Atomic Bomb In WWII

[pnewton]

As his creatures, God has dominion over all of our lives.

Of course, but that does not explain the difference. My point is that God, being all good, could not commit or require His people to commit and intrinsically evil act. Ergo, the destruction of an entire city is no intrinsically evil.

 

[miguel]

At that time, almost certainly. Just as I would almost certainly have dropped conventional explosives. I suspect the moral calculus would have seemed quite clear then. Which is not to say that it is as clear in retrospect.

I pray that I would have the moral courage not to obey that order. I could not honestly defend it at my judgement.

Personally, I wish mass bombing of cities had never happened. But I have no idea how that would have affected the conduct of the war. And I’m very reluctant to second-guess, from the comfort of my sofa, those who were fighting a world war.

Well the Church claims the authority to teach us about morality. And I take that very seriously because I take the possibility of hell very seriously.

 

[VociMike]

I pray that I would have the moral courage not to obey that order. I could not honestly defend it at my judgement.

Fair enough. As I said earlier, looking at it from a detached perspective I think the mass bombing of cities was wrong. It was the use of a new weapon simply because it could be used. But I think the most truthful thing either of us could say about such a question is that we cannot possibly know, here and now, how we would view the war and the acts of war back then.

Well the Church claims the authority to teach us about morality. And I take that very seriously because I take the possibility of hell very seriously.

Did the Church declare authoritatively during the war that such bombing was a grave sin? If she did, and if I had that information, then I would have refused to take part.

 

[sodak]

I thank you for your service, but I fail to see why this would be offensive. I don’t think this discussion detracts from honoring the sacrifice of our fallen soldiers. We are not criticising or disparaging our soldiers. We are just discussing the morality of similar wartime actions.

I’m not looking for kudos. The timing of this thread is disgusting. You could have easily waited. Yes, you are disparaging the military.

If you were given the order to drop an atom bomb on Hiroshima, would you do it?

Since you like posing questions, I’ll pose a couple for you.

A 5 year old boy comes running at you with explosives wrapped around him, you know someone in the crowd behind him has the detonator. You have 30 men behind you whose lives are in your hands. What do you do?

A 15 year old boy does the same thing. What do you do?

A 20 year old man does the same thing. What do you do?

You have about 3 seconds in each scenario to shoot or not. You have no way of anticipating what is coming next. You’ve never heard of a Church teaching on the subject. You’re 19 years old. Welcome to combat. These are the scenarios that our soldiers face every day. They don’t sit at home typing in a computer, googling references to morality that a bunch of people can’t agree on for several days. And they have seconds to decide.

So don’t get all sanctimonious on me about decisions that have to be made in a short amount of time, under pressure that you have to experience to believe, and with far less information then they would like to have. They do the best they can with what they have available to them. And it is my belief that the vast majority of them have NOTHING to apologize for when they stand in front of God on judgement day.

Fair enough. As I said earlier, looking at it from a detached perspective I think the mass bombing of cities was wrong. It was the use of a new weapon simply because it could be used. But I think the most truthful thing either of us could say about such a question is that we cannot possibly know, here and now, how we would view the war and the acts of war back then.

Did the Church declare authoritatively during the war that such bombing was a grave sin? If she did, and if I had that information, then I would have refused to take part.

Even if the Church did, how many people would have known about it in 1945? Very few. No internet, poor communications. But I agree with you, with the knowledge comes responsibility.

 

[Caesar517]

I’m not looking for kudos. The timing of this thread is disgusting. You could have easily waited. Yes, you are disparaging the military.

If my appreciation is unwanted then I will refrain from expressing it.

I’m not the opening poster. I simply found this to be an interesting and complex discussion. There is certainly no need to be rude.

I am most certainly not disparaging the military. On the contrary, I believe what was done was the right thing to do and I have the utmost respect for those who had to take part in making a decision like this.

 

[Al_Masetti]

We also need to consider this question:

“What is war?”

Some people think that war is fought with rules.

The Geneva Convention was only a recent innovation and not everyone has agreed to it. And the Geneva Conventions are very specific and detailed.

For example, people who fight who are not in uniform when they fight are not covered by the Geneva Convention. For example, pirates and terrorists.

There have been many many unlimited wars even before the atomic bomb was invented. Germ warfare/ biological warfare was very common for thousands of years. Civilian populations were taken into slavery for thousands of years. Populations were totally massacred … wiped out… for thousands of years.

We seem to have forgotten what war really is or what was has always been. We seem to have gotten the idea that war is (or should be) somehow a neat process of carefully selected or surgical precision against specific individuals. Maybe we are watching too much television or we have been using too much of applying retroactive standards.

It doesn’t matter whether war tactics are conducted by rampaging Assyrian tribes or by catapulting dead animals over the walls of a city or by beheading all the people and making pyramids of their skulls or by burning the whole city with everyone in it or by sending down fire and brimstone or by detonating a giant nuke. The results are the same.

We may not like the strategies and the tactics, but wars are brutal. That is the very definition of war.

War has always been extraordinarily messy.

Read the Old Testament. Read about the wars fought by the strong tribes … the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Cananites, etc. Read the instructions that God, Himself, gave to His prophets on how the Tribe of Judah should conduct war. No mercy.

We may desire something less than brutality, but then that would be something less than war … as wars have always been carried out for thousands of years.

If you fight with less than maximum intensity, then you will be wiped out.

 

[Al_Masetti]

The present Geneva Conventions are dated 1949.

There was a very limited biological statement issued in 1925.

It has also been pointed out that there was also a biological agreement in (about) 1968, but the Soviets immediately began a HUGE massive totally secret production campaign that lasted for 20 years. The West was shocked when word of it leaked out but the apologists of Communism denied that it existed. Only lately have the full details been emerging. It was immense. And you only need small quantities to cause devastation.

 

[Al_Masetti]

randalllarsen.com/video/index.html

View Randall Larsen’s talk at the above link for some perspectives on bio-warfare.

It fits in with the ideas of how and where bio-warfare has been used before … the idea of targeting civilian populations fits in with this discussion of the atomic bomb and WWII.

Larsen gave an outstanding talk on CSpan, but it’s not on their archives.

He has it on his own Web site in small parts. Well worth the viewing.

Here is his homepage.

randalllarsen.com/

This guy is really interesting; here is another video of him:

homelandsecurity.tamu.edu/ichs-lecture-series/oct-15-2007-randall-j-larsen-author-our-own-worst-enemy/are-americans-asking-the-wrong-questions-about-homeland-security/

 

[vee8]

Ive only read the first and last pages of this topic so apologies if what I am about to write has already been said.

Dr. Takashi Nagai a Japanese Catholic doctor who survived the bombings because he was in a concrete building wrote this "At midnight that night our cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was consumed. At exactly the same time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known his sacred decision to end the war. On August 15, the Imperial Rescript which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated and the whole world saw the light of peace. August 15 is also the great Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant, I believe, that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her …* Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole-burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all nations during World War ll?**"

*from here ad2000.com.au/articles/1993/aug1993p20_807.html

I`ve read his book The Bells of Nagasaki several times and highly recommend it.

 

[Brendan]

You can’t drop an atom bomb on a city and claim that civilians aren’t the target. That is nonsense. And I’m done with this discussion.

Yes you can, the same way you can call in artillery on a tank in a barn and not target the civilians in the house next to it, even though you know that some shells are going to fall on the house too.

It’s called collateral damage, and the Church recognizes that it happens.

I’d recommend that you take a good class on St. Thomas Aquinas Moral Theology.

 

[sodak]

If my appreciation is unwanted then I will refrain from expressing it.

I’m not the opening poster. I simply found this to be an interesting and complex discussion. There is certainly no need to be rude.

I am most certainly not disparaging the military. On the contrary, I believe what was done was the right thing to do and I have the utmost respect for those who had to take part in making a decision like this.

I sincerely apologize to you. I mistook you for the OP, whom this message is truly for. I’m sorry.

 

[Sure]

Yes you can, the same way you can call in artillery on a tank in a barn and not target the civilians in the house next to it, even though you know that some shells are going to fall on the house too.

It’s called collateral damage, and the Church recognizes that it happens.

I’d recommend that you take a good class on St. Thomas Aquinas Moral Theology.

Brendan,

Do you know of any other reputable theologians that make the Thomistic case that the act was moral?

I am curious because before you, I had never seen it done. I am still not in agreement because couldn’t they have used conventional weaponry to destroy whatever military target was there? Also, when Paul VI, John Paul II and Arch. Sheen all come down hard on it, I have trouble accepting they were wrong.

 

[Caesar517]

I sincerely apologize to you. I mistook you for the OP, whom this message is truly for. I’m sorry.

Apology accepted.

 

[Wolseley]

If you were given the order to drop an atom bomb on Hiroshima, would you do it?

Do you mean would I drop one today, with what we know today about nuclear weapons, or would I have dropped one in 1945, with what was known about nuclear weapons then?

 

[stevegravy]

It seems to me the folks who wish to beat their breast about nuclear weapons will not stop until some loser of an American President shows up at Hiroshima carrying a dozen roses and saying me so sorry.

LeMay’s fire storms and the A-bomb were both intended to kill cities. Targets were chosen for various reasons and exactly what they were and if they were even in the top 5 military reasons can be debated until the cows come home. But, besides the cities having some relevance to the enemies war capabilities, the crux of the matter is it wouldn’t be until the Japanese leadership and their minions viscerally understood continued resistance was useless, that war was going to go on. That society and the entire nation of Japan need and deserved some shock therapy. We did nothing immoral or wrong in delivering it to them. If it was the U.S. intent to wipe out cities and their inhabitants for no-good reason we wouldn’t have accepted the Japanese suit for surrender. And that is why CCC 2314 isn’t applicable. It isn’t even applicable to mutually assured destruction policy.

Which if you think about it has prevented a World War for nearly 63 years or so. This international system for the last 300 years or more has routinely delivered a major outbreak among the nations every 25-50 years or so. Sure we had lots of killing fields and still do but major powers have refrained from going at it.

 

[Al_Masetti]

It seems to me the folks who wish to beat their breast about nuclear weapons will not stop until some loser of an American President shows up at Hiroshima carrying a dozen roses and saying me so sorry.

LeMay’s fire storms and the A-bomb were both intended to kill cities. Targets were chosen for various reasons and exactly what they were and if they were even in the top 5 military reasons can be debated until the cows come home. But, besides the cities having some relevance to the enemies war capabilities, the crux of the matter is it wouldn’t be until the Japanese leadership and their minions viscerally understood continued resistance was useless, that war was going to go on. That society and the entire nation of Japan need and deserved some shock therapy. We did nothing immoral or wrong in delivering it to them. If it was the U.S. intent to wipe out cities and their inhabitants for no-good reason we wouldn’t have accepted the Japanese suit for surrender. And that is why CCC 2314 isn’t applicable. It isn’t even applicable to mutually assured destruction policy.

Which if you think about it has prevented a World War for nearly 63 years or so. This international system for the last 300 years or more has routinely delivered a major outbreak among the nations every 25-50 years or so. Sure we had lots of killing fields and still do but major powers have refrained from going at it.

It should be noted that at any time, the leaders of the Japanese Empire could have stopped the war … by simply saying: “we quit”. And just going home. However, they refused to do that. And in every engagement, fought to the death.

Their fleet had been for the most part wiped out at the Battle of Midway in mid-1942. But they fought on for another three years.

But they continued to fight.

 

[GKC]

It should be noted that at any time, the leaders of the Japanese Empire could have stopped the war … by simply saying: “we quit”. And just going home. However, they refused to do that. And in every engagement, fought to the death.

Their fleet had been for the most part wiped out at the Battle of Midway in mid-1942. But they fought on for another three years.

But they continued to fight.

This overstates the damage to the IJN at Midway, a little; their carriers were badly hurt (four fleet carriers out of seven in existence at the time lost), but the fleet wasn’t crippled.

But your basic point is correct. They were not prepared to quit, before forcing a “tennozan”, a decisive battle, which would place them in a position of advantage. Which never happened.

GKC

 

[didymus]

Let’s move on from WW2 to the Cold War (and the present).

As far as I understand the Church has said it is moral to posses nuclear arms for the purpose of deterrence. But if deterrence had failed and the USSR had launched a first strike would a retaliatory strike have been moral?
Such a strike would have meant the deaths of millions of civilians for no other purpose but revenge.

Someone mentioned that Dresden was fire-bombed in revenge for the Lufwaffe blitz against London, but that hardly seems a valid reason to kill civilians. Does committing a war crime in revenge for a war crime make it right? A retaliatory nuclear strike would be like thousands of Dresdens.

 

[VociMike]

Let’s move on from WW2 to the Cold War (and the present).

As far as I understand the Church has said it is moral to posses nuclear arms for the purpose of deterrence. But if deterrence had failed and the USSR had launched a first strike would a retaliatory strike have been moral?
Such a strike would have meant the deaths of millions of civilians for no other purpose but revenge.

Someone mentioned that Dresden was fire-bombed in revenge for the Lufwaffe blitz against London, but that hardly seems a valid reason to kill civilians. Does committing a war crime in revenge for a war crime make it right? A retaliatory nuclear strike would be like thousands of Dresdens.

That’s one reason why coming up with a credible missle defense is a highly moral option.

 

[FromTheAshes777]

Not sure if anyone has addressed this yet but…

Those of you that feel that dropping the bombs was immoral in the eyes of God and the RCC, what would your alternative have been to dropping them? Would you have preffered to invade Japan using conventional warfare? This was the only other alternative at this point in history. I have not heard anyone present another alternative that is viable given our situation during WWII.

Statistically this would have caused a MUCH greater loss of life than the two bombs did, civilian and military. Would choosing this option simply to avoid the use of certain types of weapons have been moral?

I agree that both options are great evils because all war is a great evil no matter how it is fought. I haven’t heard anyone argue that war isn’t a horrible terrible evil present only because we live in a sinful, fallen world. The question though as stated before by a few previous posts is, “which was the lesser of the two evils?” In WWII we had to choose one.

In my opinion choosing the option with a smaller loss of life and a quicker surrender by Japan was the lesser of the two evils.