Thoughts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Was it the Right Call?

[Ray McCarthy]

but weight that against the millions who would certainly have died without the bombs.

No proof. The actual deaths were real.

Also is it right to kill 10 children to save the life of 100 soldiers?

 

[BigBadBob141]

War is war is war is war.
It's nasty and it's horrible and it stinks to high heaven!
It's easy to judge with the 20/20 vision of history.
There probable were other factors such as an element of revenge or keeping the Russians out of Japan.
I can understand if not condone the revenge factor when you consider how appallingly the Japanese behaved before and during WW2.
Just look at the rape of Nanking, Nazi observers were horrified by what went on there.
But for me the main reason is the saving of lives, both Japanese as well as American and maybe British and Russian too.
I dare say they could have dropped the first bomb on a less populated target, but the shock value of Hiroshima should have made them surrender straight away.
Nagasaki need not have happened if they weren't so tardy.
I wonder what would be the reaction if Germany had managed to hold out and the first one was dropped on Berlin.
Would people be asking then if it was justified or not?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Dresden was similar destruction and death and pointless too. So you got your wish. Most of the German cities were destroyed purely as vengeance, there was little military value. Military targets and rail lines to death camps could have been bombed instead.

 

[Ursa major]

The accuracy of bombing was very poor in those days. (People, rightly, dispute the accuracy of our current weapons, because even precision weapons can go astray or be aimed at the wrong target.) Give or take the technology used in the "dam buster" raids, there were no even vaguely precision bombs and no way to aim them other than releasing them based on the plane's altitude, airspeed and distance from the target: all a bit wing-and-a-prayer, particularly at night.

Unless all the targets were literally miles from any centres of population, there would always have been many civilian casualties. Besides, there's little point in bombing military installations (mostly containing conscripts, i.e. people who would be civilians in other circumstances) if you leave the industrial base intact. Which is not to say that some of the bombing raids weren't wrong; they were. But I don't think that is true of the nuclear attacks on Japan, which is the topic of this thread.

The idea that there's a nice way to fight wars is simply ridiculous and given that ridiculousness, second guessing what people in those wars did (except in the case of provable war crimes) seems rather pointless. And saying that only the real deaths matter and dismissing the very likely much higher death tolls that would have resulted by other military strategies is even more ridiculous. Does anyone really think that the Japanese, when faced with a full-scale invasion, would have thought, "You know, we might as well surrender now." That's simply ludicrous. The Japanese defended worthless pieces of rock around the Pacific at great cost to themselves (and the Allies). Can anyone really believe that they'd have put any less effort, blood and lives into defending their homeland and their semi-divine emperor?

 

[Grimward]

Estimated casualties for the allies were 500,000 to 1.5 million. The Japanese were expected to incur casualties of around 25‰ of the population, which in 1945 was about 72 million. So that's around 18 million casualties. These numbers are based on the Okinawa campaign, when the Japanese were fighting on their own territory.

So in comparison, 129,000 casualties versus nearly 20 million is significant.

To elaborate on this point, I agree with BigBadBob (and anyone else here who alluded to this, apologies for not noting you specifically if I missed your contribution, or am repeating your quoted materials!); the Japanese were TRAINING school children (certainly secondary school level boys, although I've seen old newsreels where YOUNG [12 years old?] Japanese school girls were ALSO receiving the same training) to charge American soldiers on sight, no questions asked, with sharpened sticks, spear-like, with the intent to "bleed the Americans as much as possible"). The argument about killing 10 children to save 100 soldiers here is simply not applicable; as part of the Ketsugo program, the Japanese were prepared to sacrifice ALL of their children along with the adults in "fulfilling" their "responsibilities to the emperor". Foreign Minister Togo and Prime Minister Suzuki were not able to persuade, cajol, or convince the military to surrender, even AFTER both bombings, and had to go thru the Cabinet to effect the surrender. In other words, the question is NOT would this wholesale slaughter on both sides have happened, but for how long before some alternative influence led to surrender, and would this have happened soon enough to render Hiroshima unnecessary? And from where was that alternative influence to come? Japan was already fighting the 2-front war as Ray and others have noted, so there was no additional Russian influence to be had.

In contemplating what might have been, the numbers are staggering. Did we need the second bomb? Probably not. There is no question in my mind, however, that the abhorrent first bomb exchanged hundreds of thousands of deaths for what would have been millions. Having said that, could I look a survivor of Hiroshima or Nagasaki in the face and say it was justified? Would I be recognizable as human if I did? There's no real justification for this type of atrocity (nor should anyone infer that I consider this a moral choice; killing anyone is immoral), just a choice between a horrible outcome and another exponentially worse. Maintaining the status quo (ie, not making this decision) was automatically a choice for the invasion. I'm eternally thankful that I've never had to make such a decision.

 

[Dinosaur]

Dresden was similar destruction and death and pointless too. So you got your wish. Most of the German cities were destroyed purely as vengeance, there was little military value. Military targets and rail lines to death camps could have been bombed instead.

A) the death camp survivors agreed that bombing cities was better than relieving the camp suffering.

B) Bombing rail lines was hard, you need to hit the marshalling yards, in the cities. Which kind off defeats the point.

C) there were no convenient industrial parks on the suburbs to hit, industry tended to be in the population centres.

D) people focus on the German civilians dying but don't care about Japanese civilians dying in city busting raids. Hmm...

 

[BigBadBob141]

I'm sure I read a story somewhere, I think it was called "Back To The Stone Age", can't remember the author.
In this the Allies have no A bombs.
But instead of invading the four islands of Japan they spend the next 20 or 30 years systemically carpet bombing everything in sight.
The only other story I can remember about ending the war is "Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson.
In this the Enola Gaye crashes before the raid and the LS takes it's place.
The bombardier deliberately drops the bomb in the harbour instead of the city.
He is court marshalled and shot, but his sacrifice leads to a world wide peace movement.
While I like both stories I don't think they would work in real life.

 

[Grimward]

The invasion link in my post above details what was planned for Operation Downfall, and if you look at some of the plans for Kyushu and Honshu, the plan basically did call for what to me equates to Dresden-like carpet bombing, so while it certainly wouldn't have gone on for 20 or 30 years, maybe not so far-fetched after all?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I wonder what would be the reaction if Germany had managed to hold out and the first one was dropped on Berlin.
Would people be asking then if it was justified or not?

Bombing dams is, I believe, against the Geneva convention because of what we did at the Mohne Dam.

So yes there are things that happened in Germany I question and people questioned at the time.

Dresden was appalling.

 

[BAYLOR]

Dresden was appalling.

Dresden was unfortunate but, it never would have happened if Germany hadn't launched a war In europe in the first place. Hiroshima and Nagasaki similarly would not have happen if Japan had never launched a war against The US.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Dresden was unfortunate but, it never would have happened if Germany hadn't launched a war In europe in the first place. Hiroshima and Nagasaki similarly would not have happen if Japan had never launched a war against The US.

It wasn't unfortunate -- whether right or wrong they were by any standards appalling. Children cooked. Don't dilute an atrocity just because you believe it had to happen. Vesuvius was a similar atrocity -- there was no right or wrong but the results were awful. Unfortunate is such a lily-livered word to describe what happened.

 

[BAYLOR]

It wasn't unfortunate -- whether right or wrong they were by any standards appalling. Children cooked. Don't dilute an atrocity just because you believe it had to happen. Vesuvius was a similar atrocity -- there was no right or wrong but the results were awful. Unfortunate is such a lily-livered word to describe what happened.

It's called War Anya.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

It's called war Anya.

And how does that make it less appalling? Maybe if more people had to face the consequences of war we might see less of it. The innocent always suffer more in war than anyone guilty of anything.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

If you become "morally" the same as the original aggressor, what exactly are you defending?

War is bad, evil. Yet of course we can't allow unchecked aggression. Solutions are not simple as Balkans, Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine etc since WWII show.
East Germany 1948
Hungary 1956
Czechoslovakia 1968
Afghanistan: Russians and then West. It's not solved.
Second Iraq War:

The so called "Arab Spring" or "Social Media Revolutions" in Arab / Moslem world nothing of the sort. Libya is a mess. Egypt is worse than Mubarak era. Palestinians go from self inflicted disaster to disaster. 1Million Syrian Refuges in Lebanon. I bet none in 10 years after the conflict ends, vs the deliberate policy of Arab world to keep the Palestinians as refugees.
No solution for Iran's Nuke program.
No solution for N. Korea's Nuke program.
No solution for IS / ISIS
Saudi Arabia and Gulf states.
All the Yemen wars pointless.
French and USA Indochina/Vietnam pointless.

It's easy for the winners of a war to say the other guys were really bad. All the bad stuff we did was so totally justified, because <insert unproven winners rationalisation>

Winners write history and decide who gets tried for war crimes.

I don't have the answers, but sophist justifications of the winner's atrocities (especially when the war was justified!) gives politicians the confidence to fight new pointless ones and commit war crimes in wars that are needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Soldier_(song)
Donovan's version of Buffy Sainte-Marie's song:

He's five foot two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of thirty-one and he's only seventeen
Been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
And he knows he shouldn't kill and he knows he always will
Kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada
He's fighting for France, he's fighting for the U.S.A.
And he's fighting for the Russians
And he's fighting for Japan
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy, he's fighting for the Reds
He says "It's for the peace of all"
He's the one who must decide, who's to live and who's to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall

But without him
How would Hitler have condemned him at Labau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war
And without him all this killing can't go on

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from here and there and you and me
And brothers can't you see
This is not the way we put the end to war

 

[BAYLOR]

And how does that make it less appalling? Maybe if more people had to face the consequences of war we might see less of it. The innocent always suffer more in war than anyone guilty of anything.

War is appalling that is fact and something to be avoided. But doing what you propose won't happen and even if it did won't make war and it consequences any any less likely. In 1925 the Locarno Treaty tried to outlaw war and you can see how successful that was., The League of Nations failed to prevent the next War. And after the World War II and Nuremberg, wars have still happened.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I said less not none.

Governments have in the past been able to white wash war so that people can call the cooking of children "unfortunate" rather than appalling.

However, Social Media now plays a part. As a result I know far more about the mistakes my government has made in Syria than any previous conflict. We the "innocent" bystanders or electorate are no longer as sheltered as we used to be.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Censorship and propaganda are as much a problem in "free" countries.
There is no privacy on Internet.
Most Newspaper / TV media is dominated by rather narrow dishonest viewpoints.

 

[BAYLOR]

I said less not none.

Governments have in the past been able to white wash war so that people can call the cooking of children "unfortunate" rather than appalling.

However, Social Media now plays a part. As a result I know far more about the mistakes my government has made in Syria than any previous conflict. We the "Innocent" bystanders or electorate are no longer as sheltered as they used to be.

Did you live in London during the Blitz?

 

[BAYLOR]

Censorship and propaganda are as much a problem in "free" countries.
There is no privacy on Internet.
Most Newspaper / TV media is dominated by rather narrow dishonest viewpoints.

George Orwell would have a field day with out media .

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Did you live in London during the Blitz?

Irrelevant.