Should we have dropped Atomic bombs on Japan

[Patrick1540]

We today cannot begin to fathom the desperation to have the war end as soon as possible. If it were not for the film documentaries we wouldn’t have a clue how horrible nations committed to a war to the death acts. It is a fact the US suffered very little when compared to the other Allied nations. Yet there was a palpable desire for the war to be over as well as a palpable hatred of the Japanese. I am surmising this from sitting in the corner listening at family get together when the men talked about WWII, which they did only after debating the pro and cons of Viet Nam. They were not concerned with the fine points of just war doctrine, the subtle arguments of double effect, they were tired of being government soldiers and sailors, watching people being torn to bits and wanted to go home and get on with their lives. Believe it or not, they wanted to live and really didn’t care how Truman got the war to end they were grateful it did end.

While we can wring our hands about 4-year-old kids having the flesh burned off them don’t forget to ask the question who put them in this position in the first place. Secondly, given the reality of modern arms and the necessity of the logistical pipeline linking virtually everyone in the country to the war effort. It starts to blur the difference between legitimate targets and innocents.

We can sit here now when the bombs are not falling and people are not being shredded into hamburger debate the church’s preference for an armed invasion, blockade or nuclear weapons. But at that point in time somebody had to make a call and it was made by a government leader acting in the best interest of his government and its citizens.

Sherman may be nobody’s idea of the perfect general but at the siege of Atlanta he wrote something along the lines. “War is hell. It cannot be refined. It is about killing and the more the killing the better. Because then the killing will be over sooner.”

Think about that as you contemplate who should have done what.

PS Nuclear weapons and MAD have kept the world from another world war for 70 odd years. Not bad given the worlds previous 300 year history.

Steve, I can see the point you are trying to make,but I disagree. Ending the War with the A Bomb put us in an arms race with Russia, thus the Cold War. I grew up in the time of fear that the US would be struck with Neuks from Russia at any time. WMD’s did not prevent another world war, we are at war right now with terrorism. We have a World War, it is it’s complexity changed to gurrila warfare. People are still dying everyday because of this. My son is 82 airborne served in Iraq and Afganistan. Your right some one had to make the call, but did it have the effect Truman hoped for, I’m not talking just Japan. Did not stop the Korean War, which is still going,we are under a truce agreement. I don’t believe in WMD’s we have to worry everyday will a terrorist get one and make a dirty bomb. We have a false sense of security,because those that are called to protect have done a good job and the general public will never know.So I do disagree with some of your points. God Bless

 

[JRKH]

I argue no.

Here is my reasoning:

At this point, the japanese economy was in shambles. Their navy was ruined. Their soldiers starving. They were at the breaking point. There were cracks in the glass.

But instead of shooting the glass, we dropped 2 atomic bombs.

Some people may argue that dropping the bombs saved more human life (if the war would have continued, more soldiers would have likely died than the number of citizens)…

But, my point is that the soldier knows what he is up against. THe citizen is completely innocent.

**It just seems morally wrong to drop 2 atomic bombs in large citizen populated areas on a country that is at the breaking point. **

Thoughts?

I have seen any number of these threads and they go round and round and round…So much so that I have not really bothered to read all of the posts on this one.

All that you say above is true…and yet, I cannot say that dropping the A-bombs was any more immoral than many other thing that occurred in the war.
It is much easier to sit here now…pushing 60 years after the fact and talk about what might have happened. It is something quite different to try to put ones self into the mindset of the time. It’s like when people attack the Catholic church for actions in the middle ages - for the crusades or the inquisition - and we will say that one should not try to impose modern thinking on events deep in history…Different times, different thinking…

I would like to ask a different question if I may…

Why is is that the A-bombs are the only event that gets this question?
Suppose that instead of asking if we should have dropped the A-bombs we ask some different questions like…

Should Japan have launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while their envoys were negotiating in Washington?
Should Japan have spent days raping pillaging and murdering Chinese in Nanking…and event known to history as the “Rape of Nanking” (the largest of a number of such atrocities)
Should the US have used incendiaries to burn out huge sections of Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya and other Japanese cities.
Should the Germans have Bombed Rotterdam and London - for no military reason but in an attempt to break the will of the inhabitants.
Should the Allies have retaliated by sending hundreds and eventually thousands of bombers over Germany to decimate their cities.
Should the Germans have sunk civilian shipping without warning on the high seas.
Should the Japanese have insisted that their soldiers fight “to the last man” and never surrender in battle after battle effectively giving the impression that, no matter what, they would never surrender.

These are just a very few questions from that one war…We could ask dozens of more questions from the time leading up to it and materially contributed to it’s outbreak, and more questions from the war preceding it and on back…All of which can shed light on why the decision was made in favor of using the bombs…
Because - you see…
The decision to use the Atomic Bombs…Right or wrong…did not happen in a vacuum, nor did it occur as some great singular act of immorality in an otherwise largely moral time.

So the bottom line for me is that we should stop asking whether the US should have used the A-Bombs…And start asking whether every nation involved in that war should have done any of the horrific things that they did in that war…

Peace
James

 

[Ghosty]

To my knowledge no one ever tries to defend the attacks made by Germany and Japan, or at least not with any righteous vigor. It kind of goes without saying that the actions made by those governments were evil.

The atom bombs are a significant moral question precisely because they ended the war, and “good” came of them. They are worthy of special questioning for this reason, and also the fact that they, unlike the other attacks mentioned, are often lionized.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Holly3278]

Well, I say that we should not have done so. You cannot do evil to bring about good. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that every act of war which is dedicated to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas is a crime against both God and man:

**2314 **“Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.” A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2314.htm

 

[JimG]

To my knowledge no one ever tries to defend the attacks made by Germany and Japan, or at least not with any righteous vigor. It kind of goes without saying that the actions made by those governments were evil.

The atom bombs are a significant moral question precisely because they ended the war, and “good” came of them. They are worthy of special questioning for this reason, and also the fact that they, unlike the other attacks mentioned, are often lionized.

Peace and God bless!

And if the bombs had not ended the war, the war would have been ended by an invasion, or by a campaign of B-29’s bombing Japan with thousands of tons of conventional bombs. And more people would have died. Would we now be debating the morality of conventional bombing or of invasion involving huge losses of life?

A bomb is a bomb. It makes little difference whether one drops one 15 kiloton bomb or 30 single 500 pound bombs.

Whatever method was going to end the war was going to be costly in lives. It seems that the two bombs were the least costly in lives of the possible methods. Every day that the war continued meant thousands of lives lost.

 

[JimG]

In August 1981 Paul Fussell wrote an article for the New Republic magazine titled “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”
It can be read here.

 

[Mar044]

And if the bombs had not ended the war, the war would have been ended by an invasion, or by a campaign of B-29’s bombing Japan with thousands of tons of conventional bombs. And more people would have died. Would we now be debating the morality of conventional bombing or of invasion involving huge losses of life?

A bomb is a bomb. It makes little difference whether one drops one 15 kiloton bomb or 30 single 500 pound bombs.

Whatever method was going to end the war was going to be costly in lives. It seems that the two bombs were the least costly in lives of the possible methods. Every day that the war continued meant thousands of lives lost.

the difference between conventional and the nuclear, is that it renders lifelong sickness and poisoning, also destroys water table, todays nuclear weapons decay scale would make areas uninhabitable forever and forever, one minute man ICBM has a decay rate of 999999 million years, so if you can imagine new york hit, you would never be able to go back, like Chernobyl, where at least with fire bombing you can rebuild, maybe not human lives but the area.

although whoever thought it was ok for either side to mass bomb cities to the ground was ok is beyond me…tell me the need to raise an entire city to the ground for a factory…

madness, and then i get frustrated because it was napum used to mass burn villages and forests…I do respect the Japanese for one thing, they at least attacked a pure military installation for that one event. what i find frightening is hearing generals in todays army saying

kill the town, everybody, turn Bazra to rubble, and this argument about oh they should have left and go where? you see how many people stayed for SANDY, would you leave your home if you had nowhere to go? do you deserve to die because you can’t go anywhere else?

 

[Marc_Anthony]

The rush was that thousands of civilians and Allied POWs were dying in China, Southeast Asia, Burma, Korea, etc.

There was no way to end the war without massive loss of life.

A starvation blockade or invasion that kills millions can’t be more moral than two bombings that kill 125,000.

Sometimes the only choice you have is the lesser of 2 (or more) evils.

God Bless

No. The ends do not justify the means, ever. You target the military, not the civilians.

Massacre of civilians is NEVER, ever justified. This coming from somebody who is extremely conservative. I used to be in favor of the bomb. But if I’m not to be a hypocrite, I can’t be.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

And if the bombs had not ended the war, the war would have been ended by an invasion, or by a campaign of B-29’s bombing Japan with thousands of tons of conventional bombs. And more people would have died. Would we now be debating the morality of conventional bombing or of invasion involving huge losses of life?

This is a false dilemma. You can’t say “Well, looks like I’m going to be evil either way, so I’ll pick this form of evil.” You can ALWAYS choose not to do evil. You just wouldn’t like the choice. Target the military. Not the civilians.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Well, I say that we should not have done so. You cannot do evil to bring about good. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that every act of war which is dedicated to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas is a crime against both God and man:

scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2314.htm

 

[Ghosty]

And if the bombs had not ended the war, the war would have been ended by an invasion, or by a campaign of B-29’s bombing Japan with thousands of tons of conventional bombs. And more people would have died. Would we now be debating the morality of conventional bombing or of invasion involving huge losses of life?

A bomb is a bomb. It makes little difference whether one drops one 15 kiloton bomb or 30 single 500 pound bombs.

Whatever method was going to end the war was going to be costly in lives. It seems that the two bombs were the least costly in lives of the possible methods. Every day that the war continued meant thousands of lives lost.

We don’t know what would of/could of happened. My point is that the reason the atom bombs are so discussed in regards to morality, while the firebombing of Tokyo is not, is that the atom bombs directly led to the end of WWII. The ending of WWII is a good thing, but the atom bombings stand in stark contrast to this good, and therefore it makes for a poignant discussion point about the morality of means and ends.

All that said, moral law is very clear that you can’t intentionally target civilians in order to end a war. That makes the bombings immoral and no amount of “we weren’t there, we can’t judge” makes it moral. We don’t know the culpability of the people involved, but we do know that what they did was absolutely wrong.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I have seen any number of these threads and they go round and round and round…So much so that I have not really bothered to read all of the posts on this one.

All that you say above is true…and yet, I cannot say that dropping the A-bombs was any more immoral than many other thing that occurred in the war.
It is much easier to sit here now…pushing 60 years after the fact and talk about what might have happened. It is something quite different to try to put ones self into the mindset of the time. It’s like when people attack the Catholic church for actions in the middle ages - for the crusades or the inquisition - and we will say that one should not try to impose modern thinking on events deep in history…Different times, different thinking…

I would like to ask a different question if I may…

Why is is that the A-bombs are the only event that gets this question?
Suppose that instead of asking if we should have dropped the A-bombs we ask some different questions like…

Should Japan have launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while their envoys were negotiating in Washington?
Should Japan have spent days raping pillaging and murdering Chinese in Nanking…and event known to history as the “Rape of Nanking” (the largest of a number of such atrocities)
Should the US have used incendiaries to burn out huge sections of Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya and other Japanese cities.
Should the Germans have Bombed Rotterdam and London - for no military reason but in an attempt to break the will of the inhabitants.
Should the Allies have retaliated by sending hundreds and eventually thousands of bombers over Germany to decimate their cities.
Should the Germans have sunk civilian shipping without warning on the high seas.
Should the Japanese have insisted that their soldiers fight “to the last man” and never surrender in battle after battle effectively giving the impression that, no matter what, they would never surrender.

These are just a very few questions from that one war…We could ask dozens of more questions from the time leading up to it and materially contributed to it’s outbreak, and more questions from the war preceding it and on back…All of which can shed light on why the decision was made in favor of using the bombs…
Because - you see…
The decision to use the Atomic Bombs…Right or wrong…did not happen in a vacuum, nor did it occur as some great singular act of immorality in an otherwise largely moral time.

So the bottom line for me is that we should stop asking whether the US should have used the A-Bombs…And start asking whether every nation involved in that war should have done any of the horrific things that they did in that war…

Peace
James

Er, no, they shouldn’t have. So? We still shouldn’t have dropped the bombs. You’re not really making a point here.

 

[Mar044]

In August 1981 Paul Fussell wrote an article for the New Republic magazine titled “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”
It can be read here.

so your cool with fighting a weak enemy like iraqis or veitmin
but if you faced china or russia in a war you would nuke them and then they would nuke you.

doesn’t that make a army of cowards that wont fight honorable, (not trying to insualt anyone) but war is not meant to be easy, your not meant to win just like that. It prevents one nation from taking the whole world for itself.

so what of today? would you use the bomb again, you have shown you will invade another nation without permission from your peers at the UN? you cross airspace in pakistan to UAV strike targets even though the country says they give no permission, yet complain about Iran shooting at UAV in international waters…(you got to be kidding to think a UAV is flying over water for no reason, even u.s. statement said they wouldn’t say why it was flying the mission)

double standards or hypocritical?

but I want this answered from americans, what would be your reaction if another nation one day does that to you for the easy win, they know you won’t surrender like the japanese, so if the horror happens, tell me what will your feelings be?

the point i am making is, don’t use a weapon your not prepared to use, because even china has slipped past the net and test launched of L.A youtube.com/watch?v=0wiLW48ox7Y

and a chinese sub has surfaced in the middle of a carrier fleet so thinking it cant happen is foolish

 

[Marc_Anthony]

We don’t know what would of/could of happened. My point is that the reason the atom bombs are so discussed in regards to morality, while the firebombing of Tokyo is not, is that the atom bombs directly led to the end of WWII. The ending of WWII is a good thing, but the atom bombings stand in stark contrast to this good, and therefore it makes for a poignant discussion point about the morality of means and ends.

All that said, moral law is very clear that you can’t intentionally target civilians in order to end a war. That makes the bombings immoral and no amount of “we weren’t there, we can’t judge” makes it moral. We don’t know the culpability of the people involved, but we do know that what they did was absolutely wrong.

Peace and God bless!

Perfectly stated.

Face it, every single argument in favor of the bombs goes back to, “But so many people would have died!”

But the ends still don’t justify the means. They never do. And no amount of argument or sophistry will change that.

 

[edwest2]

Oh brother.

colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/atomicdec.htm

I am convinced the bombs were dropped under combat conditions so that their effects could be be studied directly by American Intelligence. Russia was the new enemy before World War II ended. And we continued to test atom bombs and order our own troops to march into areas shortly after the blast effects subsided. Just look up Atomic Veterans.

Peace,
Ed

 

[GKC]

I’m not even going to read this stuff. 4 years is more than enough trying to bring light to darkness, or empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Though I still know more of the history of this event than anyone within 3-4 threads in any direction. Or any 2 such combined. Reference the last 4 years of threads on the subject, locatable by searching here.

You regulars go ahead.

GKC

 

[JimG]

We don’t know what would of/could of happened. My point is that the reason the atom bombs are so discussed in regards to morality, while the firebombing of Tokyo is not, is that the atom bombs directly led to the end of WWII. The ending of WWII is a good thing, but the atom bombings stand in stark contrast to this good, and therefore it makes for a poignant discussion point about the morality of means and ends.

All that said, moral law is very clear that you can’t intentionally target civilians in order to end a war. That makes the bombings immoral and no amount of “we weren’t there, we can’t judge” makes it moral. We don’t know the culpability of the people involved, but we do know that what they did was absolutely wrong.

Peace and God bless!

Yes, the ending of the war was a good thing. Which is precisely why I believe that had Truman NOT ordered the use of the atomic bombs, we would now have endless threads discussing whether he was justified in not using the means at hand to quickly end the war.

I think he would now be the subject of great vilification for producing a million more deaths for his lack of action.

But that is hypothetical, as are most of these discussios.

 

[JimG]

I’m not even going to read this stuff. 4 years is more than enough trying to bring light to darkness, or empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Though I still know more of the history of this event than anyone within 3-4 threads in any direction. Or any 2 such combined. Reference the last 4 years of threads on the subject, locatable by searching here.

You regulars go ahead.

GKC

I entirely agree. That’s why in post #8, I linked to a couple of previous threads. No point in covering all the same ground again.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I think he would now be the subject of great vilification for producing a million more deaths for his lack of action.

We’re talking about the action of dropping the bomb, not the reputation of the President who ordered it dropped.

 

[oldcatholicguy]

so your cool with fighting a weak enemy like iraqis or veitmin
but if you faced china or russia in a war you would nuke them and then they would nuke you.

doesn’t that make a army of cowards that wont fight honorable, (not trying to insualt anyone) but war is not meant to be easy, your not meant to win just like that. It prevents one nation from taking the whole world for itself.

so what of today? would you use the bomb again, you have shown you will invade another nation without permission from your peers at the UN? you cross airspace in pakistan to UAV strike targets even though the country says they give no permission, yet complain about Iran shooting at UAV in international waters…(you got to be kidding to think a UAV is flying over water for no reason, even u.s. statement said they wouldn’t say why it was flying the mission)

double standards or hypocritical?

but I want this answered from americans, what would be your reaction if another nation one day does that to you for the easy win, they know you won’t surrender like the japanese, so if the horror happens, tell me what will your feelings be?

the point i am making is, don’t use a weapon your not prepared to use, because even china has slipped past the net and test launched of L.A youtube.com/watch?v=0wiLW48ox7Y

and a chinese sub has surfaced in the middle of a carrier fleet so thinking it cant happen is foolish

Funny you should mention the Chinese. A very famous Chinese military genius covered the topic of what you should do if your enemy was stronger than you, as strong as you, and weaker than you. He did it so well in fact, he is considered one of the greatest military strategists of all time and his work is assigned reading for almost every military school and military leader worldwide. Google The Art of War by Sun Tzu.