible weapon, but to prevent the Nazis from using it!


I think the most reasonable reasons for the bombs were:
1) They had to be tested. The sientists and the military had to know more about the new weapon.
2) The whole development of the bomb had to be justified. Millions of dollars had been spend in the middle of a bloody war.
3) It was a demonstration for the USSR.

By the way, none of the Americans had an idea of the whole strength of the new weapon.

[Furunculus]

according to the interpol department here, from which half the staff went on 'sabbatical' in early 2003, japan had officially agreed to negotioating surrender terms before the bombs had dropped.

regardless, POW's were dropping like like flies through blatent mistreatment, if 1,000 of them were saved by the killing of 100,000 japanese then such is the cost of war, because those POW's should not have been dieing.

it is also a great boon to humanity that we discovered the terrible cost of nuclear war when there were less than half a dozen 'midget' nukes', the alternatives replayed in the 1960's would have been far worse!

[Furunculus]

it is the quietly held opinion of Aberystwyth University Interpol Department (i.e the one set up to train spies in WW2) that the japanese intention to surrender was known to the allies at the time they were ok'ing the A-bomb strikes.

it is my considered opinion that they should have been dropped anyway, as it no doubt saved the lives of thousands of POW's who were dieing in droves due to inhuman conditions at POW camps, labour camps, and forced marches. this disgusting behaviour was so far beyond the bounds of acceptable wartime conduct it beggars belief, and we had the means to stop it. good job guys!

supplementary to this i have two reasons that i believe worth the mention:
1) japan started the war, so why should we waste the lives of thousands more allied soldiers fighting the pacific war whilst japan tries to negotiate an 'honourable' surrender when we had the ability to force an unconditional surrender, and thus save those lives.
2) no-one understood the horrors of nuclear war before the first one was dropped, i for one am jolly glad humanity did learn that lesson while there was only one to drop and not hundreds, and if someone had to be the fall-guy it might as well be japan, they earned it.
they do not justify the A-bombs in and of themselves, but they add to my conviction that the action was appropriate.

[KingKnudthebloodthirsty]

If nothing else, the Japanese completely deserved what they got from the bomb, whether or not it was inhumane. The Crimes Japan committed by killing 10million Chinese and countless more across Asia and the Pacific is several times more than the horrors you witness from the bomb. A great example is the Rape of Nanking, when they raped 80000 Chinese women. Being Chinese and actually being born in Nanjing makes me feel angry every time I think of Japan's heinous crimes committed on my countrymen.

Me and my friends compiled a list of reasons for or against the Atomicbomb's use on Japan, and I made a page of it on my site, and the link is in my signature. Also, there's a poll to this matter which you can find at http://tinyurl.com/yczjua8

[The Lurker Below]

consider everything that could have come from NOT using the bomb. I believe there would have been much more to regret had that direction been taken.

[Sarmatian]

If nothing else, the Japanese completely deserved what they got from the bomb, whether or not it was inhumane. The Crimes Japan committed by killing 10million Chinese and countless more across Asia and the Pacific is several times more than the horrors you witness from the bomb. A great example is the Rape of Nanking, when they raped 80000 Chinese women. Being Chinese and actually being born in Nanjing makes me feel angry every time I think of Japan's heinous crimes committed on my countrymen.

Me and my friends compiled a list of reasons for or against the Atomicbomb's use on Japan, and I made a page of it on my site, and the link is in my signature. Also, there's a poll to this matter which you can find at http://tinyurl.com/yczjua8

The issue here is making a difference between the the military clique that was rulling Japan and Japanese civilians.

[TinCow]

Nice textbook response, but when applied to real life it doesn't really hold up - but maybe that's me being soft and not really liking nukes or anyone being nuked. As far as the arms manufacture/supply goes, conventional bombings would have taken out any arms factories without causing 200,000+ civilian casualties (most of which probably weren't involved in arms manufacture). This was not a targeted strike against military installations but an immoral and unjustifiable attack on the people of Japan themselves (the psychological warfare of carpet bombing taken to another level). It's what the US like to call "terrorism" nowadays and certainly would call terrorism if it was carried out against them.

There are also the long term effects of Nuclear attack to consider. This is what really makes it much worse than most other kinds of conventional bombing as it affects civilian people for many generations to come.

To be clear, I don't like nukes nor do I want anyone to be nuked.

I agree that it is terrorism, but there is this odd idea these days that 'terrorism' is not a legitimate form of warfare. Terrorism is as old as war itself, and is a very effective method of warfare. By modern standards, Rome's destruction of Carthage in 146 BC was terrorism. Pretty much any time you read about an army sacking a city, you're reading about terrorism. Vlad Tepes was a terrorist, in that he intentionally terrified his enemies with his acts. The Ottomans terrorized the Serbs in 1809 by constructing the Skull Tower. Americans used terror against the Brits in the Revolution, and both sides used it in the Vietnam War.

Terrorism has occurred in every war since the beginning of time, and it always will. We proudly represent 'morale' in our wargames, which is clear evidence of how important fear is in warfare. Terrorism is a direct attack on morale, without a separate military objective. von Clausewitz would argue that was a legitimate means of fighting, as would Sun Tzu. It may not be a nice method of fighting, but war is not a nice thing.

For many western nations, using terrorism in warfare is no longer considered beneficial as it causes more harm to the international perception of the nation using it than the benefits it brings. We can call it morality if we want, but it's a purely practical thing. Push any nation far enough, and it will use terrorism in its own defense.