# Was Nagasaki the greater U.S. sin? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 5, 2013, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202 "2013-01-05T23:02:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/41 "2013-01-06T07:38:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > People seem to feel using the atomic bomb was some immense moral issue that should have been agonized over for weeks and months. Keep in mind the world was eight years into a war that killed over sixty million people. People in 1945 probably didn’t see two hundred thousand people being killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as that much of a moral issue. Certainly not as far as public opinion was concerned. My parents saved a great many newspapers from the war years, and I spent any number of rainy afternoons (plenty of those 'round these parts) perusing them. From what I recall of the letters to the editor, the more charitable correspondents wanted the Japanese reduced to poverty and powerlessness; most of the rest wanted them exterminated. ---
**Author:** ![markdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@markdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markdash)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/42 "2013-01-06T07:43:25Z")
The title of this thread is, to me, a lot like the question “are you still beating your wife?” ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/43 "2013-01-06T08:03:33Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > People seem to feel using the atomic bomb was some immense moral issue that should have been agonized over for weeks and months. Keep in mind the world was eight years into a war that killed over sixty million people. People in 1945 probably didn’t see two hundred thousand people being killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as that much of a moral issue. > [@markdash](#): > > The title of this thread is, to me, a lot like the question “are you still beating your wife?” I really get a bit miffed at the people who make posts like the original post. Why they feel that someone not of the current ‘moral set’ should be acting like they were is baffling. “Oh why did they marry 12 year old girls”/“keep slaves”/do whatever the fuck these OP idiots feel they shouldn’t because we today don’t as we are so morally advanced over everybody else in history … Yes, we had been at war, and as was also pointed out upthread the general opinion was ‘the only good jap is a dead jap’ and we _interned_ our Japanese and vaguely Japanese population in concentration camps. At least we didn’t work to death, starve and bury in mass graves like the Nazi did with the Jews and various others ranging from Romany to gays. Lots of things were acceptable then that are not now - but we can’t treat their actions as if they were the people of today. You want sin? Here is sin. Look at this [stupid fucking waste of life and property](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties). We [the US] did _not_ start the damned war, we aided England and Russia in ending the war in Europe, and aided Australia and other pacific rim regions in stopping Japan. If you want to put the burden of sin somewhere, it is on Japan for the Pacific theater, and Germany for the European theater. We spent an amazing amount of time and effort in producing war materials, and getting them to our allies, and sending our own planes, ships, boats and manpower to support the war effort as well. Postwar, we rebuilt the areas that we bombed. You can not say that we did not rebuild Japan. I guarantee that if the positions had been switched, I would be speaking Japanese and probably working at a scutwork job or being stuck as a ‘comfort woman’ in a brothel somewhere because they sure as hell would not have rebuilt our economy and turned us loose as a political entity, we would have been a subject region. Google the Rape of Nanjing. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/44 "2013-01-06T08:06:40Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > A peculiar irony there in a sense because Attlee, love him or hate him (or both, as I espouse) was probably the most significant PM of the 20th century, more important than Churchill frankly (others would have done a fairly similar job I think). I hadn’t heard before, the comment that Attlee was the most significant PM of the 20th century. Can you clarify as to why he was? ---
**Author:** ![Sevencl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sevencl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevencl)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/45 "2013-01-06T08:12:15Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > I hadn’t heard before, the comment that Attlee was the most significant PM of the 20th century. Can you clarify as to why he was? He’s largely responsible for the nanny state we have today, including the NHS. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/46 "2013-01-06T08:45:59Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Eight years ? I thought Pearl Harbour was a day that would live in infamy. Guess Franky D. was full of it 🙂 Contrary to popular belief on one side of the Atlantic, Dec 7 1941 was not the beginning of World War 2. Hitler invaded Poland over two years before, but the Japanese had been stuck into China before that - hence “eight years”. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/47 "2013-01-06T09:16:17Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Contrary to popular belief on one side of the Atlantic, Dec 7 1941 was not the beginning of World War 2. Hitler invaded Poland over two years before, but the Japanese had been stuck into China before that - hence “eight years”. I’m aware of that (being French, I \*know \*the war started in '39, mister ! :p), but the country wasn’t really on a war footing then. It was very much a phony war at that point, least as far as the general American public was concerned. So claiming that American sentiment/decision process would have been influenced by 8 years of bloody warfare is not really accurate. Wasn’t American opinion majorly set on isolationism right up to Pearl ? And even after that, only really set on dealing with the Japanese and in need of further prodding to get involved in the European theatre ? ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/48 "2013-01-06T11:34:02Z")
It may ultimately be defensible, and may have been the least bad thing that could have happened, but it’s still so horrifying and terrible that I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to reexamine it, debate it, or play devils advocate against it until they can feel at peace with it, to whatever degree that is possible. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/49 "2013-01-06T11:46:59Z")
what’s scary is that it is only a couple of generations ago. how long before it is distant enough for history to repeat itself? ---
**Author:** ![solosam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@solosam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solosam)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/50 "2013-01-06T14:42:32Z")
1. Yes, it was okay to drop the bomb on Nagasaki. We dropped one, and they didn’t give up. We dropped another, and they surrendered. Obviously, they did not get the message the first time around. 2. Do not project modern attitudes on past eras. The idea that atomic weapons are inherently evil or horrifying is very much a post-war attitude. The people at the time had a very poor understanding of radiation’s effects on the body and the environment. Before the war, they genuinely believed that it was possible to build a super-weapon that would enforce peace rather than invite armageddon. The concept of a global nuclear holocaust did not enter the public mind until the Soviet arms race. 3. With that, bombing attacks on civilian targets was a normal part of WWII. This was not a “limited military intervention” like the BS missions we participate in today. WWII was a “total war” struggle to shape the globe. Every nation, be it Germany, US, Britain, Japan, whoever, attacked civilian targets. I struggle to understand how dropping one massive bomb on a city is fundamentally different than dropping millions of pounds of conventional bombs or firebombing the crap of Japan, both of which we did. 4. If I had spent years engaged in the world’s bloodiest war, and I found myself with a giant weapon that no one else possessed and could cause a totally lopsided victory with little/no loss of life on my side, I would use it, too. Repeatedly. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/51 "2013-01-06T14:55:46Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > what’s scary is that it is only a couple of generations ago. how long before it is distant enough for history to repeat itself? Five minutes. That’s a fact. You can look it up. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/52 "2013-01-06T14:59:42Z")
> [@solosam](#): > > 1. Yes, it was okay to drop the bomb on Nagasaki. We dropped one, and they didn’t give up. We dropped another, and they surrendered. Obviously, they did not get the message the first time around. Actually, if the mistranslation story holds any water, it’s quite possible they did get the message the first time around. That would be darkly hilarious. > [@](#): > > 1. Do not project modern attitudes on past eras. The idea that atomic weapons are inherently evil or horrifying is very much a post-war attitude. > The people at the time had a very poor understanding of radiation’s effects on the body and the environment. Before the war, they genuinely believed that it was possible to build a super-weapon that would enforce peace rather than invite armageddon. The concept of a global nuclear holocaust did not enter the public mind until the Soviet arms race. “Now we’re all sons of bitches”. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. > [@](#): > > 1. With that, bombing attacks on civilian targets was a normal part of WWII. This was not a “limited military intervention” like the BS missions we participate in today. WWII was a “total war” struggle to shape the globe. Every nation, be it Germany, US, Britain, Japan, whoever, attacked civilian targets. I struggle to understand how dropping one massive bomb on a city is fundamentally different than dropping millions of pounds of conventional bombs or firebombing the crap of Japan, both of which we did. Indeed. But of course, it is already agreed that firebombing Tokyo and carpet bombing Dresden were monstrous things to do to begin with. > [@](#): > > 1. If I had spent years engaged in the world’s bloodiest war, and I found myself with a giant weapon that no one else possessed and could cause a totally lopsided victory with little/no loss of life on my side, I would use it, too. Repeatedly. Admittedly. But that doesn’t make it the \*right \*thing to do, only the understandable thing to do. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/53 "2013-01-06T16:52:58Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Actually, if the mistranslation story holds any water, it’s quite possible they did get the message the first time around. That would be darkly hilarious. But really unlikely. The Potsdam Declaration, which warned Japan of “prompt and utter destruction”, was issued on July 26. So regardless of how you translate the Japanese response, it was pretty clear by August 6 that they weren’t surrendering. Prime Minister Suzuki even issued a public statement in response to the Potsdam Declaration that Japan planned on continuing to fight. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/54 "2013-01-06T16:58:13Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > But that doesn’t make it the \*right \*thing to do, only the understandable thing to do. What was the right thing to do? Suppose we hadn’t used the atomic bomb and we had invaded. And 2,000,000 Japanese had died during the Battle of Japan (which is a very low estimate for Japanese casualties). And then after the war, we revealed we could have tried using the atomic bomb to end the war instead but that would have killed 200,000 Japanese. How would we have morally justified not using the atomic bomb? ---
**Author:** ![Sevencl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sevencl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevencl)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/55 "2013-01-06T16:58:31Z")
> [@solosam](#): > > 1. With that, bombing attacks on civilian targets was a normal part of WWII. This was not a “limited military intervention” like the BS missions we participate in today. WWII was a “total war” struggle to shape the globe. Every nation, be it Germany, US, Britain, Japan, whoever, attacked civilian targets. I struggle to understand how dropping one massive bomb on a city is fundamentally different than dropping millions of pounds of conventional bombs or firebombing the crap of Japan, both of which we did. Every nation has ALWAYS attacked civilians in war. The idea of attacking civilians being wrong, and war crimes in general, is very much a recent, modern invention. For most of history there was never any question that killing civilians was a perfectly valid tactic - if you could manage to do it. It just also happens to be that modern war doesn’t much resemble the wars of those times. What’s changed is it’s now easier for us to target civilians with the technology of the day, whereas before when vast armies would engage on the battlefield, civilian casualties came afterward - for the loser. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/56 "2013-01-06T17:17:20Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > The OP seems to be of the opinion that the Japanese didn’t respond because they didn’t have time. I disagree. They chose not to respond. In fact, they chose not to respond to the second bombing as well. That is, the people who held the power chose to do nothing, despite having ample evidence of the hopelessness of their situation, and the counsel of others (who weren’t empowered to make the call) that it was time to give it up. > > And frankly, it was time to give it up long before the two bombs were dropped. The war had been an almost unbroken string of disastrous defeats for almost 3 years, and many of their major cities had been burned to the ground. The bombs were useful for their shock value, and not particularly for their destructive power. The Japanese high command had to be shaken up, badly, before they would change course. > > And even the second bomb didn’t do it. They were still gonna sit on their asses planning the glorious death of the whole nation, until the emperor intervened and ordered a surrender. Had that not happened, who knows how long the war would have lasted? This. I don’t have the energy to read through yet another “should we have dropped the bomb” thread, but the idea that we should have waited on dropping the second bomb or that a demonstration explosion be made of the first bomb almost always comes up. That and the mistaken idea that either the second bomb was dropped as a warning to the Soviets or that the Soviets were somehow taking advantage of the situation by going to war with Japan after the first bomb. The US expected and had asked for Soviet intervention, Stalin pledged to go to war with Japan within 3 months of the defeat of Germany at the Yalta conference, and the USSR attacked Japan exactly 90 days after the German surrender. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/57 "2013-01-06T17:25:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > What was the right thing to do? Suppose we hadn’t used the atomic bomb and we had invaded. And 2,000,000 Japanese had died during the Battle of Japan (which is a very low estimate for Japanese casualties). And then after the war, we revealed we could have tried using the atomic bomb to end the war instead but that would have killed 200,000 Japanese. > > How would we have morally justified not using the atomic bomb? Well, it all depends on what moral system one goes by of course. The modern moral value system seems to hold that attacking military targets in time of war is A-OK (and even then, not any and all means of attack are cool), while deliberately attacking civilians is wrong, period. By that rationale, it would have been better to kill 2.000.000 Japanese men in arms and uniform (or however many until the remaining just gave up) rather than 200.000 old men, women and children. Can’t say I necessarily agree with that myself, but then it doesn’t say anywhere on my Devil’s Advocate card that I gotta use \*my \*code of ethics unless absolutely necessary, marginally convenient, or even slightly funny. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/58 "2013-01-06T17:38:54Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Actually, I remember reading somewhere, (and I can’t remember where, some trivia book of mine,) that the second bombing was because of a translation error in communications. The Japanese response to the call for surrender was “We will consider your demand for surrender,” meaning “we’ll get back to you.” The response was accidently translated as “We will ignore your demand for surrender”. I don’t know how accurate this claim is. I’ve only seen it put forward once, but I haven’t read too much about the bombings. That’s true. Okay, I lied and kept reading. As **Mr. Kobayashi** linked, the word mokusatsu doesn’t mean “we’ll get back to you”, “we’ll consider your demand for surrender”, or as I’ve sometimes seen it “no comment.” The word literally means ‘to kill with silence’, from the wiki link: > [@](#): > > It is composed of two kanji: 黙 (moku, literally “silence”) and 殺 (satsu, literally “killing”). The story of this ‘mistranslation’ has gotten around quite a bit. Not only was it not a case of mistranslation, it wouldn’t have mattered if it was; mokusatsu was the response to the Potsdam Declaration which was an ultimatum demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan. There are only two responses to an ultimatum, acceptance or defiance. “No comment” or “we’ll get back to you” aren’t acceptable replies to an ultimatum. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/59 "2013-01-06T18:22:55Z")
It’s simple: Always Double Tap. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202/60 "2013-01-06T18:57:33Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > …Admittedly. But that doesn’t make it the \*right \*thing to do, only the understandable thing to do. The “right” thing to do is to end wars quickly. Attempting to end WWII in August of 1945 INSTEAD of Aug of 1946 or 1947, was the “right” thing to do. I also understand that the number of casualties on the “other” side is a secondary consideration to the number of casualties on “my” side. Truman had the opportunity to possibly end the war quickly with little loss of Allied lives or to chose not to use a newly built weapon which meant the original invasion plans would proceed and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Allied lives could be lost. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-nagasaki-the-greater-u-s-sin/646202.md?page=4)