Were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?

[aggiecatholic05]

the atomic bombs and the air war were fully justified.

1. argument from personal incredulity is flawed reasoning. testimony from the Japanese themselves shows how they intentionally decentralized and dispersed manufacturing facilities among the population to make targeting more difficult, for how and where this was done, see the postwar United States Stragetic Bombing Survey. the military significance of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been explained numerous times on many threads.
2. unless you show a lot more familarity with the problems facing air war planners in WW2 (e.g., among hundreds of other issues, the misnomer of “precision” bombing and the ability of repair crews to repair RR damage as fast as it could be inflicted), you are simply not qualified to render any opinion on targeting choices.
3. how to win the war without the atomic bombs? Japanese miiltary and civilian officials stated (see the above cite) that the air war would have compelled surrender by November or December 1945 at the latest. the damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been duplicated by three full scale B-29 raids. but the war would have continued for months afterwards with successive Japanese cities being subjected to firebombing on a regular basis, causing, ultimately far more casualties than the atomic bombings themselves, not to mention, most important, the loss of allied lives as the war continued.
4. so, here I’m asking again, so you can again evade the question. you don’t like total war, so what would you advise the victims of nazi and imperial japanese total-war agression at the onset?

very well thought out and articulated post. couldnt have put it better myself, and i know because i didnt.

 

[SimonArizona]

1. The bombs saved endless GI lives.
2. Japan invaded China and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of women and children civilians. We were sending aid to China so Japan hated us and attacked us. Japan was unjustified in its attack on the United States.
3. The Japanese were inhumanly severe to our POWs.
4. They were an evil murderous imperial empire, and I strongly doubt that any good christian people were killed when we A-bombed their mountain which they worshipped.

 

[aggiecatholic05]

1. They were an evil murderous imperial empire, and I strongly doubt that any good christian people were killed when we A-bombed their mountain which they worshipped.

actually there were christians there when the bomb dropped. you were right though that they were not killed.

pdtsigns.com/hirosh.html

always gives me something to think about if i wonder if our prayers are heard.

 

[Appleby]

Everyone believes that he or she could have come up with some other way to do everything that would have worked better than what the people who were there chose to do. The problem is that we were not there and that we do not have only the information and the world view that our fathers and/or grandfathers had.

On the other hand, we did not see first hand what our fathers and grandfathers saw and experienced. My second cousin was in the Bataan Death March, for example. I am sure he would have a different point of view about whether the bombs should have been dropped. My Daddy helped liberate a concentration camp. My Daddy is a Jew. You can imagine his point of view on the subject, even if you would cheerfully send him off to his death on the Japanese Mainland instead.

Like a jury making a decision, you can only use the information presented to you to make the decision. You are not allowed to make up evidence or speculate about what other evidence you might not know about.

 

[quasimodo]

1. The bombs saved endless GI lives.

1. Japan invaded China and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of women and children civilians. We were sending aid to China so Japan hated us and attacked us. Japan was unjustified in its attack on the United States.

1. The Japanese were inhumanly severe to our POWs.

1. They were an evil murderous imperial empire, and I strongly doubt that any good christian people were killed when we A-bombed their mountain which they worshipped.

consequentialism - the ends justify the means. Not a good way to run a war or a life. They were bad guys so we can be too? they were bad guys so they deserved what they got? You have to rethink that if you are a Christian.

You strongly doubt that any Christians were killed? You aware that the local Catholic cathedral was used as the target by the bombardier? The blessed sacrament was present at ground zero. Consider that for a moment if you are Catholic.

so, here I’m asking again, so you can again evade the question. you don’t like total war, so what would you advise the victims of nazi and imperial japanese total-war agression at the onset? - whose is evading? Another straw man I’m afraid - shame on you.

The war was justified. Do you need me to say it in smaller words? here goes… It was OK to fight the bad guys. But not by any means at our disposal.

No matter how you slice it or label arguments you don’t like, bombing predominately civilian targets cannot be excused by claiming there were some factories interspersed. The ends do not justify the means. It is wrong even if you use conventional bombs.

I made no claims regarding “precision.” I hope you run out of straw soon. I do not underestimate the problems faced by the planners. Problems do not justify immoral means to an end.

Study up on just war:

* the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

* all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

* there must be serious prospects of success;

*     Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of proportionality. The force used must be proportional to the wrong endured, and to the possible good that may come. The more disproportional the number of collateral civilian deaths, the more suspect will be the sincerity of a belligerent nation's claim to justness of a war it fights

 

[YipYupYep]

Perhaps, their vision exceeded that of the politicians, whose only interest is the next election.

No, no. That’s just not true.

Sure, I know the Vatican’s position, but we can not judge.
406,000 Americans had already been killed in action. My own Uncle John was killed on Leyte Beach. My Uncle Bob was with his unit, getting ready for the invasion.

 

[mdgspencer]

My reason against their use is simply that it it wrong in war to kill innocent people. And killing them was not incidental, the target was the total population of these cities.
I wonder. If Americans can rightly justify the use of nuclear weapons in war, what if another country uses the same sort of reasoning to use nuclear weapons on U.S. cities? They can say for example if we do not use nuclear weapons on American cities, millions of our soldiers will die. Will they then with a good conscience be able to use nuclear weapons on cities such as New York or Washington D.C?

 

[aggiecatholic05]

My reason against their use is simply that it it wrong in war to kill innocent people. And killing them was not incidental, the target was the total population of these cities.
I wonder. If Americans can rightly justify the use of nuclear weapons in war, what if another country uses the same sort of reasoning to use nuclear weapons on U.S. cities? They can say for example if we do not use nuclear weapons on American cities, millions of our soldiers will die. Will they then with a good conscience be able to use nuclear weapons on cities such as New York or Washington D.C?

in 1945 i think that would have been a very good argument. however now that noone has a first strike capability regarding nukes it is void. even with a dirty bomb or other terrorist attack our nuclear capabilities would remain and we could retaliate much harder than anything anyone could do to us. therefore they do not have a reasonable chance of succeding.

 

[SimonArizona]

consequentialism - the ends justify the means. Not a good way to run a war or a life. They were bad guys so we can be too? they were bad guys so they deserved what they got? You have to rethink that if you are a Christian.

You strongly doubt that any Christians were killed? You aware that the local Catholic cathedral was used as the target by the bombardier? The blessed sacrament was present at ground zero. Consider that for a moment if you are Catholic.

Far from consequentialism, The United States was the protagonist in this situation, Japan attacked us without declaring war because we were sending aid into China during Japan’s ethnic cleansing into northen China. We were in the right, and if you want to call Japan “the bad guys,” that is an understatement.

How many more American familes were to be torn apart while their brothers, fathers, husbands, sons, were being killed in a long battle for pacific islands? Many lives were saved by the bombs, most importantly American lives, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’m proud that our innocent boys were spared.

 

[SimonArizona]

My reason against their use is simply that it it wrong in war to kill innocent people. And killing them was not incidental, the target was the total population of these cities.
I wonder. If Americans can rightly justify the use of nuclear weapons in war, what if another country uses the same sort of reasoning to use nuclear weapons on U.S. cities? They can say for example if we do not use nuclear weapons on American cities, millions of our soldiers will die. Will they then with a good conscience be able to use nuclear weapons on cities such as New York or Washington D.C?

You don’t get it. MANY MORE innocent lives were going to die such as our drafted boys, if we didn’t stop Japan dead in its tracks.
It’s justified.

 

[aggiecatholic05]

You don’t get it. MANY MORE innocent lives were going to die such as our drafted boys, if we didn’t stop Japan dead in its tracks.
It’s justified.

also the fault for the civillian deaths is on japans hands, as they intentionally put war industries in the middle of population centers.

 

[quasimodo]

No, no. That’s just not true.

Sure, I know the Vatican’s position, but we can not judge.

We can’t judge? We MUST! These things must be thought about and argued and moral decisions must be anticipated. I hope you are not casually dismissing the Vatican’s position.

406,000 Americans had already been killed in action. My own Uncle John was killed on Leyte Beach. My Uncle Bob was with his unit, getting ready for the invasion.

I am sorry for your family’s loss. As grievous as it was, it does not justify nuking civilians.

A short while ago I would have argued the other side of this debate vigorously. Then I decided that being Catholic is, at times, in conflict with being an American. I choose to be Catholic. I wish more people would choose to be Catholic rather that Democrat or Republican, too. Unfortunately, many people would rather take their moral guidance form their political party or from the national Zeitgeist than the church.

 

[mdgspencer]

You have a good point. Weren’t American soldiers then innocent people too? Actually I should have said what I meant and spoken in terms of combatants and non-combatants.
Actually, the Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities (section 2313), which reflects the traditional Catholic teaching about war when it comes to the treatment of non-combatants.

 Still-could an enemy nation at the same time of history have with a good conscience felt they were right to use nuclear weapons on American cities, if they did it for the same reason. That is, it will save our drafted soldiers. Is this a good reason for a country to use nuclear weapons on its enemy.

You don’t get it. MANY MORE innocent lives were going to die such as our drafted boys, if we didn’t stop Japan dead in its tracks.
It’s justified.

 

[Wirraway]

My reason against their use is simply that it it wrong in war to kill innocent people.

every antiwar rant should at least acknowledge WHO STARTED THE WAR and the the viscious nature of the Japanese conquest of China and southeast asia, including, a slight nod to the massacre of nanking (300,000 murdered civilians in the span of a couple of weeks) and the extremely well documented war crimes committed by the Japanese occupation authorities and the millions of american, brit, australian, filipino chinese casualties and, with regards to the latter, that number amounted to something around 280,000 deaths per month for about 72 months of war. is that so difficult? throw them a bone sometime before launching into platitudes about how it is wrong to kill innocent people. you might possibly sound rational.

And killing them was not incidental, the target was the total population of these cities.

notice to future warlords: next time, don’t start the war. and if you do start the war, don’t hide your war factories in civilian centers or disperse them throughout cities. to assuage the feelings of your future apologists, please put them in deserts so they can be attacked with minimum collateral damage. better yet, don’t start the war.

I wonder. If Americans can rightly justify the use of nuclear weapons in war, what if another country uses the same sort of reasoning to use nuclear weapons on U.S. cities? They can say for example if we do not use nuclear weapons on American cities, millions of our soldiers will die. Will they then with a good conscience be able to use nuclear weapons on cities such as New York or Washington D.C?

american cities were targeted by russian nukes throughout the cold war and probaby still are, as well as by the chinese. if you’re trying the justify the the terrorist use of nuclear weapons against american cities based on 1945** kid, that’s just the wrong thing to say** and someone is going to take you to school on this.

 

[redrosetea]

If we are going to go by the Just War Theory…I think it would be no…which isn’t to say it would have been easy

The Just War Theory was asserted as authoritative Catholic Church teaching by the United States Catholic Bishops in their pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, issued in 1983. More recently, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for “legitimate defence by military force”:

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
there must be serious prospects of success;
the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

 

[Wirraway]

… Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of proportionality. The force used must be proportional to the wrong endured, and to the possible good that may come. The more disproportional the number of collateral civilian deaths, the more suspect will be the sincerity of a belligerent nation’s claim to justness of a war it fights

except you have no viable alternative solutions, no facts, only bare statements devoid of **any **analysis and which are nothing more than mere conclusions. you’ve already admitted elsewhere that you have no idea how the war could have ended otherwise. , it happens that the allies chose, as confirmed by the Japanese authorities, the method that did end the war with the least human cost – the air campaign, as brutal as it was.

without the bombing of Japanese cities and in particular the atomic bombings, the total toll of Japanse and American losses soars into the millions if the DOWNFALL invasions went forward. this sounds like prosecuting a just war to me.

before you drone on and on about proportionality, come up with a viable alternative available to war planners in the summer of '45.

you also might want to acknowledge who was at fault here. hint: they had a god-emperor.

 

[mdgspencer]

I wouldn’t say I am against war in every case. However, I am against the use of nuclear weapons on entire cities. Using a nuclear weapon on a military target like an enemy fleet seems justified, but not on an entire city.
Nor do I feel that there is not right or wrong when a country wages war even if the war is just.

every antiwar rant should at least acknowledge WHO STARTED THE WAR and the the viscious nature of the Japanese conquest of China and southeast asia, including, a slight nod to the massacre of nanking (300,000 murdered civilians in the span of a couple of weeks) and the extremely well documented war crimes committed by the Japanese occupation authorities and the millions of american, brit, australian, filipino chinese casualties and, with regards to the latter, that number amounted to something around 280,000 deaths per month for about 72 months of war. is that so difficult? throw them a bone sometime before launching into platitudes about how it is wrong to kill innocent people. you might possibly sound rational.

notice to future warlords: next time, don’t start the war. and if you do start the war, don’t hide your war factories in civilian centers or disperse them throughout cities. to assuage the feelings of your future apologists, please put them in deserts so they can be attacked with minimum collateral damage. better yet, don’t start the war.

american cities were targeted by russian nukes throughout the cold war and probaby still are, as well as by the chinese. if you’re trying the justify the the terrorist use of nuclear weapons against american cities based on 1945** kid, that’s just the wrong thing to say** and someone is going to take you to school on this.

 

[Wirraway]

If we are going to go by the Just War Theory…I think it would be no…which isn’t to say it would have been easy…

yeah? tell the forum how. don’t even try to make it easy. make an educated guess.

most of the criticism of the bombings is done by merely citing a rule like the Just War Theory without applying it to the historical facts, as is done here and in recent anti-war posts.

you want proportionality? feel the loss of japanese was too great? a chinese source, different from the source I cited elsewhere, puts chinese losses at 35 million killed and wounded, the war lasted from 1937 through '35, say 96 months, for a monthly loss of over **360,000 **per month, every month, for eight years.

conventional air raids alone would have ended the war in a couple of months, by whch time another 700,000 chinese would have died, and added to that more japanese deaths because the conventional raids would have continued.

the atomic bombings ended that in a week.

 

[redrosetea]

Why are you so belligerent? I have a right to my opinion even if you don’t share it

 

[Wirraway]

I wouldn’t say I am against war in every case. However, I am against the use of nuclear weapons on entire cities…

the exact same results could have been accomplished by two firebomb raids on Hiroshima (the Strategic Bombing Survey estimated 200 B-29s would have had the same effect as the one atomic bomb, so, two big raids), and on Nagasaki with a 100 B-29s. Happy with that?

because if you are, the war would have dragged on through August, September, October and maybe November, with cities like Hiroshima being levelled every week.