Hiroshima: war or terrorism?

Sure you can. By the ethics/morality of 1945 what the Nazis were doing was considered evil just as it is today.

No, the Japanese government/military back in WWII was evil all by itself. In some ways they were worse than the Nazis. Bit of a judgement call I admit but the Japanese were not “bad” merely by association with Nazis…they were evil all on their own.

AFAIK Japan was the only country in WWII to engage in biowarfare killing up to a million Chinese (and supposedly some of that lingers yet today in animal populations). Look up Shiro Ishii and/or Unit 731 and read up and that nice little buried note to Japanese contribution in WWII. All sorts of nastiness to make your soul cringe including things such as giving prisoners gangrene and watching it progress and vivsection of live people.

How about enslavement of 200,000 “comfort” women to sexually appease Japanese soldiers? This wasn’t the random rape that sadly seems to be part and parcel to wars. This was systematic, organized enslavement.

The atrocities committed in China/East Asia are pretty well documented with the Rape of Nanking just being emblematic of it all rather than the exception.

Look up the Bataan Death March in which 20,000 prisoners died on a forced, 55 mile march. That again is emblematic of POW conditions that were nightmarish.

“Just a bunch of stupid ocuntries blowing the f*ck out of each other”? I wish I lived in your world where the moral clarity is so simple. The world I live in things get a lot more gray. War is a horrible thing to get to and perhaps you can say it is stupid to get there in the first place. But how you prevent the Nazis and Japanese from embarking on their plans ahead of time without going to fight them is beyond me. They tried that with Hitler and he kept on keeping on till the Allies went to war. The US was restricting oil shipments to Japan as a way of trying to peacefully get them out of east Asia. The Japanese responded by attacking Pearl Harbor to get us to stop. Tell us what the smart move would have been so all the horror of WWII culminating in droppping the atomic bomb could have been avoided?

Yeah, they were bad. But not nearly as bad as the Nazis, and not nearly as bad (in terms of total deaths caused internally or externally) as our allies, the Russians. Judgment call, yeah.

I know that some of this kind of stuff took place, but… cite? Also, the US engaged in nuclear warfare, hence this thread.

Yep, and bad. I admit it. As for the numbers, cite?

That was 1937. We first started fight those “bad guys” in 1941. I admit Japan was aggressive and pretty nasty, but they just weren’t on the level of the Nazis. In fact, Japan had already done most of their conquering before we even bothered to fight them, whereas Germany was doing much less in 1938 and even in 1939 with Poland. Funny war.

No denying it. But still, not at the level of the Nazis. And I don’t know how good we can say the US was, as the US firebombed and nuked cities whereas Japan didn’t.

Any species watching from outer space had thought we were all pretty pathetic. And I said, without the Holocaust the moral clarity had not been there. The Holocaust let’s us say, Nazis bad, all their allies bad, we good. I’m arging in favor of the gray, not against it.

Umm, and we fought Germany and not Russia… because? They also attacked Poland. There were other solutions at the time. In fact, the US didn’t get involved right away.

Better diplomacy with Japan. That was a comedy of errors.

Aeschines:

So, in 1945, being nuked is morally worse than being gassed? Or having a plague unleashed on your population? I would love to hear the logic behind this.

BTW: one slight difference between the Allies anbd the Axis: The allies weren’t bent upon World Conquest or genocide. Methods aside, I think the question of “desired outcome” should also be factored into your moral reasoning.

And yes, Stalin was every bit as bad as the Nazis and the Japanese combined. But as the saying goes, “…but he’s our bastard.” Up until WW II, the Ruskies were content to stay out of western Europe, so it is only after WW II that we get expansionist USSR and the Cold War. BY the time this became evident, I think we were already in bed too deep with Stalin; a sort of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of thingy.

Er, aren’t they all bad?

Britain had an Empire which included many subjugated countries that weren’t too happy about their position. I think that counts as “conquest.” As for genocide, none of the Axis was bent on genocide until later in the war.

I understand the strategic import of it all. BTW, what were we arguing? I grant that Japan was a country that was pretty nasty and brought a lot of problems down on itself. It got its comeuppance, no doubt. But it simply wasn’t on the level of Nazi Germany regarding both domestic policy and the way it conducted the war. And in WWII, its intention was to hold onto territory, not conquer new.

Er, aren’t they all bad?

Britain had an Empire which included many subjugated countries that weren’t too happy about their position. I think that counts as “conquest.” As for genocide, none of the Axis was bent on genocide until later in the war.

I understand the strategic import of it all. BTW, what were we arguing? I grant that Japan was a country that was pretty nasty and brought a lot of problems down on itself. It got its comeuppance, no doubt. But it simply wasn’t on the level of Nazi Germany regarding both domestic policy and the way it conducted the war. And in WWII, its intention was to hold onto territory, not conquer new.

The vast majority of people simply don’t know, or refuse to consider, that the strategic bombin in the WWII European air war was against civilians. Early in the war the British Air Ministry, under Air Marshall Portal, developed a plan to bomb the residential areas in German cities for the purpose of destroying the morale and effectiveness of German industry. This plan was formalized at the Casablanca Conference by the Casablanc Directive on the conduct of the war. That was the genesis of Churchill’s comment about “dehousing” the Germans.

The US Air Force originally though that precision bombing really meant precise and followed a pattern of daylight bombing in an attempt to be precise. The technology of the time simply wasn’t up to the demands of the task and a new method was worked out. Groups with high explosives would go in to create a lot of wreckage. That would be followed by groups with incendiary bombs to set the wreckage on fire. And that would be followed by groups with anti-personnel fragmentation bombs or by escort fighter strafing to suppress fire fighting efforts. Despite high-minded propaganda about precision daylight bombing, everyone who planned a carried out the missions recognized what the object was and that the German cities were occupied mainly by women, children and the elderly and disabled. Unfortunately, there was no other means available at the time other than sheer brute expenditure of personnel in slugging it out on the ground, which, unlike the Soviets, we didn’t have.

So, if it so happened that by the ethics/morality of 1945 what the Nazis were doing was considered OK, we couldn’t condemn it as barbaric and evil, just because people in 1945 didn’t think it was evil?

Sorry, but I can’t decide if someting is barbaric or evil based solely on whether people in that period thought it was evil. I consider something evil based solely on my own opinion as to what constitutes evil. Like Aeschines says: “There is a difference between understanding and judging”

So, I may understand why someone behaved a certain way at some time in the past, but I can still judge that action to be evil.

Well, yes and no. Suppose at the time you didn’t have any other way and all the ramifications of the use of the bomb weren’t understood at the time?

For example, for centuries surgeons operated without anesthetics and by methods incredibly far from antiseptic. Were they evil?

One thing that is ignored many times: the target was a small bridge in the middle of the city, I would have felt much better for posterity’s sake if the target had actually been one of the military installations, of course it is mostly a symbolic point: the whole city was virtually destroyed, but I would at least had made an effort to spare a little bit more of the population.

Ok…hope you haven’t eaten recently.

http://www.technologyartist.com/unit_731/
Japan Admits Dissecting WW II POWs, By Thomas Easton, The Baltimore Sun

Image - Child Experimental Victim

JAPANESE MEDICAL ATROCITIES IN WORLD WAR II: UNIT 731 WAS NOT AN ISOLATED ABERRATION; A PAPER READ AT THE INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS FORUM ON WAR CRIMES & REDRESS; TOKYO, JAPAN, DECEMBER 11, 1999; BY SHELDON H. HARRIS, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY EMERITUS, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

Unit 731 Testimony (book you can buy from Amazon.com)

Japan’s War Crimes

You can come up with LOADS of other stuff on this but hopefully that will appease my requirements here to cite claims.

More on Comfort Women (kind of a one-stop shop): Comfort Women Links

Sure you could and I have no issue with that. But the gist of this thread is was the US committing an act of terrorism when it dropped the atomic bombs. In hindsight you might say “yes” but I think with hindsight it is completely plausible that they ultimately saved more lives than they took (I know that is odd to say the least but in the calculus of war that seems to have been the end result). Nevertheless the US did not have the benefit of 60 years to look back on and mull their decisions. They had to decide to drop the bomb based upon what was usual and acceptable for that time.

I think I have shown that none of the options were any better. Even if you decide there was a “better” way out of this that would require the sacrifice of 20,000 (at a minimum) American soldier’s lives (not even couting how many Japanese would die) I am not sure it is reasonable to say we should have done so. As a commander your responsibility is to your troops and not the enemy. No commander chooses to send thousands of his own soldiers to their deaths when an option exists to achieve his goals and save his own troop’s lives. Taken to a small example it’d be like the choice of sending troops into a building to clear it out and see some die or call in an airstrike to bomb the building to rubble. If you were a commander what course would you decide to do?

Further, WWII was a “Total War” and not like the US going to Iraq. Not only do we possess technology to make precision strikes that limit civilian casualties the overall arc of the war was not the total annihilation of the enemy but rather a more focused effort to depose a regime and we could do that without laying waste to everything. In “Total War” frankly the civilian population is a legitimate target. Who makes the food for the army? Who makes the tanks and planes for the army? Where do new, replacement soldiers come from?

Yes it is harsh and brutal and not pretty. I also wish like most any rational person that wars never happened. Sad fact is they do. There are some evil people in the world who frankly you will only stop by beating them into submission via force. You can try diplomacy, as was tried with Germany and Japan, but if they are bent on their conquest goals you WILL fight them or you WILL succumb to them. No two ways about it. The Ghandi style of resistance works against a generally moral country like Great Britain. Against Nazis they will laugh at the ease and convenience with which they gun you all down.

Idealism is all well and good but to me it has to be a compass you try very hard to adhere to but allowances must be made when reality no longer permits staying that course while still maintaining your freedoms. Many men and women bled to secure your ability to be free and write on these forums (which I seriously doubt would exist in a Nazi regime). Germany did not capitulate till Russians were swarming over Berlin. Japan did not capitulate till two cities were vaporized (and almost not then). What, in any of their actions, makes you think the US in 1945 had better options but took the “easy” and “terrorist” road?

To me the US did the right thing as miserable of a decison as it was and I have yet to see anything beyond idealist rhetoric spoken from 60 years out suggeting there were better options.

It’s foolish to judge the wartime Japanese vs. the Nazis based on number of victims alone. The Germans were better oganized and were conquering a Europe that had more road and railroad infrastructure than eastern Asia, as well as finding local populations in conquered nations that were sympathetic to the Germans and eager to sycophatnically comply with the elimination of an undesirable (by Nazi standards) portion of their civilian populations. That the Japanese had fewer total victims certainly wasn’t from a lack of trying. Their incentive not to slaughter local populations wholesale stemmed from a need for slave labour, not any moral edge over wartime Germany.

As for the question at hand, I say Hiroshima was an act of War. The arguments for Terrorism are specious.

Whack-a-Mole, I fully believe the horrer stories. Those numbers (both of them) seem a little high, but what do I know?

BTW, I agree 100% that Japan was a corrupt, evil, arrogant nation that deserved to get its butt kicked. It should never have invaded China, Korea, and Taiwan and occupied them. But those things were fait accompli in 1941.

Bryan, I’ll continue to deny that Japan was as bad as the Nazis regarding both “trying” and “succeeding.” But I’ll grant that they were #2 or #3 worst in the world after the Nazis and maybe Stalin’s regime.

I also think Polerius and I have given a non-peacenik, non-naive and nuanced version of our side of the argument.

Funny this thread should exist. This afternoon I was thinking of starting one named “Dresden: War or War Crime?”

(see, kids, this is how you build your post count: remember something you wanted to say after you hit the Submit button :rolleyes: )

This discussion of Japanese war crimes is totally irrelevant to whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have been targeted. Civilians in a totalitarian country are not responsible for the actions of their masters.

I just wanted to drop this link in and add that the Appendix (especially the last 3 paragraphs) is worth a read…

THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI
by The Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946.