As a Catholic, What do you think about Hiroshima?

[Georgia]

Criticism of historical events comes with a big trap, judging the past by today. We have to put ourselves in the shoes of President Truman with the information he knew, with the technology at his disposal, and the consequences he envisioned to fully judge what he ordered.

 

[JimG]

My blood turns cold when I think of the reasons people on this thread use to justify using nuclear weapons. I can only hope and pray that people using the same sort of reasoning won’t use weapons of mass destruction on the United States. But this may be exactly what happens. More and more counties are getting nuclear weapons.

The reasons people give for the use of nuclear weapons are pretty much the same as the reasons they give for the use of conventional weapons. Indeed, it has been argued on this thread that the bombing of Tokyo with conventional weapons was equally as important in leading to ending the war as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons.

Are uranium and plutonium inherently evil but TNT is not?

 

[exnihilo]

I think developing the bomb was needed. Hitler was truly evil; a lot of people forget how bad he was and as soon as it became speculated the Nazis were working on a bomb we had to work on one. Given that Hitler was talking about Germany claiming land and racial “purity” and genocide and all kinds of other topics.

Thank God no one had nukes when America was expanding across North America or during the prime of the British Empire. Both had the same ideologies. In fact what the British did to the Boers was truly, and undeniably genocide and in line with what the Germans and our Soviet Allies did.

Check out this picture of a British concentration camp victim:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_Wars

Looks like pictures from Germany during the Nazi era.

 

[exnihilo]

When dealing with xenophobic, racist States such as the Axis who have commited atrocities in the name of their ideology you cannot give them the advantage of not targetting civilians when they freely do so to us. The attacks done by the United States were done to end the war quickly, and that wouldn’t work if we played humanitarian and never struck at the Japanese mainland.

See the article linked in my previous post to see what the xenophobic, racist British did to the Boers. The Brits invented the modern concentration camp. The Brits killed over 27,000 Boers in concentration camps. Most were children.

If only the US had been interested in holy wars back then. Unfortunately they were busy blowing up the USS Maine in order to make war on the Spanish Empire and seize territory.

With governments none are good and righteous.

 

[Godfollower]

So if the United States say firebombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the extent that led to the amount of death total that the atomic bombs brought it would be fine for you?

When dealing with xenophobic, racist States such as the Axis who have commited atrocities in the name of their ideology you cannot give them the advantage of not targetting civilians when they freely do so to us. The attacks done by the United States were done to end the war quickly, and that wouldn’t work if we played humanitarian and never struck at the Japanese mainland.

Yes, you can. That’s actually a basic requirement of a moral state: we don’t target noncombatants. Deliberately killing an innocent person is always evil, and you cannot do evil to achieve good.

Catholic theology reluctantly admits the possibility of actions that kill innocents unavoidably when the action itself satisfies the principle of double effect. But deliberately aiming to kill innocents automatically fails that analysis.

Imagine if a terrorist state sponsored car bombs in U.S. cities, killing innocent civilians. It would be evil for the U.S. to do the same in response. We simply could not go to that state’s cities and set up car bombs to kill their civilians in a sort of tit-for-tat terrorism scenario. It would be evil, even though our refraining from doing it would mean that they have a weapon they’re willing to use and we aren’t.

 

[Godfollower]

The reasons people give for the use of nuclear weapons are pretty much the same as the reasons they give for the use of conventional weapons. Indeed, it has been argued on this thread that the bombing of Tokyo with conventional weapons was equally as important in leading to ending the war as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons.

Are uranium and plutonium inherently evil but TNT is not?

There’s nothing inherently evil about nuclear weapons. Where they go wrong in Catholic theology is when they are used against innocents.

To take an example from the movies, there’s nothing wrong with using a nuclear weapon to divert an asteroid from hitting the Earth. Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with using a nuclear weapon against enemy combatants, assuming that there’s sufficient justification.

You cannot deliberately kill non-combatants, even to achieve a good result (that would be Machiavelli’s “the end justifies the means,” which is incorrect in Catholic theology). Although the principle of double effect allows certain actions that will unavoidably kill some innocents under the right circumstances (an example from earlier in the thread involved a cleaning crew killed when the munitions factory they were cleaning gets hit by a missile), widespread, indiscriminate killing of innocents is evil. TNT aimed at a munitions factory so the factory stops producing munitions for the enemy during the war is not evil, assuming that the war itself isn’t evil; TNT aimed at a city full of noncombatants for the purpose of demoralizing the country is just as evil as using a nuclear weapon in the same way.

It’s the intent that matters, not the particular weapon used; but the intent includes the effects of the weapon. You can use TNT against specific military targets in a city; you can’t use nuclear weapons the same way.

 

[stevegravy]

Oh dear, I know it upset folks but really everybody gets their shorts in a bunch when things go nuclear and it is tough dealling with truth. So, I ask a few unsettling questions. In the modern state who qualifies as a non-combatant? The dude in uniform running an unarmed tanker bringing food stuffs to the front or home front depending on who side you are on. He is a non-combatant but he is intimately supporting the war effort. So, legitimate target easy question(hint the answer is either yes or no)? Consider, the factory making some widget that goes in some weapon; its run by non-uniformed folks and when it is targeted, some of those non-uniformed folks are going to get killed. So, legitimate target? If you can answer yes to the above questions then the only complaint about weapons of mass destruction is the numbers killed and amount of destruction in a highly efficient method.

Oh my…. now comes the hand wringing about principle of double effect, and proportionality. Double effect might make the bombardier who blew up a factory feel better but the schmucks in the factory are not feeling anything because they are dead, pedal that double effect stuff to their widows and orphans. I say it is not very proportional from the point of view of the factory dude. So, I say, the tough part of big bombs by their nature involve everybody in the boom, but small bombs only get a couple dudes caught up in their booms. That is the difference pure and simple. I say the bomb being small does not make any difference. I think when it gets to this point your splitting hairs and yes, you are back in a counting game. And I am not supporting consequentialiasm.

The whole concept of modern governance and what constitutes the state, the intimate relationship of the military-industrial state with its citizen enablers has distorted and blurred the meaning of innocent civilian. Yea, we can let off the hook the real old and real young but everyone else is likely to be caught up in the great national stake of life and death war, mortal combat on the national scale.

This makes the big ones beautiful. They do not discriminate or involve themselves in the hypocrisies of proportional response and double effect. If the state is going to war, not just the young men at the front die but everyone else can be killed as well, because everyone else is intimately involved in sustaining continuous killing of young men at the front and that is what makes some folks angry about the big ones. The guy at the front and all his enablers are the same, targets.

The bombs big or little, bayonets and bullets cannot be moral maybe morally neutral at best not moral. Would we never have to learn war but that won’t happen until the second coming. In the meantime, we have to muddle through the best we can which means in practical terms the paths that cause the least amount of pain and destruction while keeping us safe in a very dangerous world.

And that is the truth.

 

[mdgspencer]

One problem–this same logic may cause another nation to use nuclear weapons on U.S. cities.
And countries that do not seem entirely rational are making them, including North Korea and Iran.

Oh dear, I know it upset folks but really everybody gets their shorts in a bunch when things go nuclear and it is tough dealling with truth. So, I ask a few unsettling questions. In the modern state who qualifies as a non-combatant? The dude in uniform running an unarmed tanker bringing food stuffs to the front or home front depending on who side you are on. He is a non-combatant but he is intimately supporting the war effort. So, legitimate target easy question(hint the answer is either yes or no)? Consider, the factory making some widget that goes in some weapon; its run by non-uniformed folks and when it is targeted, some of those non-uniformed folks are going to get killed. So, legitimate target? If you can answer yes to the above questions then the only complaint about weapons of mass destruction is the numbers killed and amount of destruction in a highly efficient method.

Oh my…. now comes the hand wringing about principle of double effect, and proportionality. Double effect might make the bombardier who blew up a factory feel better but the schmucks in the factory are not feeling anything because they are dead, pedal that double effect stuff to their widows and orphans. I say it is not very proportional from the point of view of the factory dude. So, I say, the tough part of big bombs by their nature involve everybody in the boom, but small bombs only get a couple dudes caught up in their booms. That is the difference pure and simple. I say the bomb being small does not make any difference. I think when it gets to this point your splitting hairs and yes, you are back in a counting game. And I am not supporting consequentialiasm.

The whole concept of modern governance and what constitutes the state, the intimate relationship of the military-industrial state with its citizen enablers has distorted and blurred the meaning of innocent civilian. Yea, we can let off the hook the real old and real young but everyone else is likely to be caught up in the great national stake of life and death war, mortal combat on the national scale.

This makes the big ones beautiful. They do not discriminate or involve themselves in the hypocrisies of proportional response and double effect. If the state is going to war, not just the young men at the front die but everyone else can be killed as well, because everyone else is intimately involved in sustaining continuous killing of young men at the front and that is what makes some folks angry about the big ones. The guy at the front and all his enablers are the same, targets.

The bombs big or little, bayonets and bullets cannot be moral maybe morally neutral at best not moral. Would we never have to learn war but that won’t happen until the second coming. In the meantime, we have to muddle through the best we can which means in practical terms the paths that cause the least amount of pain and destruction while keeping us safe in a very dangerous world.

And that is the truth.

 

[Twilight_Crow]

I don’t think that anything which causes destruction on that scale is morally justifiable. On a whole, war is terrible not only for the loss of human life, but the ethical and moral chaos it causes within those who participate in it.

Terrible choices were made on every side of the war (heck, every war if we want to get down to it). The use of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one such terrible decision.

 

[ETEXAS]

In Irony…it saved Japan…Russia was SWIFLY moving to position an attack and occupation…it would have been worse than Germany. Russia’s collective memory never forgot nor forgave aspects of the Russo-Japapanese conflict…the retaliation would have stripped Japan of Heritage and Culture, such would have been the Soviets bloody price. The need of the bomb was tragic but the only option that would have kept Japan from being over-run by the Soviets. Many in considering this have over-looked the Menace of the Soviet Shadow. It would (a Soviet invasion) been MORE devastating than the two bombs…no one Truman or the Military wished to do this thing, some claim we wanted to test them, the declassified reports of the period reveal a FAR different story, we wanted the ability but we wanted to keep the Atomic Card close to the vest, they were in fact not for Japan (unless dire need-swift soviet advance)…the real aim was to hold this knowledge in reserve … our Nation knew that the “gains” of Stalin, would loom large…for a long time…they were in fact…for Russia.

 

[boldlibrary5]

Well, I’m not sure as to whether this affects the debate or not, but wasn’t St. Maximillien Kolbe present with his missionaries in Japan? And didn’t he foresee the coming of the bomb?

For those who don’t know or who aren’t aware, his missionaries were built alongside a mountain, which were strategically placed so that the coming bomb wouldn’t hurt the buildings as much. Everyone else wondered as to why he built it there in the first place, but it became clear after the bombing. As far as I know, it still stands today!

I know that the bomb being prophesied doesn’t necessarily make it justified or not (who knows, could count as something), but I’m just throwing this fun fact out there.

Gear change here, millions of people died, yet millions were saved. I’m not sure if that’s historically correct, but as I see it, it’s kind of like the scenario where a man steals food to feed his family. Only in this case, the food is worth a heck of a lot more! (pretty much priceless!) Is it justified?

 

[jeffrey_erwin]

Most of the posts make the assumption that the two atom bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were intrumental in persuading the Japanese to surrender. That is an incorrect idea which is based on US propaganda. Prior to the A-bomb attacks the US had destroyed some 62 Japanese cities by firebombing ( the Tokyo raid killed over 100,000.) Two additional cities destroyed, by whatever means, did not mean a great deal to Japanese leaders.
What did impress those leaders was the entry of the USSR into the Pacific war. The Japs were hoping that the Russians, as a neutral party, would broker a peace deal on their behalf with the US. The Russian attack ended that idea, and Japanese leaders realized that Japan could not continue fighting the war on two fronts. US leaders knew well in advance of Russia’s plan to declare war on Japan; that was the deal brokered with Stalin at Yalta. The American leaders also knew that Japan would be forced to surrender by the USSR attack. In order to creat the impression that Japan was surrenduring as a result of US initiative, President Harry Turman ordered the A-bombs to be dropped just prior to the Russian declaration of war. This propaganda action was quite successful. Most Americans still believe it today. But it is not the truth, which is readily available to anyone who is willing to do a little research.

 

[Scholar2008]

The Japanese were well on there way to an atomic weapon and would have used it if we had not, I have seen photos of the Japanese cyclodine as it was being dumped into the South China Sea (History of WW II magizine some time around 1987) used to purify the Korean uranium that was the basis of their weapon.
To attempt to view it through today’s moral clarity forgets such incidents as the rape of 20,000-80,000 Chinese woman and the murder of in excess of 200,000 men in the 1937 massacre in Nanking China.
Revisionist history is thus flawed, and should be avoided.

 

[JimG]

In Irony…it saved Japan…Russia was SWIFLY moving to position an attack and occupation…it would have been worse than Germany. Russia’s collective memory never forgot nor forgave aspects of the Russo-Japapanese conflict…the retaliation would have stripped Japan of Heritage and Culture, such would have been the Soviets bloody price. The need of the bomb was tragic but the only option that would have kept Japan from being over-run by the Soviets. Many in considering this have over-looked the Menace of the Soviet Shadow. It would (a Soviet invasion) been MORE devastating than the two bombs…no one Truman or the Military wished to do this thing, some claim we wanted to test them, the declassified reports of the period reveal a FAR different story, we wanted the ability but we wanted to keep the Atomic Card close to the vest, they were in fact not for Japan (unless dire need-swift soviet advance)…the real aim was to hold this knowledge in reserve … our Nation knew that the “gains” of Stalin, would loom large…for a long time…they were in fact…for Russia.

Well, Japan was fortunate in any case not to have been turned into another Soviet gulag.

 

[ETEXAS]

Well, Japan was fortunate in any case not to have been turned into another Soviet gulag.

Thank you Jim! You have done your homework as well, my research is not (based on one posters) US Propaganda ! The Japanese are a proud and Strong people! They were willing to fight even in the Rubble…our air Raids…had done all they could…had it been the US desire to use the A Bomb as “heavy” club…there were more Strategic / Cultural / Populated areas…Truman was up all night Reading a Bible praying…it was a hard call…General MacArthur said…“the Soviets moved like wildfire through China, the swiftness of their recall of Eastern front Troops in conquered areas was alarming…it forced the hand” People Nasty story re Stalin…Stalins shipyards went to full swing seeing the US could not (with air raids) bring submission …he devise a new plan …already Stalin “Organs” were emplaced on the Coast of China…tracks were laid down for their early crude but DEVASTATING rail gun w/ a twist it was the early mobile rocket launch platform…finally…we Know…by US/UK/ and Soviet “flips”…stalin had a plan for His good Allies in the US…if he had been able to get the momentum (and it was fast building) Stalin secretly sent forth Orders!!! Should the US try to intervene or interfere in his plan…by blockades or other means (here is Stalins Frightening Madness)…consider the US Naval/and Marines involved in slowing the Soviet move (viable TARGETS) People…WW2 was over but had we not been pushed by Soviet movements and some knowledge of Stalin’s Treachery…WW3 would have BEGUN…simply based on his order to view US Ships or Manpower to be viable targets in “protecting Japan”…EVEN Stalin knew…we were not out to obliterate Japan and make her a US “satellite” …Stalin’s plans were…dark and Far Different…Japan as we know it would culturally never recovered…MacArthur was correct…“our hand was forced”

 

[sedonaman]

Much self-criticism have Americans heaped upon themselves with beating breasts and mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpas in an attempt to gain some sort of intellectual and/or moral high ground over the use of the A-bomb, but when you boil it down it’s nothing more than pseudo intellectualism and contempt for not having to risk as many of our soldiers as normal combat requires. This is a tough pill for liberals with high opinions of themselves to have to swallow, especially when they have never had the pleasure of sitting in an invasion landing craft waiting the “go” signal and wondering if you will live to see tomorrow … all because some people halfway around the planet deluded themselves into following some despot wanting to rule the world and promising glory for their country.

 

[JaneGrey]

Much self-criticism have Americans heaped upon themselves with beating breasts and mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpas in an attempt to gain some sort of intellectual and/or moral high ground over the use of the A-bomb, but when you boil it down it’s nothing more than pseudo intellectualism and contempt for not having to risk as many of our soldiers as normal combat requires. This is a tough pill for liberals with high opinions of themselves to have to swallow, especially when they have never had the pleasure of sitting in an invasion landing craft waiting the “go” signal and wondering if you will live to see tomorrow … all because some people halfway around the planet deluded themselves into following some despot wanting to rule the world and promising glory for their country.

This is not about liberals and conservatives, this is about the morality of it from a Christian point of view.

 

[sedonaman]

This is not about liberals and conservatives, this is about the morality of it from a Christian point of view.

No, it isn’t. It’s about putting America down by any means possible. Period.

 

[JaneGrey]

No, it isn’t. It’s about putting America down by any means possible. Period.

So any criticism of America is putting America down? I have to disagree. Those of us who disagree with Hiroshima are not even criticising America. It is more a criticism of a decision made by some of those in government at that particular point of time. I know people who have had relatives tortured by the Japanese, but no one condemns the entire country. Thus no one is condemning America here.

You dont have to answer this, but do you consider yourself an Catholic first, and American second or the other way round?

 

[sw85]

It was morally wrong.

It doesn’t matter if the act saved lives, saved money, saved Japan, whatever (for the record, I think it did all those things). You simply cannot *morally *do evil that good may result.

Any argument that the nuking of civilian centers is “good” because its outcome is good is rank consequentialism, which is utterly at odds with the Church’s teachings (and which, quite frankly, is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the rise of totalitarianism in the first place).