As a Catholic, What do you think about Hiroshima?

[smichhertz]

The thing, in war, is that many people are called upon to commit immoral acts thanks to their participation in the war (which may be forced upon them).

I see war as a temporary suspension of normal circumstances, if you will, in that individuals might commit immoral acts (murder) but these are not sinful in the usual way, if the war meets our Catholic understanding of a “just war”.

From the Catechism, for a war to be a “just war”, it must satisfy these demands:

• It must be authorised by a competent authority (For America, in WW2, this is satisfied by the United States Government, a democratically elected body, declaring war on Japan in response to an unprovoked surprise attack by the Japanese).
• It must have a just cause (the American cause for war was just as they were victims of unprovoked, surprise aggression which cost many American lives, as well as a global “loss of face” for America).
• It must have a just purpose (which was to defeat Imperial Japan, an aggressive nation which attacked America)
• It must be a last resort (essentially a moot point here, as war was forced on America by Japan’s surprise attack. America did not make the decision and so cannot be accused of going to war too readily).
• the methods used must be proportionate (this is perhaps a debatable point. I would argue however that the bombings were proportionate. Imperial Japan was a dreadful, fearsome enemy - let us not forget - which was happy to invoke large scale slaughter of P.O.W.s and civilians, and terrifying (to the western mind) suicide attacks in their war effort.

No amount of foreign death, military or civilian, was too much for them to bear in their efforts to win. And when you consider the massive toll of Allied lives an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have cost, the bombings seem proportionate. Especially when you consider the repeated Japanese refusal to surrender. They even refused again after the first atom bomb, which is why the second was necessary.

An invasion of the home islands would only been successful if every last Japanese adult (males anyway) had been killed. Remember that surrender was a total dishonour to the Japanese mind and generally their troops would chose to die - even needlessly - rather than give up. I think the bombings were a tragedy, but I think they were a lesser - and less individualised - tragedy than would have occured, if America was forced to physically invade Japan. It was Japan who started the war and it was Japan who ultimately forced the bombings by refusing to surrender, when they had no remaining chance of success - see below also).

• there must be a reasonable chance of success (America had every right to feel confident, being the dominant global industrial and military force of the middle 20th century)

I think there can be no doubt that Americas war against Japan (as part of the wider WW2) was a just war. And so any act of killing within that war, while still being immoral, as all murder is, was “just”. The only debatable point is whether or not one thinks the bombings were proportionate - which must be weighed up against the methods Japan used to fight the war, and the likely massive human cost of victory via conquering the Japanese home islands.

GWright,

You’re entire post is flawed because it hinges on the idea that a combatant killing another combatant in war is murder. It’s not. It is morally permissible for a combatant to kill another during war.

If we start out by saying “war is murder” then there is no way to argue for the legitimacy of war as we’ve ruled it out as immoral.

Secondly, you are correct with the Just War Theory, but that’s just used to justify the act of going to war, not for individuals acts of war after the fact. No one on this thread is arguing that the US wasn’t justified in going to war, only that the bombing of Hiroshima was immoral. There’s a difference.

Hope that helps.

 

[smichhertz]

If we had invaded Japan you can just imagine what our casualties would be. If I ever had questions about our dropping the bomb all of them disappeared when I read the book “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilence, and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand. It’s on the best seller list and is a true story of one of our POW’s of the Japanese. Their cruelty to the POW’s was unbelievable – if any of you have any doubts I recommend that you read this book. One of my cousins was a POW of the Germans and he definitely didn’t experience that kind of treatment.

Certainly, the Japanese committed very heinous immoral acts during the war. Truly horrible, awful situation. Also, what they did was far worse that what we did by comparison.

However, two wrongs don’t make a right. Simply because they committed immoral acts doesn’t justify us committing immoral acts.

 

[smichhertz]

1. The people of the town were told to get their stuff and get out because it was coming. The town was blanketed with flyers before it happened. They ignored the warnings.

Whether or not warning is given doesn’t justify committing an immoral act. I’m not justified in murder if I warn the person I’m trying to kill ahead of time. Hitler wouldn’t have been justified in the Holocaust if he gave the Jews a warning first.

And secondly, there wasn’t any warning. Sure they blanketed it with flyers, but gave no specific indication that it would be an atomic bomb and not a regular bombing.

1. Nearly every person from Japan I have ever talked to about it (and let me assure you, it’s quite a few since that’s my typical social circle, especially in college) feels that it was a necessary evil. They believe that their government was corrupt, and thank America for waking them up and stopping the killing of millions of other innocent Japanese in the war at the expense of these cities.

How many people agree or disagree with an act doesn’t justify it. You said it yourself, the ends don’t justify the means. We can’t just go killing innocent civilians and then say it’s okay because of its results. Sure their government was corrupt, but that doesn’t mean we’re justified in killing civilians.

 

[smichhertz]

C - out of the question unless we were looking for self-sacrifice.

How was an invasion out of the question? We were getting ready to invade when we dropped the atom bomb. Not only was it not “out of the question” it’s what we were going to do

 

[Whitacre_Girl]

Whether or not warning is given doesn’t justify committing an immoral act. I’m not justified in murder if I warn the person I’m trying to kill ahead of time. Hitler wouldn’t have been justified in the Holocaust if he gave the Jews a warning first.

And secondly, there wasn’t any warning. Sure they blanketed it with flyers, but gave no specific indication that it would be an atomic bomb and not a regular bombing.

Here is the actual flyer’s warning:

“Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America’s humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.”

They kind of made it clear - they didn’t want to target or injure any civilians. They did all they could to tell innocent civilians to get away from the explosion. The Japanse government told them to ignore it.

http://www.corbisimages.com/images/IH129393.jpg?size=67&uid=cd4ba83e-8a4d-4aec-9180-d95286b9a061

If I understand things correctly - in a just war, there is no moral problem with targeting and destroying military targets. It seems the US made every effort to tell innocent people to evacuate as the ENTIRE city could/would be destroyed.

I’d also like to point out that they flyer was right - once that government was destroyed a free and better Japan emerged that valued human rights.

Also, nice play on Godwin’s law. I think the more apt example is trying to destroy a military bunker where civilians are also living. You paper the bunker saying “This building will be destroyed. Everyone LEAVE” and people stay anyway. It’s just on a grander scale. The holocaust is not an applicable example in this case. Civilians were not the target - the military operations were. In the Holocaust, the innocent people were the specific target.

 

[Godfollower]

Godfollower;8131957:

Suppose you could go back in time and abort Hitler while he was still in the womb. Would you do it? Of course not; abortion is intrinsically evil, so it’s off the table as a choice, even if you somehow knew that it would save millions of lives lost because of him during World War II.

You’ve actually posed an interesting question. Abortion is intrinsically evil because it is considered murder; i.e., killing of the innocent. If you actually knew what was going to occur, it would have had to come from God. The interesting philosophical question then becomes if God told you that a great evil would occur and you just stood by, is that wrong?

Standing by, doing nothing? Not moral. Killing an innocent to avoid evil? Not moral. You’d have to find another path – raise him differently, take steps to prevent him from taking office, etc.

So why are you able to deliberately kill the thousands of babies and small children living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in order to save lives by avoiding an invasion or blockade? What makes their deaths so much more acceptable?

Not completely acceptable, no. Again, it’s the principle of double effect:
1.The nature-of-the-act condition. Blockading the enemy in a just war (preventing him from waging war and from receiving more weapons) is morally good (or at least neutral).
2.The means-end condition (can’t achieve a good end by evil means). A blockade doesn’t win by starving the innocent; it wins by forcing the combatants to surrender. Even if you know that the enemy combatants are going to starve the innocents to let the combatants last longer, that evil is chargeable to the enemy, not to you the blockaders.
3.The right-intention condition. You’re intending to prevent further war; your goal is not the deaths of whoever dies during the blockade. Those deaths are an unintended side effect.
4.The proportionality condition. Blockading the enemy is proportional to their waging war, and the evil (innocent deaths of starvation during the blockade) is proportional to ending the war.
So a blockade is moral (assuming the war is just, which WWII was, at least on the Allied side).

Nuclear weapons against an inhabited city full of civilians and innocents (the two terms are not interchangeable) fails the analysis:

1.The nature-of-the-act condition. Indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of people in an inhabited city is neither morally good nor morally neutral. It is evil.
2.The means-end condition (can’t achieve a good end by evil means). The surrender was forced in part because the sheer number of deaths of civilians caused by a single bomb contributed to the sense of finality. The goal was to use all those deaths to force a surrender (we totally destroyed Hiroshima, and other cities are next! Surrender!). So the good end (surrender of the enemy) is being accomplished as a direct result of the evil means (killing innocents).
3.The right-intention condition. The civilian deaths were intended; they were not an unavoidable consequence. Unlike the cleaning crew killed by a missile taking out a munitions factory, the civilian deaths were actually part of the plan.
4.The proportionality condition. There’s some debate about this particular point. Some claim that the atomic bombs saved lives – both Japanese and Allied – that would’ve been lost during an invasion or blockade; others dispute that conclusion. So, depending on your conclusion regarding the facts, this single factor might weigh for or against dropping the bomb. Too bad the three other factors all weigh against it.

 

[Godfollower]

I suppose the proper Catholic response is that it was morally wrong and the ends don’t justify the means.

I don’t feel it was wrong though. Here are the reasons:

1. The people of the town were told to get their stuff and get out because it was coming. The town was blanketed with flyers before it happened. They ignored the warnings.
2. Nearly every person from Japan I have ever talked to about it (and let me assure you, it’s quite a few since that’s my typical social circle, especially in college) feels that it was a necessary evil. They believe that their government was corrupt, and thank America for waking them up and stopping the killing of millions of other innocent Japanese in the war at the expense of these cities.

In an ideal world, the people would have left the town and no human lives could have been lost.

But then again, in an ideal world the war would never have happened.

Ther flier is available here. What’s interesting is that the flier is aimed at having the Japanese people petition the emperor to end the war. What, like that would happen? Yes, there’s one sentence toward the end that says “EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.” We paid no attention when the Germans said that to us, and the Japanese paid no attention when we said it to them (as if they could’ve just up and left during the war under the Japanese regime at the time). At best, that was a sop to our consciences.

 

[Godfollower]

I’d still like to know why, in general, there are no discussions at all about worse atrocities committed by America’s enemies.

We already agreed that the worse atrocities committed by America’s enemies were, in fact, worse atrocities. That doesn’t make our immoral actions moral.

 

[Whitacre_Girl]

Ther flier is available here. What’s interesting is that the flier is aimed at having the Japanese people petition the emperor to end the war. What, like that would happen? Yes, there’s one sentence toward the end that says “EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.” We paid no attention when the Germans said that to us, and the Japanese paid no attention when we said it to them (as if they could’ve just up and left during the war under the Japanese regime at the time). At best, that was a sop to our consciences.

This was a flier released after Hiroshima. See my above post where I showed the original flier dropped on Hiroshima and other cities before the bombing.

 

[exnihilo]

They kind of made it clear - they didn’t want to target or injure any civilians. They did all they could to tell innocent civilians to get away from the explosion. The Japanse government told them to ignore it.

Some things to consider:

Why would anyone believe their enemy’s government?

Where could they go to? This was Tokyo at the time:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Blowing up a city is targeting civilians by its very nature.

Governments lie as a matter of course. The current Japanese government has been lying about radioactive dangers surround damaged nuclear power plants and telling folks to stay put.

 

[Warrior1979]

Not completely acceptable, no. Again, it’s the principle of double effect:
1.The nature-of-the-act condition. Blockading the enemy in a just war (preventing him from waging war and from receiving more weapons) is morally good (or at least neutral).
2.The means-end condition (can’t achieve a good end by evil means). A blockade doesn’t win by starving the innocent; it wins by forcing the combatants to surrender. Even if you know that the enemy combatants are going to starve the innocents to let the combatants last longer, that evil is chargeable to the enemy, not to you the blockaders.
3.The right-intention condition. You’re intending to prevent further war; your goal is not the deaths of whoever dies during the blockade. Those deaths are an unintended side effect.
4.The proportionality condition. Blockading the enemy is proportional to their waging war, and the evil (innocent deaths of starvation during the blockade) is proportional to ending the war.
So a blockade is moral (assuming the war is just, which WWII was, at least on the Allied side).

The is the optimistic view. The reality of the situation is that military gets fed first, and the innocents are the first to die. Intended or not, it is the direct result of one’s actions, and therefore would be considered intrinsically evil by your standards.

Nuclear weapons against an inhabited city full of civilians and innocents (the two terms are not interchangeable) fails the analysis:

You forgot to mention the part about being warned in advance.

 

[JaneGrey]

The Harvest of Sorrow refers to Stalin’s systematic starvation of the Ukraine in 1932. I mention this to illustrate how America’s alleged “sins” are magnified while the real horrors of despotic regimes somehow get trivialized, glossed over, or ignored. Your not knowing about it shows that it is not well-known and illustrates this trivialization. My not knowing it doesnt prove anything, as I m just one mere person. Many know about the general atrocities committed by Stalin. Indeed many put him right up there with Hitler. Speaking of Hitler, he was not American yet he is seen almost as an ‘AntiChrist’ figure in popular culture nowadays, for instance. This thread is specifically about Hiroshima. I disagree with you that America is being targetted by anyone for the sake of it - as I said earlier America is a very high profile nation, thats what you get for being one of the (if not the) most developed country. We are still debating the A-bomb, but few know about or question the Harvest of Sorrow or any of the other deka-megamurders I listed. And this does not happen by accident. Read about this “intellectual and moral disgrace on a massive scale” here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest#Later_works .

You see? By referring to atrocities of unimaginable scale as “bad decisions”, even you are trivializing them while magnifying America’s “bad decision”. At least America can claim the primary target was the military installations in Japan. What purpose does systematic, intentional massive starvation of whole populations serve? So, it shows more than other countries making “bad decisions”.
The morality of Hiroshima is not affected by how immoral or pointless other acts of war were.
Now you are magnifying. I fail to see how the A-bomb is unique in this respect. Approximately 50 million people were killed in WW-II as a result of other countries’ “bad decisions”. Do you think that has not changed future generations? All we need is a reminder of the story “It’s a Wonderful Life” to see how future generations can be changed by the absence of only one person.

The A bomb is unique because it is nuclear warfare.

nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html

The above link outlines the risks, both immediate and delayed, of nuclear attacks. Yes every type of war act that kills civilians is wrong in that sense, but what makes using the A bomb particularly deplorable is the delayed onset of the effects - babies in the womb, among others, were all adversely affected.

Say it was France who bombed Japan or some other country with the A bomb. I would s till use the same arguments and posit that France made a bad decision. So please dont take this as being against America when it is not even about America . This is beyond nationalism.

God bless

 

[JaneGrey]

Whether or not warning is given doesn’t justify committing an immoral act. I’m not justified in murder if I warn the person I’m trying to kill ahead of time. Hitler wouldn’t have been justified in the Holocaust if he gave the Jews a warning first.

And secondly, there wasn’t any warning. Sure they blanketed it with flyers, but gave no specific indication that it would be an atomic bomb and not a regular bombing.

How many people agree or disagree with an act doesn’t justify it. You said it yourself, the ends don’t justify the means. We can’t just go killing innocent civilians and then say it’s okay because of its results. Sure their government was corrupt, but that doesn’t mean we’re justified in killing civilians.

Well said smichhertz.

 

[GWright]

You’re entire post is flawed because it hinges on the idea that a combatant killing another combatant in war is murder. It’s not. It is morally permissible for a combatant to kill another during war.

Hi there,

Re the above - that is the point I was making, when I said normal rules dont apply, if the war is considered “just”.

 

[sedonaman]

… but what makes using the A bomb particularly deplorable is the delayed onset of the effects - babies in the womb, among others, were all adversely affected. …

What makes the A-bomb particularly deplorable is that we don’t have to risk as many of our own fighting men in order to win, and America winning is also deplorable to some people; call it the Rev. Jeremiah Write syndrome, if you will.

 

[smichhertz]

They kind of made it clear - they didn’t want to target or injure any civilians. They did all they could to tell innocent civilians to get away from the explosion. The Japanse government told them to ignore it.

Thanks for the inclusion of the text. I’ve actually read it before, however. Nothing in there notes anything about an atomic bomb, and the Allies had already bombed many cities in Japan, there was no reason for the citizens of Hiroshima to think it would be any different for them.

However, you’re entirely missing my point. Even if they had dropped leaflets saying “we will drop an atomic bomb on this city”, it would still have been immoral for them to drop it. You can’t target innocent civilians.

If I understand things correctly - in a just war, there is no moral problem with targeting and destroying military targets. It seems the US made every effort to tell innocent people to evacuate as the ENTIRE city could/would be destroyed.

Targeting an entire city IS targeting innocent civilians. There is no distinction. You are correct in that there is no moral problem with targeting legitimate military targets, but a city is not a legitimate military target.

I’d also like to point out that they flyer was right - once that government was destroyed a free and better Japan emerged that valued human rights.

True, but irrelevant. Even if the bombing of Hiroshima would have ended all wars for all time, and freed all societies forever, it would still have been immoral. You can’t commit an evil to bring about a good.

Also, nice play on Godwin’s law. I think the more apt example is trying to destroy a military bunker where civilians are also living. You paper the bunker saying “This building will be destroyed. Everyone LEAVE” and people stay anyway. It’s just on a grander scale. The holocaust is not an applicable example in this case. Civilians were not the target - the military operations were. In the Holocaust, the innocent people were the specific target.

Haha, you’re welcome. A city is not a military bunker, and it cannot be held up as a legitimate military target. There’s no problem with attacking factories, supply lines, etc. But to level an entire city is another story entirely. Furthermore, I used the holocaust to show how giving warning before committing an act does not justify it. I was not comparing the bombing of Hiroshima to the holocaust.

 

[smichhertz]

Hi there,

Re the above - that is the point I was making, when I said normal rules dont apply, if the war is considered “just”.

Okay, you lost me. A combatant killing a combatant is morally permissible and not murder. Those are the “normal rules”. There are no “not normal rules”. Also, I would say a combatant killing another combatant is morally permissible even if the war is unjust, as combatants usually do not make the decision to go to war in the first place.

What’s giving me pause is when you describe a scenario where due to circumstances we can suspend our moral beliefs. Moral beliefs are precisely there to guide us when the circumstances become difficult. We can never suspend them.

 

[smichhertz]

What makes the A-bomb particularly deplorable is that we don’t have to risk as many of our own fighting men in order to win, and America winning is also deplorable to some people; call it the Rev. Jeremiah Write syndrome, if you will.

That has nothing to do with why the Hiroshima bombing is immoral. Nor has anyone who has been arguing for the immorality of the Hiroshima bombing used logic anything like that.

I really don’t understand your position. Do you think the Hiroshima bombing was immoral? Yes or no? If yes, then why would you support it?

 

[sedonaman]

That has nothing to do with why the Hiroshima bombing is immoral. Nor has anyone who has been arguing for the immorality of the Hiroshima bombing used logic anything like that.

I’ve heard this lopsided debate for over 50 years and can read between the lines. I’ll bet you not one in 100 who condemn America’s military has ever spent so much as one day in its armed forces, much less sit in an invasion launching craft waiting for the “go” signal.

Gen. Curtis Le May’s firebombing raids killed more people in one night than both A-bombs put together, yet no one talks about them because the only difference [besides the casualty numbers] was we had to risk more planes and more of our fighting men.

America is condemned for ending the insanity we call WW-II and gets no credit; yet no country, save Germany, has ever been condemned for any atrocities it committed. Why? As I said earlier, the Leftist media sets the agenda, and the agenda is condemn America since communism failed, thus America must be handed a defeat and brought down by any means possible. This is only one of them.

Once we spend 65 years debating the deka-megamurders of the despotic regimes of the 20th century, then maybe I’d be willing to discuss America’s sins. My country, right or wrong, is, after all, my country.

---

“The more America does to better itself, the more – not less – unbearable her remaining faults.”

 

[Neildown]

How was an invasion out of the question? We were getting ready to invade when we dropped the atom bomb. Not only was it not “out of the question” it’s what we were going to do

That’s probably WHY they dropped the bomb…