Hiroshima

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christmary4ever

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History Records that about 100 thousand people died in hiroshima when the A BOMB
was drop. Is the decision to do it fully justifiable? claiming that thousands of lives were save
and it ended the horrible pacific war. Are a large majority of the people killed truly innocent ?
If they are is it still justifiable but unfortunate? Is this just a case of self defense?
 
Unless you consider a city full of civilians a military target because a few factories are there (would you consider nuking Detroit to be licit if we were at war?) then I believe catholic morality would say no- in fact, killing a single Japanese innocent to end the war would be considered immoral.
 
tjm190 said:
Unless you consider a city full of civilians a military target because a few factories are there (would you consider nuking Detroit to be licit if we were at war?) then I believe catholic morality would say no- in fact, killing a single Japanese innocent to end the war would be considered immoral.
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Got news…there are VERY few factories left in Detroit. 😦

But your point is well taken and yes, purposefully killing even a single Japanese innocent would be considered immoral.

Which brings up the topic of “collateral damage”. In war there are always unintended civilain casualties. These, methinks, are different than intended casualties.

In such situations, intent has a whole lot to do with the morality of an act.

Having seen the power of the first bomb, I am thinking that the second bomb was “more” immoral than the first, if we can make such a comparison. Let’s not forget that in this day and age our communications are instantaneous, not like 60 some years ago.
 
christmary4ever said:
History Records that about 100 thousand people died in hiroshima when the A BOMB
was drop. Is the decision to do it fully justifiable? claiming that thousands of lives were save
and it ended the horrible pacific war. Are a large majority of the people killed truly innocent ?
If they are is it still justifiable but unfortunate? Is this just a case of self defense?
Click to expand...
yes and no. Without the a-bombs the war would have dragged on for months more with a possible invasion by allied troops resulting in hundreds of thousands(non-combatants and troops alike) being killed. Still bombing campaigns like the ww2 ones are questionable in hindsight(even criminal) but if there was a better way to stop axis war production at that time and (in the hope of the allied commanders) terrorize the populace into revolt then im sure the allied generals(probably) would have tried it

still the firebombings of Tokyo killed many more than the a-bomb
 
The bombing of Hiroshima was NOT, IMHO, “immoral.”

Some thoughts:
  1. As of mid-1945, the US was engaged in a war brought about by Japan, via a sneak attack during time of peace. Japan started the war, and waged it aggressively.
  2. During the war, millions of truly innocent people had suffered horrible carnage at the hands of the Japanese. Chinese…Koreans…Dutch from the East Indies…British in Hong Kong…NONE were spared the wrath of the Japanese. If ever the defeat of a nation fulfilled the concept of a “just war,” WWII was it.
  3. By the same time, the US was planning the invasion of Japan, with the intent of ending the war.
  4. The Japanese nation, by this time, was essentially one where 100% of residents were being armed to defeat and kill all invading enemies. “Civilians” were being armed by the government, and taught to kill americans essentially on sight.
  5. American airmen shot down over Japan were usually afforded the same treatment, whether captured by the military, or civilians: Death.
  6. The Japanese government had issued orders that upon ANY invasion,ALL allied prisoners of war in Japan – over 400,000 of them – were to be killed.
  7. Government estimates indicated that in the planned invasion, the US alone would incur 1 million casualties of soldiers killed or wounded (over and above Japanese deaths,and over and above the murder of the POWs). To give some scale, before the a-bombs, the US placed an order for “purple heart” medals in anticipation of the invasion…in 2010, after Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I & II…the US has still not exhausted its 1945 purple heart order. US soldiers wounded in Iraq, today, get a 1945-era purple heart.
With the A-bombings…the war ended. No invasion. No 400,000 alliwed POWs murdered. No 1 million US casualties. No unspeakable blood in the streets.

Compared to that calling the a-bombing of Hiroshima “immoral” is IMHO not realistic or accurate. “Unfortunate?” Maybe. Immoral? No. There’s a time to sing “Kubaya.” There’s also a time to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
 
tjm190 said:
Unless you consider a city full of civilians a military target because a few factories are there (would you consider nuking Detroit to be licit if we were at war?) then I believe catholic morality would say no- in fact, killing a single Japanese innocent to end the war would be considered immoral.
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Not necessarily so. According to Catholic teaching (emphasized again by JPII in his Gospel of Life encyclical), my understanding is that the lesser of two - the one that does the least damage of two possible choices - is the one that is to be taken.

Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan scheduled for 1946, would have resulted in between 200,000 and one million US casualties (the best and worst estimate range) and untold number of Japanese deaths (at least one million Japanese dead). So the 80,000 of Hiroshima and the 70,000 of Nagasaki are small in comparison to the other choice, only some 7-15% of an invasion.
So given the two choices on the table, it was the proper decision.
 
Actually the total count of Hiroshima keeps rising(over 350,000 including Nagasaki). The effects of a nuclear bomb are devastating, to say the least. We as Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that the bomb was the best way to go and that it was justified(guilty people always make excuses). It happened so of course it was in Gods plan but we must realize the horror. To answer your question about innocent people there is no such thing(only Christ and His Mom were innocent, so far).
That horrible tragedy happened, and it happened for a reason. Just don’t let anyone tell you it was justified because that must be a lie since none of us has any clue about the lives of those murdered, and there is simply no chance that those that “pressed the button(s)” had any clue either.
The reason the bombs were dropped was to teach us all a lesson. That lesson is that man loves to play God.

ccross
 
I’m sorry, CCross, I will have to respectfully, but quite vehemently, disagree with a great deal of what you write:

“Actually the total count of Hiroshima keeps rising(over 350,000 including Nagasaki).”
–The total count is nowhere near any estimate for what would have happened had Japan been invaded (which is exacly what would have happened without the a-bomb, and since such an invasion would clearly have been required to defeat Japan once and for all.

“We as Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that the bomb was the best way to go…”
–It was the way to go, because the alternative was unspeakably worse. You’d think the planned murder of 400,000 POWs upon news of an invasion would be bad enough. We are “indoctrinated” to the truth.

“and that it was justified (guilty people always make excuses)…”
–Come ON, CCross, read a bit of history before you write, okay? Specifically, read about the Japanese and their deliberate actions in WWII, including the following:
  1. Pearl Harbor sneak attack;
  2. Rape of Nanking (including mass rape, torture, and murder of thousands of Chinese women, including unspeakable atrocities such as forcing fathers forced to rape their daughters at gunpoint) at the express authorization of the Japanese army;
  3. Japanese “medical experiments” on POWs;
  4. Bataan death march;
  5. Orders to murder all allied POWs on news of invasion;
  6. Forced use of thousands of Korean, Chinese, etc. “comfort women,”
    –etc.-- …
    before writing that “guilty people make excuses,” as if the USA’s defeat of the unspeakably vile cancer of Japanese imperialism, which gave the world all of the above, renders us “guilty.”
“That horrible tragedy happened, and it happened for a reason. Just don’t let anyone tell you it was justified because that must be a lie since none of us has any clue about the lives of those murdered and there is simply no chance that those that “pressed the button(s)” had any clue either.”
–“They,” who “pressed the button,” knew exactly what vile cancer the Japanese empire was capable of, since it was demonstrated a million times over, and “they” were determined to wipe that cancer out. Thank God they did.
 
By any normal “moral” standard dropping the bomb would be considered immoral. But these were not normal times. Consider the times and the moral “frame of mind” of the decision makers in mid 1945.

By July of 1945 Japan had been at war for nearly 15 years starting in Sept 1931 when she invaded Manchuria and then China. She had NOT racked up a record for being the most “civilized” of combatants. Two of her more egregious acts were the “Rape of Nanking” in which, over the course of a six week blood orgy, some 300,000 Chinese civilians and POW’s were brutalized, raped and murdered. Then there was the Bataan Death March in which 75,000 already half starved American POW’s were force marched 60 miles to their prison camps. Along the way they were taunted and tortured, jabbed if they lagged and shot or stabbed if they fell out of line. Only 54,000 made it to the camps.
These and other similar acts did not endear the Japanese, as a people, to those they were fighting.

Then there was the, by then well-established Japanese practice of choosing death over surrender. While this tactic did not really inflate US casualty rates a great deal, it did result in huge death rates among the Japanese. You can imagine how many would die if Japan had to be invaded.
This practice did not appear to be confined to the military. On Saipan, the first Pre-war Japanese territory invaded, over 10,000 Japanese civilians, including babies and children killed themselves rather than surrender. Many jumped from cliffs at the north end of the island; they would toss their children off and then jump themselves.
The Allies were well aware that the Japanese military was training civilians to resist the invaders with whatever was handy, from rifles to bamboo spears.
None of the actors above from the atrocities to the policy of “no surrender” gave the allies much reason to hope for a pre-invasion surrender.

Finally there was the fact that in over 5 years of war in Europe and Asia, the Bombing of civilian populations had become almost routine. In Europe it was widely done by both the Germans and the English, and while the US resisted the use of “Area Bombing” it did participate in the bombing of Dresden near the end of the war, which resulted in the deaths of over 25,000 people.
The tactic of night area bombing was then adopted by Curtis LeMay against Japan in order to overcome problems that the B-29’s were encountering at high altitude. In the first half of 1945 the American B-29’s dropped incendiaries on many of the highly flammable Japanese cities including the Capital of Tokyo where in a single raid on the night of March 9-10, 1945 over 100,000 people were killed.
None of this seemed to make an impression on the Japanese High command.

This then was the atmosphere as the Joint Chiefs and President Truman contemplated the invasion of Japan where estimates of American casualties alone ran to over 100,000 in the first 90 days or so, imagine how many Japanese, both military AND civilian, would die given their national psyche.
Then in July, President Truman was presented with the nuclear option. An option that just might shock the Japanese Emperor and High command into surrendering. An option that would save countless lives on both sides.
Given the toll already expended in blood and treasure, what decision would you make??

President Truman is said to have commented that, how could he look at an American mother who’s son died in the invasion of Japan and tell her that he had the weapon that could have saved her son’s life and chose not to use it?

It was horrible that it came to that – To dropping the bomb(s). It’s easy for us to sit here some 65 years later and second guess and moralize, but frankly I think that Truman made the right decision.
Read through the above, and go to Wikipedia or other sources and look up the various events I mention. Look at the details that I left out and the pictures, some highly disturbing, that are contained in the articles. Then ask you self if you would make a different decision.

Peace
James
 
Why is this even an issue?!

It’s done. The bombs were used. The war is over.

In time of war, societies that get into it will use whatever means they can obtain to win it and not get destroyed in the process. “Thou shalt not hurt women, or children, or nature, or…etc” just doesn’t work in a day and age where anybody can be a combatant.

If you don’t like that, then it doth behoove you to become a pacifist. But this particular “moral issue” was moot the day after it happened.
 
beehumble said:
So given the two choices on the table, it was the proper decision.
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There were actually several possible choices on the table:
  1. A traditional invasion. You’ve already seen the casualty estimates for that possibility.
  2. The actual result - bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only thing that the Japanese considered less acceptable than surrender was extinction, and the atomic bomb made this a possibility. They had no idea how many bombs we had. They chose surrender as the only viable option.
  3. Invite Japanese officials to a test of the atomic bomb out in the American desert, and give them a final opportunity to surrender. Now, this was never a very good option, because the US only created four bombs, and one was already used in the test. To waste another one on our soil at the cost of billions of dollars in development and time was unthinkable. Further, what would have been the Japanese reaction if the bomb had been a dud? (Some superweapon.) Even if it HAD worked, there was no guarantee that they’d surrender, and we’d be down to two bombs.
  4. We could have bombed Hiroshima, and waited some time to bomb Nagasaki. This is a more plausible option. What few people realize is that Hiroshima was so totally destroyed, that anyone left alive was helping the survivors, not running off to Tokyo to inform people what happened. The entire infrastructure was wiped out, so it was impossible to call or radio anyone either. As the second bomb was dropped, the government was only just realizing that an atomic bomb had gone off in Hiroshima. If the US had waited, say, another week, it might not have had to use the second bomb. That said, as it was, many officers tried to overthrow the government when the Japanese decided they were going to surrender, because they were STILL not ready to surrender, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered.
 
christmary4ever said:
History Records that about 100 thousand people died in hiroshima when the A BOMB
was drop. Is the decision to do it fully justifiable? claiming that thousands of lives were save
and it ended the horrible pacific war. Are a large majority of the people killed truly innocent ?
If they are is it still justifiable but unfortunate? Is this just a case of self defense?
Click to expand...
Of course it was gravely immoral to target and kill civilians by an atomic bomb. Further, many people have said that the use of the atomic bomb was unnecessary to end the war.
 
GEddie said:
Why is this even an issue?!

It’s done. The bombs were used. The war is over.

In time of war, societies that get into it will use whatever means they can obtain to win it and not get destroyed in the process. “Thou shalt not hurt women, or children, or nature, or…etc” just doesn’t work in a day and age where anybody can be a combatant.

If you don’t like that, then it doth behoove you to become a pacifist. But this particular “moral issue” was moot the day after it happened.
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It also was wrong from the point of view that dropping atomic bombs set a bad precedent. They were never used before, and now that there use has been justified by American apologists, humanity can look forward to their being used again against innocent civilians.
 
I have relatives who were tortured by the Japanese, yet I still do not think that it was necessary for innocent men, women and children to live with a legacy of horrible, scarring memories and cancer just because they are of the same nationality as my relatives’ captors.
 
JaneGrey said:
I have relatives who were tortured by the Japanese, yet I still do not think that it was necessary for innocent men, women and children to live with a legacy of horrible, scarring memories and cancer just because they are of the same nationality as my relatives’ captors.
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And yet the same thing can be said for those killed in the fire raids over England and Germany and Japan.
London Blitz 1940-41 - 43,000 killed
Bombing of Hamburg July 1943 - 55,000 killed
Bombing of Tokyo March 1945 - 100,000 killed.

The above are but three examples of the long and exhaustive list of targets on both sides that involved the deaths of civilians, and none of the numbers above include the huge numbers of injured, burned, maimed people who survived and suffered from physical and mental scars for the reat of their lives.

Why is there such sympathy for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no one speaks of the “Rape of Nanking” where more than twice as many Chinese civilians and POW’s were brutalized by the Japanese.

To single out the use of the Atomic Bombs is like taking a single verse out of the bible. It removes it from it’s context and makes it seem different than it actually was.

Rolltide and I have written posts above that try to give some context to the times and mentalities in play when the decision had to be made.

The use of the A-Bomb WAS necessary as a way to shock the Japanese into surrender. The alternative was to; a) stand off and try to starve and Bomb Japan into surrender and as one can easily see the death and suffering from conventional bombing could be just as bad as from nuclear bombing. b) Invade Japan with the consequent loss of life on both sides likely running between a half million to upwards of a million. Again not counting the maimed, burned and otherwise traumatized.

The US did not start the war by using the A-Bomb. The war was already started and the loss of life on both sides, both civilian and military was frightful. The goal of using the A- Bomb was to STOP the war…period. It achieved that Goal, quicker and with less loss of life and destruction of property, on both sides, than any of the alternatives.

Peace
James
 
beehumble said:
Not necessarily so. According to Catholic teaching (emphasized again by JPII in his Gospel of Life encyclical), my understanding is that the lesser of two - the one that does the least damage of two possible choices - is the one that is to be taken.

Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan scheduled for 1946, would have resulted in between 200,000 and one million US casualties (the best and worst estimate range) and untold number of Japanese deaths (at least one million Japanese dead). So the 80,000 of Hiroshima and the 70,000 of Nagasaki are small in comparison to the other choice, only some 7-15% of an invasion.
So given the two choices on the table, it was the proper decision.
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Not how Catholic morality works- the ends don’t justify the means. This is why the Catholic Church won’t permit a direct abortion even if both the mother and child will die without an abortion.
 
JRKH said:
The US did not start the war by using the A-Bomb. The war was already started and the loss of life on both sides, both civilian and military was frightful. The goal of using the A- Bomb was to STOP the war…period. It achieved that Goal, quicker and with less loss of life and destruction of property, on both sides, than any of the alternatives.
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I’d agree that the use of the bomb was optimal for the US, all things considered. However, under Catholic morality, it was clearly illicit.
 
tjm190 said:
I’d agree that the use of the bomb was optimal for the US, all things considered. However, under Catholic morality, it was clearly illicit.
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Under catholic morality the entire war was illicit, from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, to the Attack on Pearl Harbor and right down the line…
The use of the A-Bomb did much to “correct” the immoralities already existing.

Peace
James
 
JRKH said:
Under catholic morality the entire war was illicit, from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, to the Attack on Pearl Harbor and right down the line…
The use of the A-Bomb did much to “correct” the immoralities already existing.

Peace
James
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First- I don’t think Pearl Harbor would be considered illicit.

Second- Again, the ends don’t justify the means in Catholic morality. If you could have gone back in time and killed an infant Hitler to stop the whole war and save 10’s of millions of lives, Catholic morality would still label that act mortally sinful.
 
The truth is we can never really know. It is easy to sit back 65 years later and go through all sorts of what if scenarios second-guessing those who were alive at the time and had to make the decision for real. What we do know is a bomb was dropped, another followed, and the war ended’ In the effect the dropping of the bombs had exactly the effect that those who approved of it wanted it to.
I

Whenever this topic comes up a I always think about my father -who was about as liberal as one comes. But you criticized the dropping of those bombs at your own risk-in 1945 he was on a ship off the coast of Japan preparing to invade. He had seen the horrors of war and held friends and comrades as they died. He was adamant that dropping those bombs was the moral and necessary thing to do. Who am I to second guess him?
 
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