The surrender conditions offered by the Japanese government included that there be no occupation of Japan or war crimes trials, and that the generals running the government be allowed to remain in power. There is no way Truman would have accepted those terms, and no reason he should have. No rational leader would accept those terms were they in Truman’s position. After all, it’s pretty clear that as soon as they rebuild the country, they’re just going to attack you again. (Can you imagine the Allies in Europe pulling out of Germany immediately after their surrender without even removing the Nazis from power?) The Japanese generals would never accept the surrender offered by the United States, and they were the ones running the country. Instead, they preferred that the entire population of Japan fight to the death. It was better for the Japanese people to be wiped out rather than surrender, as far as they were concerned.
As support, I present you with excerpts from A Democracy at War, written by Professor William O’Neill of Rutgers University.
Others have covered most of what I would say, especially David Simmon’s mention of Hiroshima as a more effective demonstration than any number of bombings on uninhabited islands. And Nagasaki shows that it was ineffective - they still didn’t surrender.
** I am at a loss as to what we would or should have done if we valued human life more. Invade? That would have ended more human lives than the A- bomb. Do nothing? Same objection.
** Used in the legal sense, “mass-murder” is inaccurate. Used in the moral sense, it is perjorative. It implies a judgement that the actions taken by the US to end its defensive war were immoral. Condemning the actions of both sides has a nice, rounded “a plague on both your houses” feel to it, but it shows (in my opinion) a lack of moral courage in standing up for principle - that human life, even that of your enemies, is important, and that whatever action can be taken to save those life is necessary - even if fifty years later you have to deal with a lot of unjustified criticism by those who are going to object, not to the actions that started the war, but the actions that ended it.
** I can’t interpret this in any other way than you saying that the US - not Japan, the US only - is going to be condemned no matter what they do.
I would say that if something is wrong, we should not do it. Based on my understanding, the bombing of Hiroshima was justified. Unless you have some consistent set of moral principles from which to argue, I cannot see how you can argue whether it was or not.
You seem (as far as I can tell) to concede that the bombing minimized casualties. You seem (as far as I can tell) to concede that an invasion would have resulted in far more death and suffering than the bombings. You seem (as far as I can tell) to concede that the war had to be brought to an end, and that doing nothing was not an alternative.
The only objection you can cite is that the deaths happened quickly, in a moment, rather than over the course of an invasion of several months. It seems to me that you are saying that prolonged suffering of a million people is better than a quick death for some hundred thousand. This is a moral principle I reject. So do most others, and, in circumstances not involving the US, I suspect you would as well.
If your moral position is “Use of atomic weapons is always wrong”, I would ask why you think that. In particular, I would ask why you would think that in 1945. Because it causes casualties? War does that, so we wanted to put an end to it. Because World War II was a bad idea? We agreed, so we wanted to put an end to it. Because WWII should not have occured in the first place? We agreed - which is why the attack on Pearl Harbor, which started US involvement in WWII was morally wrong. Not the bombings which ended it.
Unless your moral principle is “No matter what, the US is wrong.” If that is the case, I cannot argue the point with you.
If you ask a question requiring moral reasoning, it is a mistake then to reject moral reasoning in favor of a gut feeling that it was wrong because - well, it’s just icky. That nasty US, taking decisive action against a known enemy. How dare they?
The least they could do is feel just as awful as they can, and apologize for it, and agree with us that the Empire of Japan was horribly wronged, and in general do what they can to make us feel all morally superior.
All the hard work has been done. Now for the fun of pointing fingers of condemnation at those who did it.
To say that Hiroshima was a demonstration is disingenuous. One could have demonstrated that we had a massively destructive weapon without dropping it on a city and, then, two days later, if the demonstration didn’t convince, drop the next bomb on a city such as Hiroshima. Two days–wasn’t that the length between Hiroshima and Nagasaki? How much would it have hurt to wait two days before destroying an entire city?
Having said that, I seem to have answered my own question, David Simmons. In the part about a demonstration I notice that I used the word “weapon” rather than “bomb”. The reason that I switched from “bomb” to “weapon” while typing was that as I thought about the non-populated site–an island, perhaps–to be obliterated as a demonstration, I thought that we didn’t have to drop a dinky, little bomb on it; that we could repeat White Sands and manually emplace a really big nuclear weapon by ship.
That thought would be one that the Japanese General Staff would also have had–that we were bluffing about being able to transport such a weapon as a bomb. So, on that note: I must switch sides and agree that to drop the bomb on Hirshoma was necessary–reserving the right to later change my mind.
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I have read, Sajon, that the leaflet warnings** were **ignored. Who wouldn’t say something like “We have a really huge weapon,” and thereby disrupt an entire city for 2-3 days. The leaflets might have worked after a demonstration-bomb but not before, which is what history says about what actually did happen at Hiroshima.
In the context of 1945, with the facts Truman had, what did the term “atomic bomb” mean?
From what I’ve read, the politicians and generals thought the atomic bomb was just a REALLY BIG bomb. They didn’t have any concept of radiation poisioning, fallout, etc. Hell, if they did, do you think the U.S. would have continued to conduct above-ground tests on its own soil for years afterward?
Even the scientists must not have had much appreciation of the effects of the bomb, since they were taking only the most rudimentary precautions against radiation.
So considering that both the Axis and Allies had been bombing civilian targets throughout the war, if a general told you they wanted to use a really big bomb to blow up yet another civilian target, would you think twice about it?
And “considering how experimental it was” would you have wasted one of your only two bombs dropping it offshore to convince the enemy that – yes – it’s a really big bomb?
This is only partially true. The US had broken the Japanese code and was aware of Japanese thinking regarding the question of surrender, or (as the Japanese would have preferred to call it) “negotiated truce.” The conditions you cite above were so-called “secondary” conditions; the only real condition the Japanese insisted upon was a guarantee of safety for the Emperor.
The Potsdam Proclamation required “unconditional surrender;” it was issued (by radio) on 26 July 1945. The actual formulation of the Proclamation was hotly contested by Presidential advisors. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the administration’s No. 1 expert on Japan, argued that the wording of the Proclamation should include some sort assurance regarding the life of the Emperor (or the continued existence of the “Emperor system,” as it is often called). Secretary of State Byrnes, on the other hand, argued against the inclusion of such a clause.
What seems incontrovertible is that all of Truman’s political and military advisors, including the President himself, were aware that the call for “unconditional surrender” would prolong the war. As stated above, the US was aware of the concerns of the Japanese government, and in hindsight it seems difficult to justify the terms of the Proclamation.
The Proclamation also included ominous statements such as, “There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest” and “stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals;” statements that could be easily interpreted as directly threatening to the Emperor’s life. US decision-makers were aware that the Japanese would probably reject their offer.
I’m surprised that this thread has continued for so long in this manner without anyone pointing out the false dilemma that underlies all of the “moral arguments” in favor of dropping the Bomb. It has been uniformly assumed throughout this discussion that the US had a choice between A) dropping the Bomb, and B) invading (with the resultant loss of countless lives). Let be that in all probability, estimates of US losses in the case of an invasion were probably greatly exaggerated, but what about the possibility that Japan would have surrendered without either A or B? Certainly, many historians argue that the bombing might have been avoidable, had the US acted differently.
Writing in about 1950 regarding the Casablanca Conference that initially called for “unconditional surrender” and specifically dealing with the effects on the leaders of both Germany and Japan at the end of the war, Winston Churchill specifically states that it was highly unlikely that the call for “unconditional surrender” prolonged the war. At the time he wrote, he had access to not only the views of the Allies but also every bit of evidence on hand as to the secret councils of German and Japanese war leaders. It is of course possible that Churchill was arguing in defense of his stance which might be refuted unpublished material available to him. What evidence do you have to suggest that this conclusion is “incontrovertible” – because as between the expertise of Churchill and the British chiefs of staff and that of unsubstantiated Svinlesha, I prefer the former. You can change my mind with a specific statement attributed to an American war leader that strongly supports your contention.
Characterizing these as “ominous” ignores the state of mind of the U.S. government during the Second World War, which might best be analogized to the feelings of the average citizen immediately after September 11 of last year – “they attacked us without provocation, and they deserve to die!” Dispassionate examination of history needs to recognize that leaders and peoples at war are often passionate.
Why is this a “false dilemma”? Regarding your last sentence, please cite at least one respected historian with an alternative view, preferably substantiated by a proposal at hand in the summer of 1945 for ending the war with neither invasion nor bombing.
While I’m not accusing you of anything underhanded, it’s been my experience that often revisionism views the historical situation with vastly different eyes than were available contemporarily, and comes to significantly differing conclusions that are not in fact justifiable.
Asserting, for example, that “the Romans could not have crucified Jesus because capital punishment is wrong” proves nothing except the inability to deal with the mores of a different time of the speaker. I suspect that your sources are not dealing evenhandedly with the material in the context of its time and place. Forgive me if I seem to be in any way attacking your own credibility for posting it.
Not at all. I guess I should have made this a bit clearer. You can find an excellent summary of both sides of the debate here. jonp linked to the site earlier in this thread. The historian you are looking for is named Gar Alperovitz, and there is a link to his argument, as well criticism of it, a short way down the page.
As I understand him, by the way, he seems to feel that the bomb was dropped mainly to intimidate the Soviet Union. His argument is a bit too complicated for me summarize at the moment, as I am writing against a deadline. But in shorthand, many advisors around Truman advocated a kind of “two-step” strategy: let the Russians declare war, and then clarify that if the Japanese agree to surrender, the Emperor would not be executed. Stimson, among them, believed that the shock of the Soviet announcement, coupled with a US guarantee for the life of the Emperor, would have given the doves in the Japanese Cabinet the leverage necessary to force a negotiated truce. Alperovitz argues that, at the very least, this strategy could have been explored before dropping the Bomb. An invasion of the mainland could not have been launched before November at the earliest, so there was time.
I put it to you that Truman changed course during the Potsdam negotiations when he received word that the first test had been successful. Suddenly, Soviet intervention in the Pacific theater didn’t seem to be such an appealing option. We are perhaps left to speculate about the morality of Hiroshima when seen in that light, but surely you will also agree that one decides to use a weapon like that only as a last resort.
There are countless examples quoted at the cite above. Even Eisenhower opposed it, stating in an interview a few years afterwards that
That is your opinion that it shows moral weakness, and maybe, because of the way you’re wired, it would constitute moral weakness for you. I understand you’re saying, and I’d like to respect it. Yet I can honestly say that, for the way I’m wired, not to do so would constitute moral weakness. More on this below…
That’s not what I mean, and it is not what I intended to convey. I think it seems that way because we are operating on a fundimentally different ethical framework. More below…
Well then this is the difference between the way you and I see things. I do not view right and wrong in an either/or manner. Sometimes it is necessary to do a lesser wrong to do a greater good. Hiroshima (assuming it was the only way to end the war) would be an unusual and exteme example of this: a lesser wrong that would have been a greater wrong by any other standards other than ending WWII. Not that that changes things from a moral math perspective, but it does make Hiroshima a unique and emotionally difficult issue in the history of large scale warfare. How am I supposed to feel about something so terrible? The fact that it was arguably for the greater good is not an answer, not for the grief that it caused. It’s that grief that troubles me… and the more “right” the bombing appears, the more troubling it becomes.
I do have principles that I think are consistant. I do my best to explain them below.
I concede that all these things may be true, and that there are compelling arguments to support them. If I wanted to argue otherwise, I’d have to do my own research… which I haven’t. So, for the purposes of this conversation, yes, those are all correct assumptions.
Okay, I think this is where a misunderstanding lies. When I make reference to the horror of the atomic bomb, I mean it mostly in regards to those who survived it, and that includes all those at the time and since who have suffered the environmental, emotional, and genetic damange that was a direct result of it. I would probably agree that less people dying quickly is preferable to more people dying slowly, but the atomic bomb was hardly an example of a clean and painless killing. For a number of people it was, and the rest experienced a brand of suffering previously unseen in history. Not that that suffering outweighs the suffering of countless more killed in a conventional invasion, but I do think it demands special consideration and cannot be rationalized by common standards.
Because atomic weapons by there very nature overextend their destructive usefullness. The destructive power we weild through them is one we cannot effectively contain or control, which is why since 1945 nuclear weapons only been effectively used as a deterrent. In physical practice (as opposed to acting as a deterrent) it causes more casualties, more destruction, and greater long-term consequences than its tactical usefullness justifies. It is a imprecise weapon with unwanted side-effects and consequences, and I know I’m not alone in the opinion that use of atomic weaponry should be avoided at all costs. And even if the bombings that ended WWII was the one exception in light of its extreme circumstances, it should serve as a reminder as to why nuclear weapons should never, ever be used again. You are always going to bite off more than you can chew with the use of an atomic bomb, and everything that falls outside the realm of strategic usefullness in terms of sheer casualty numbers is going to fall into the realm of unneeded death, disease, and evironmental damage.
Desperate times may have called for desperate measures, and it is possible that the atomic bomb may have been the only way. The above argument is not meant as a reason why the bomb shouldn’t have been dropped necessary, but an explanation as to why it deserves special moral consideration beyond the sheer number of casualties.
That’s sound logic.
Well, I dunno where you’re getting that line of reasoning from. I’m just arguing that the one instance where the U.S. decided to use atomic weapons was a morally complex event that involved abhorant (if necessary) behavior on America’s part. I do not think that the U.S. is automatically wrong, but as the only nation every to drop an atomic bomb on human beings–justified or not–I think it needs to face a trickly responsibility, and that responsibility is to look at the consequences from all angles and make an honest effort to comprehend the multi-layered implications of such an action.
I agree that you should not reject moral reasoning based on a gut feeling. Of course not. However, I do think that ignoring that feeling can be as big a mistake. I do not think that the mind should rule over the heart or vice versa, but I do think that an open communication between the two is essental to making a whole, honest, and human judgement. All I know is that a special kind of grief was created by the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and that grief is not given a voice by the mere realization that Hiroshima may have been for the greater good. I think turning an ear to that voice is essential to forming an accurate moral perspective about the events that transpired there. That kind of awareness needs to be weighed with greater moral reasoning in order to really do justice to the issue.
That’s what I believe. However, I think a lot of the disagreement here comes from semantics more than anything. I doubt anyone would disagree with me that the use of an atomic bomb is an ugly matter to some extent regardless of the ultimate ethics involved. The argument really arises from the multiple emotive meaning attached to the words used to describe this. Words like “justified”, “moral”, and “ethical” imply different sets of values to different people. To me these words seem very black & white, very either/or, and they are therefore not my choice words to use when trying to understand something as controversial as the bombing of Hiroshima. To others (even though who share my reservations about the bombing) these words might be just fine.
I don’t think it’s fun to condemn anyone, which is why I didn’t. All I wanted to do was illustrate a moral paradox and how, in my opinion, some words we commonly look to for comfort cannot accurately describe it. Saying one action in one instance is wrong or involves a measure of wrong-doing is not the same thing as condemning a nation or the powers that govern it. I never once said anything about “condemning” anyone. I’m just trying to explain how right and wrong can be inevitably intertwined, and that sometimes it is impossible to seperate them in a clean and morally satisfying way. I think this kind of moral discomfort is a natural part of war, and part of the reason why can be so terrible.
It was three days actually. Hiroshima was bombed on 6 August 1945; Nagasaki on 9 August (The Soviets declared war on 8 August). Truman and the other American planners set this schedule with the intent of allowing the Japanese to realize the extent of destruction form the first bombing and give them time to indicate their willingness to surrender before subsequent cities were bombed.
The Allies were trying to avoid the mistakes of 1919. In the First World War, Germany asked for an armistice and declared the willingness to negotiate an end to the war. The Entente powers subsequently wrote the Treaty of Versailles and Germany, faced with the choice of signing it or going back to war, felt forced into accepting it. But the bitterness of what the Germans saw as unfairly extreme surrender terms was one of the main factors in the rise of the nazis and the outbreak of WWII.
In that war, the Allies wanted to make the peace terms clear. They publicly declared early in the war that they wanted an unconditional surrender. This made it clear to the Axis powers that when they admitted they were defeated, they couldn’t expect anything except charity from the victors. Because of this, the peace that came in 1945 was much less bitter than the one that came in 1919.
**The question in the OP is “Was the Hiroshima bombing justified?” Your position seems to be “Yes, it was, and we should feel terrible about it.”
The trouble with such a position is that it buys into the moral equivocation - not to say moral cowardice - of many Japanese and many revisionist historians, who feel that Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor cancel each other out, and that therefore half the blame of World War II can be shifted off to America.
This is a position I utterly reject. Japan attacked the US, in furtherance of aims that are indefensible. They were acting in concert with Nazi Germany, for heaven’s sake, and with much the same ends. They even engaged in the same acts of racist mass murder, the Nazis against Jews, Poles, gypsies and Roman Catholics, and the Japanese against the Chinese and Pacific Islanders.
If you abandon the principle that waging an unjust war is wrong, or that taking an action to end such a war at least partly because you want to spare as many of the lives of your enemies as you can, should be an action that is morally ambiguous at best, is to abandon moral reasoning altogether.
If you feel like a pity party for the Japanese, help yourself, but don’t call it moral reasoning, which is a little more rigorous than that.
** I am sorry to say that all this is demonstrably false. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed to bring an end to WWII. They did so. As I mentioned earlier, neither city ceased to exist, or to become uninhabitable, and the aim was brought about at a net saving of life. I thought you were admitting that they were not simply "strategically useful’, but absolutely necessary if we wish to save Japanese and American lives.
In that sense, all the casualties, environmental damage, and later disease caused by the A-bombs were “needed”, and entirely justifiable. Use of the bomb should not have been avoided “at all costs”, since those costs included roughly 1.2 million lives that could have been, and were, spared.
Unless you are arguing that an invasion would have caused fewer maimings, damage to the islands of Japan, or disease (as from starvation and polluted water). Feel free to try - I expect you will have cites.
** I am going to have to ask you to define the terms under which we can give moral consideration to use of the A-bomb, if not the number of casualties it caused.
Unless you are simply talking about vague feelings of guilt. As I may have mentioned, I do not share these feelings. Is there another basis from which we can discuss? I think you already mentioned that the A-bombings acted as a deterrent to their further use, so I hardly think “it was a bad example” is going to fly. Horrifying, overwhelming damage? We have already agreed that the A-bomb resulted in a net decrease in such damage.
** The question was why I thought this was anti-American. My basis is that I am the only one taking any of Japan’s actions into consideration in discussing the issue. Other posters are stating that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “going about their ordinary lives”, without mentioning that these ordinary activities included waging aggressive war against the peoples of the Pacific. In case you care, today is the anniversary of the Bataan Death March. 37,000 set out. Three days later, 20,000 arrived.
** Such an effort was made before the bomb was dropped. The decision was made (and I agree) that this was morally justified. No information has since surfaced to dispute that conclusion (that I find at all convincing). I do not therefore see any problem - nor any reason that the US should feel even the least bit guilty or ashamed of what they did. They started it. We ended it. Get over it.
I would agree with you. Ugly, painful, even horrifying - and entirely justified, necessary, and right.
Amputating a leg is much the same. Painful, horrible to watch, even sickening. But nobody involved needs to be ashamed of anything.
Please do not accuse me of moral cowardice by heaping me into categories that I have repeatedly tried to make clear I do not belong to. I never said anything about Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor being “even”. I never said anything about America being given half the blame for WWII. I am not a revisionist historian. Please do not read things into my statements that are not there. This is not about taking sides.
I agree. (Who wouldn’t?)
A moment ago you were speaking about “moral equivocation”. Claiming that Imperialist Japan was pretty much the same thing as Nazi Germany is in no way an accurate statement. They were not the “same acts” of racist mass murder. They were actually very different acts of racist mass murder. Not that that makes them morally any better (of course not), but my point is that this is no excuse that Japan deserves to be generalized into the same moral consideration as Nazism simply because they were affiliated militarily. This is oversimplifying the issue.
This is not part of my argument, but I just wanted to say something here. You seem to think that it is a solid, steel fact that the primary (if not only) consideration involved in the bombing of Hiroshima was to save lives by ending the war. Although I am for the time being giving you the benifit of the doubt to argue a seperate point, I would remind you that—even though you make a compelling argument and one that I am presently inclined to believe—this fact is still debatable.
That is your perpetual misunderstanding. To admit moral ambiguity is not to abandon moral reasoning, not unless your moral paradigm is based exclusively on an either/or orientation to right and wrong. There is not one standard of moral reasoning.
I would appreciate if you didn’t patronize me by calling it a “pity party”. It is not about pity. I am not trying to get attention by it. I simply believe that grief and ambivalence should be addressed, but not to the point where they consume all logic. And I do not believe that they are for the way I am addressing them.
And I do call this moral reasoning… precisely because it is rigorous enough to address this kind of ambiguity without collapsing to either extreme.
I never said that the price was uninhabitability or non-existance. By effects beyond our control or their own usefulness I am referring to things like terminal cancer and birth defects that continued to be an issue for generations after all formal peace had been declared. I took a look at some of the numbers. According to the American Airpower Heritage Museum website the Hiroshima death toll of 140,000 in 1945 increased by 60,000 in the next 5 years. By that time, Nagasaki’s original 70,000 had doubled making for an estimated total of 340,000 which leaves roughly 130,000 deaths that occurred in the first 5 years of peacetime. After 1950 the numbers become sketchier, but according to CNN.com 2,000 cases of fatal disease a year in Hiroshima alone are attributed to the atomic bomb of 1945. These figures are from 1998.
Whatever our intentions were, I know they were not to kill people for the next fifty years of peacetime. Now, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable by suggesting that effects like these are not necessary to win a war. However… (see next comment)
This is where I very much disagree. These effects were not intended or part of any strategic relevance that ended the war. It is superfluous suffering that continues to affect people born after the fact. It is suffering inflicted on innocents in peacetime. These effects are not justifiable. They are not needed. And they cannot be seen as such simply because they inevitably accompanied whatever usefulness the bomb served.
I don’t see what’s so hard about entertaining the notion that certain aspects of the bombing were perhaps more justified than others. Why does it have to be all or nothing?
I said all costs… with the possible one-time exception of WWII because of the unusual and extreme circumstances. When I made the comment about avoiding use of atomic weapons at “all costs” I was referring to the post-WWII military climate of the world.
Now wait a minute. To what extent did the civilians of Hiroshima “wag[e] aggressive war against the peoples of the Pacific”? Does simply supporting their nation count as the same thing? Are we to view them as exactly the same as the soldiers? What about children? Throughout this discussion you have made repeated attempts to heap all Japanese citizens together into a single political entity deserving of a single moral consideration, and I don’t think this is accurate. You make it sound like Japanese civilians were no different then soldiers, and your logic seems to suggest that no Japanese citizen could be seen as innocent. I will agree that the Japanese civilians were involved in and supported their war effort, and insomuch as that was for an immoral cause, yes, it was wrong. However, that doesn’t mean that most of the 300,000 to 400,000 citizens of Hiroshima weren’t otherwise living normal, everyday lives and probably did not deserve to have an atomic bomb dropped on them.
But that’s beside the point. You are not the only one who is taking Japan’s actions into consideration. If I may remind you, I agreed with every statement you made as to Japan’s unjust action against America and other countries, and I do not think that the civilians not directly involved are completely unaccountable either. However, you seem to be operating from the assumption that the accountability of a government and the accountability of its people are one in the same. I don’t believe this. When I suggest that a massive attack on Japanese civilians is unjust as an action unto itself, I do not mean that to imply that the same moral consideration extends to Japan as an aggressive military body. (Hence I don’t consider my position anti-American.) Inspite of your earlier claim, I do not think there is satisfactory evidence to suggest that the citizens of Hiroshima should be thought of in the same way as the government they supported… not unless you can provide evidence of what kinds of direct involvement in “waging aggressive war against the peoples of the Pacific” they supposedly participated in.
It’s not you’re logic I’m disputing here. To a minimal extent I am disputing your choice of words, but even that can really just be chalked up to personal semantics. What I am disputing is your attitude. If you don’t feel grief or guilt, that’s fine. I am not suggesting that you should necessarily. What I find discomforting is your apparent refusal to accept that—regardless of how you may feel—grief, regret, and moral ambivalence may very well be an integral part of other people’s process of coming to terms with what Hiroshima means to Japan, America, and the world. When you tell people who want to face this grief and question its necessity to “get over it” you are showing disrespect and disregard for a tidal wave of emotion that it doesn’t do anyone any good to ignore or suppress. You don’t have to share it, but I hope that you would see that it is beneficial to allow people to grapple with it in their own way. No one is going to be able to “get over” Hiroshima until they are allowed the breathing room to achieve the peace of mind they need in a fashion that hold personal meaning for them. If all you need to achieve this peace of mind is a simple moral math equation, that’s fine. Other people need other things. I personally need more than a word like “justified” or “right.” I think if evidence supports them they can and should be part of my answer, but they cannot be my answer. But that’s just me.
** You are making a distinction without a difference.
Japan is not generalized into the same moral consideration because they were affiliated with the Nazis, but because they committed the same morally outrageous acts.
Mass murder? Bataan Death March - check.
Racism? Rape of Nanking - check.
Medical experiments on prisoners - check.
Concentration camps? Check.
Waging aggressive war against your neighbors? Check.
Enslaving populations? “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” - check.
On the one hand, you say that the acts of racist mass murder committed by the Japanese (although different in whatever way you think) are morally no better than the Nazis. In the next sentence, you seem to say that they were not nearly as bad, since they do not cause the Japanese to deserve to be lumped together with the Nazis. Which is it? Are you saying that a dead Filipino, or dead Chinese, or dead American POW is not as bad as a dead Jew, gypsy, or gay man? Are you saying that being beheaded is not as bad as being shot? Are you saying that the attack on Poland was worse than the attack on Pearl Harbor?
**Do I need to point out that over fifty-five years, people tend to develop cancer and die regardless of whether they have been exposed to an A-bomb or not?
It is a little disingenuous to point to some eighty-year-old Japanese with cancer and say “Obviously if it weren’t for those horrible bombs, this would never have happened.” Old people die. This hardly constitutes an argument against the A-bomb.
** I think you are. They were necessary, since there was no realistic alternative that would not have cost far more lives. Your top estimate of all deaths for the next fifty years is 340,000. My top estimate of deaths from an invasion is 1.5 million. You have 1.15 million lives to go.
**
You seem to be saying that we should have waited until we developed a bomb that will kill only the bad guys. If we had done so, World War II would still be going on.
You seem to be arguing that any action that causes suffering by the innocent can never be justified, even if its good consequences outweigh its bad. By this reasoning, no child can ever be vaccinated, since pretending that the pain involved in piercing a child’s skin could be outweighed by the consequence of a longer, healthier life means “abandoning moral ambiguity” or “all-or-nothing thinking”.
**Because it is impossible to separate the consequences, which is why we need to consider them all before acting. Which we did, and which (I think) almost all agree we did correctly.
If you want to mourn the fact that the universe isn’t perfect, feel free, but that is not a factor that can enter into moral reasoning. Because it cannot be avoided.
But you cannot first apply the principle that actions are justified if they are taken to reduce suffering, and then condemn the same actions because they don’t reduce it to zero. Because no such actions are available, then or now. The only way to avoid the suffering in WWII was for Hitler and Tojo not to have caused it in the first place. That didn’t happen. Therefore the justified second choice would be to end WWII as quickly as possible, and at the least possible cost in human life. That did happen, and it happened because of the US.
**That is not beside the point; it is exactly the point.
Insofar as the civilian population of Japan was involved in and supportive of their war, and insofar as their war was immoral, they did deserve the bomb if anyone did. You seem to be implying that the only ones it would be justifiable to bomb are the ones engaged 24/7 in waging war. If a weapon existed that only kill such people, we would have used it, which is the point of the precision munitions used with such success in the Gulf War. But they didn’t in 1945, and no weapons that reduce collateral damage to zero exist today.
What are you trying to say? I am sure that a fair proportion of Adolf Hitler’s time was spent not plotting mass murder - eating lunch, going to the bathroom, playing with architectural drawings, screwing Eva Braun, whatever. Would you argue that apart from the mass murder thing, Hitler was “otherwise living a normal life” and didn’t deserve to be killed?
What kind of moral reasoning says “We shouldn’t do anything, even when doing nothing is worse. Or if we do what we all agree is morally justified, we still aren’t morally justified.” WTF?
** I would be delighted to hear what you think would have been morally justified for us to do. If you are saying “there wasn’t any better choice”, you will begin to sound like you are going to condemn the US actions in ending WWII because the universe is flawed. To which the obvious rejoinder is “Why the hell is that OUR fault?”
You are, of course, quite correct that I feel no guilt, shame, or remorse over the actions of the US in ending World War II. Others can feel what they like. But once their “grief, regret, and moral ambivalence” leads them to abandon logic in favor of a detestable tendency to pretend that those who do wrong do not deserve condemnation, or that it makes no difference who is committing the injustice and who is suffering it, I for one find it offensive and insulting - and stupid.
If my son came home crying, and told me “I threw a rock at Billy and he punched me in the nose”, I would not attempt to comfort him with ideas that we are all somehow at fault when violence occurs. My advice would be not to throw rocks at people. In the same way, when the grieving of Hiroshima and Nagasaki attempt to work thru this deep emotional experience (fifty-five years after the fact, and all the war criminals are safely hung), I would offer similar advice.
You don’t like losing wars? Don’t start them. You don’t like what happens when you piss the US off? Don’t piss us off.
And don’t you dare point any fingers of blame at what we do to stop you from your crimes. Or we bite it off and spit it in your face.
This is a difficult discussion to sustain because you continuously argue a point that I continually agree with. Every point I make you use to bolster your evidence that the invasion of Japan would have been a greater wrong than Hiroshima. I fail to see why you continue to do this since I am not disputing this point. Rather my examples are meant as evidence as to the ethical duality of the bombing. Every time you argue that an invasion would have cost more lives, you are missing my point and engaging in an argument I haven’t the means or desire to counter.
Lemme see if I can finally illustrate this for you. Maybe I just haven’t done a good job of it so far. You are the one who is constantly, constantly connecting moral judgements to positions of “should’s” and “should not’s”. By suggesting that something involves an aspect of moral paradox, a combination of right and wrong I am not suggesting that it should invariably not be done if the greater good will clearly be the result. As your argument makes a good case for, Hiroshima may have been an example of just such a situation. You are operating from a paradigm of moral reasoning that defines the moral consideration of a given situation in terms of ultimate right or ultimate wrong, i.e. an entire situation must be considered “right” if the outcome is “right”. Now, I will state once again that I am not operating from the same paradigm. I do not see it as a fallacy of moral reasoning for actions to involve a degree of both right and wrong in some extreme circumstances. I think Hiroshima was one of these circumstances.
As for thinking that “any action that causes suffering by the innocent can never be justified” I think that is true to an extent (regardless of your bug-bite analogy, which I don’t think has much relevance to the loss of mass human life) It can’t be thought of as “pure” justice, but it can be thought of as a diluted form of justice that is necessary given the circumstances. That’s why I’d called Hiroshima a “necessary evil” rather than simply “good”.
There you go again, with that word “condemn”, a word I never used once and a word you have repeatedly used to interpret my statements.
It was beside the point of the primary argument I was trying to make, which was not about the relative innocence of the citizens of Hiroshima but about how moral reasoning doesn’t need to be black and white.
Unless I am grossly misunderstanding you, the implication here is that civilians are to be viewed no differently from the leaders they support in terms of moral accountability and whatever justice it deserves. Am I the only one who disagrees with this?
I think there is a difference between people who support a war effort and those who command it. Hitler deserved to die because he made the decision to kill millions of people, and I don’t think I’m crazy for suggesting that wielding that kind of power deserves different moral consideration than those who merely support the ideals of a government but who have no decision-making power. Not that that absolves them of all responsibility, but I do think it is logical enough that they be considered separately (though not independent) of the government they support in terms of the kind of justice they deserve.
I dunno. My moral reasoning says no such thing.
Well that’s fine. You go ahead and do that if you find someone who fits that description. As for myself, I never suggested any of those things. I never said anything about abandoning logic (in fact, I said the opposite). I never said anything about Japan not deserving justice for what it had done. And I never said there was no difference between Japan’s injustice and the suffering it caused. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you think my claims somehow imply these conclusions… that is your perception. You are the person who is drawing those conclusions from my reasoning, and they are not conclusions I would draw or support. If you think that my reasoning inevitably leads to these conclusions, you don’t understand it correctly.
Perhaps you classify my thinking as black and white. I would classify it as the consistent application of a moral principle, and accepting the consequence.
The OP asked “Was the US attack on Hiroshima justified?” As far as I can tell, we agree that it was. The moral principle I think we agree on is that the US should have, and did, end the war in ways that minimized death and suffering. But somehow or other you want to insist that we should judge the situation by principles other than the stated one, that the use of A-bombs is always wrong, or that we should have treated the people of Hiroshima differently than we did, or we should feel sorry for what we did, or something.
But, as I thought we agreed, the use of A-bombs is not always wrong. When used in accordance with the principle of ‘minimum casualties, even for enemies’, it was and is entirely moral and correct to bomb the shit out of them in 1945.
And, as I thought we agreed, we could not have treated the people of Hiroshima any differently than we did. The deaths of the 340,000 (or whatever the final total is) is an unavoidable consequence of ending the war. That is the minimum number of casualties involved in ending WWII. It is not therefore a moral ambiguity; it is the only possible morally justified option.
Should we have treated the people of Hiroshima and Japan differently than we did?
Probably not. Nor am I arguing that they should necessarily be viewed any differently. What I am arguing is that they should be, and were, treated differently. The leaders and instigators of WWII were tried and executed after the war. The US took no such punitive actions against the people of Japan after the war. Indeed, they did a great deal to rebuild and improve their political and economic structure after the war, assisting them in becoming the second largest economy in the world.
The fact that we made some of them suffer and die is a manifestation of exactly the same principle under which we rebuilt their economy and infrastructure after the war - to treat your enemies better than they deserve. We bombed them to bring a quick end to the war. We rebuilt them to prevent future wars from happening. Of course it was partly in our own interest that we took both actions. But it was for the benefit of the rest of the world that we did so as well.
I frankly do not see any benefit in pretending that we should be sorry for bombing them, or to classify it as a "morally ambiguous’ action. What benefit does that entail? Because it would lead us to do anything different the next time? Not as far as I can see. The same principle of minimum damage has been (thank God) extended and better implemented with the “smart munitions” of the Gulf War, with its incredible ability to pinpoint military and bypass civilian targets. The fact that so much colllateral damage occurred is entirely the fault of Saddam Hussein, for using human shields in his failed attempt to keep what he had stolen. In the same way, the collateral damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the fault of Tojo and those in the war cabinet, who started and continued WWII, and who refused to surrender even after we showed in Hiroshima that we had the will and the ability to end the war without allowing them their last-ditch desire to die gloriously, taking many of the enemy with them.
Who would you say is acting morally - those who try to bring an end to the war as quickly and humanely as possible, or those who say, “We will die to the last man in defense of our Emperor - and we will take the civilians and women and children of Japan with us”?
If I haven’t said it before, I will now. The OP asked if the bombings were justified. Based on my understanding of moral principle, and, as far as I can tell, yours as well, they were entirely justified.
Feel free to feel bad if you like. But such feelings achieve nothing good, and some bad. If we feel guilty or ashamed of our principles, or the instances in which we applied them, we are less likely (in my view) to stick to them in the future. And that is (again in my view) not an enhancement of moral reasoning, but its abandonment.
I think I have said pretty much what I have to say on the topic. Thanks for your thoughts.
I can’t argue with most of the points in your final post, and the reasonable tone with which you make them doesn’t inspire me to try. I still disagree with some of it, but the parts about the ultimate usefulness of the bombing, the reconstruction of Japan, and how the notion of minimizing casualties has extended with greater accuracy to modern warfare are all fair points. As my own closing comment I’d like to take issue with only one statement:
I think you go too far in assuming this. I and others who share such feelings will decide what they achieve, and I would hope others who don’t share them wouldn’t dismiss them so easily. Feeling regret about an action and feeling regret about the principle that demanded that action are two separate things. As someone who does feel sorry for the action—and not the principle—I can say that such feelings would not and do not necessarily result in the abandoning of such principles in the future. On the contrary I think such feelings can facilitate the kind of caution that leads to a well-balanced decision.
That said, I think that perhaps I was making the right points in the wrong argument. Technically, the bombing of Hiroshima can certainly be seen as “justified” by any argument that effectively makes the case that invasion was the only other option. I was not trying to argue with that reasoning but (and perhaps this was the unfair part) the false absolution that I feel it implies—false because it is (in my experience) deaf to the suffering of those involved and deaf to the grief of those who feel responsible. This suffering and grief is part of the world we live in whether it is justified by moral reasoning or not, and the only way it’s going away is if it’s listened to for as long as it needs to be heard. Maybe that’s fair; maybe it isn’t. I dunno. But I do think that is the reality of the situation.
Anyway, I guess that’s it. Thanks for the argument. Regardless of what my opinion is I feel better informed about the issues overall.
-Matt
