No, not at all, here |
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23.5% (19) |
Not really, but it |
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4.9% (4) |
Maybe, but it |
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13.6% (11) |
Yes, here |
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56.8% (46) |
Poll: Use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagaski - justified? Pages 1 2 NEXT | |
That or invade Japan costing many more American and Japanese lives? Yeah I'm picking the option that results in less bloodshed. | |
I'd say the nukes were justifiable. One major reason being that it's likely far more people would have died had an invasion taken place. And as for nukes preventing future nukes, I agree with that, as realizing just how powerful they are would make nations use nukes very sparingly. | |
To me, they were definitely justifiable. While we do something that can be looked back at as immoral, it prevented how many lives that would have been lost had we invaded Honchu. In fact, that would have probably caused more scorched earth than the nukes. I also see it as a way that helped prevent the cold war from becoming a hot one because people had seen what it could do to people and cities so I feel that it helped create MAD. | |
Yes. We had four options to end the war with Japan in World War II: 1. Use the bomb. Given that we were going up against a force that had displayed perfect willingness to fight to the last man, and a physical invasion would have also meant having to subdue a civilian population, the bombs easily resulted in fewer deaths -- both Allied and Japanese -- than any of the other 3 options. | |
I think "justified" is the wrong term here. It's not that it was morally justifiable, it's simply that it was the best option out of a slew of truly terrible options. What else possibly could've convinced the Japanese to surrender? | |
Hiroshima is a definite yes, the Japanese were prepared to die to the last and we needed to show them it was futile somehow. Theres no honor in being radioactive dust afterall. However I think we should have waited a bit on Nagasaki and gave more of a chance to give in. Overall though it was necassary and was better then the alternatives. | |
Why do these type of threads pop-up almost every month? Its like this this topic is the go-to issue for anyone who just wants to create some kind of a edgy thread for the sake of creaing edgy threads. That and the fact that its a cheap way to bash Americans in case the OP dislikes the US. | |
You should keep morality out of war. Any action that decreases the time fighting should be taken since the less time we are fighting the less of us will be dying. As Sun Zu said, no one benefits from a prolonged war, and the Nukes ended the war quickly and cleanly. We would of won in the end (we were a resource rich industrial powerhouse against a resource poor nation that encouraged their best soldiers to die as quickly as they could), but the bloodshed on both sides would of been much greater. The nukes were just bombs. Big bombs and a powerful bombs, yes, but they were just bombs that didn't even kill as much as the firebombing did. | |
Unlike a lot of people here I've actually interviewed a Hiroshima victim and spent several years living near the city. No, the bombings were not justified. They were expedient. They were not justified. Many Americans in particular seem to really struggle to wrap their minds around this. We are inundated with war and post-war propaganda to teach that the bombing was necessary (even if it was, that doesn't make it justified. Though I contend it wasn't even necessary.) The common argument is that invading the Japanese islands would have resulted in a million casualties on both sides. I find this number questionable given that the Truman administration had an ulterior motive to demonstrate America's new nuclear power to Communist Russia. But I find it more questionable given that the entire reason Japan relied on kamikaze bombing instead of more traditional and effective forms of warfare is because Japan was already running out of men and resources with which to fight the Pacific war. Part of the reason boys were being sent out as kamikaze pilots was because Japan didn't have time to train them how to aim bombs or land planes. The a-bomb survivor I interviewed was a 14-year old girl at the time of the bombings. She was being trained to defend Japan with sticks. People like to say this is proof that Japan would have fought to the last man. I've actually worked with Japanese 14 year olds. I know what they are like. They are not prepared to sell their lives to defend their homeland. They aren't prepared to put up stout resistance to trained, adult soldiers. Japan was filled with a population that was too old, too young, too untrained, and too hungry to make a credible defense. It would not have cost a million lives on each side. But the biggest problem with the atomic bombings is that they didn't end the war. They simply ended the fighting. They cost America the moral high ground. The lesson Japan has come out of WWII learning was not that the actions of Imperial Japan were immoral because they treated the people of Japan's neighboring countries like they were less than cattle. It's that you shouldn't fight a war because a country larger than you might beat you. This unwillingness to recognize the true moral costs of the war and the ability to feign a victim status because of the bombing has allowed a virulent strain of nationalism to fester in Japan's underbelly. Most Japanese people today are lovely folks who would never harm a fly. But they're also absolutely unaware of the vile hatred that lurks in the ultra-nationalist segments of their population. And I often worry about what a bad enough turn in the economy might bring out of the ultra-right woodwork in Japan. I don't think most Japanese people are prepared to go along with a new fascism were it to emerge. But I don't know I can confidently say they're prepared to resist it. | |
This is pretty much all that has to be said. Now, I do lack the first-person perspective, but from what I've read and seen, I'm inclined to agree. Not justified. And anyone who seriously considers a "but otherwise X would have happened" to be a legitimate justifications should check their facts and look for something more solid. | |
I never understood why the atomic bombs generate so much more debate than the firebombing. Both hit targets with many civilians. Both caused deaths in the neighborhood of 100000. Why is one bomb so much more controversial when multiple bombs have caused comparable destruction. | |
Sure, we can talk about Dresden too. But I think it's because most people don't even know that happened. Me, I've always said, there were some people missing at the Nürnberg tribunal. | |
Kind of the track I take. Saying they were "justified" is playing a little too fast and loose with that word and implies the Japanese really deserved it for some reason. | |
Of course they weren't justified. The USA had known that the Japanese government had been making peace overtures before the bombs were dropped. While we can't guarantee they would have been successful, though I think they would have been, the USA didn't even try. | |
They didn't know the real impact of the bomb. Nothing of this scale ever occured and they had no idea what other consequences would follow. They did however knew two major things - That destroying Japan's largest industrial region and also residential area, completely obliterating the cities - would completely break the Japanese fighting spirit (Though it didn';t in some, the emperor did surrender). You're saying that a nuclear bomb does this or that, but we had no idea what the consequences would have been... We knew it was very powerful and would destroy and kill many buildings and people, but the other results and the magnitude was something else. Was it humane? Was it moral? | |
The 14 year olds that you have worked with are not the same ones from the 1930s and 1940s.
What? Seriously, what? Compared to Japan, the US still came out with the moral high ground. If you don't want to take my word for it, there are other people who would feel the same way.
OP this about somes up my answer to your question. Hindsight is always 20/20 | |
That's right. Unlike the 14 year olds of the 1940s, my students had a diet with the proper levels of vitamins and protein.
Yeah, the moment you think the moral high ground is relative is the moment you've completely failed to grasp what the moral high ground is. If you haven't captured the moral high ground completely, you haven't captured it at all. | |
Your students also grew up in a different environment and government than that of their grandparents. | |
And your point is...? Kindly phrase it in a sentence that isn't vague. | |
That your earlier point about fourteen year olds doesn't hold up, the people you have worked with grew up in a completely different environment than those fourteen year olds that were alive during the 1930's-40's. Your comparison doesn't hold up. | |
How do you propose my students were different? Please be specific: none of your usual games of hiding behind vaguery to avoid actually making a point that can be disputed, if you don't mind. | |
The children you taught weren't poured properganda as their education and weren't told every day by their teachers, parents, and friends that dying for the emperor is something to aspire to, or that they were a superior race that was destined to be above the lesser people of the Earth. Remember, many villages in the Japanese islands, the old, the young, and everyone inbetween, thought it was better to walk off a cliff than be captured by the Americans. Your personal stories of children who have grown up with 60 years of cultural evolution isn't a good metric to judge their grandparents in their youth. | |
It appears that Not G. Ivingname answered your question before I could. However I would also like to add that believe that a living god(state Shintoism IIRC) supports your military is a very large influence on the people as well. From what I understand today, the only role that the Emperor really plays at all is when he waves at people when they celebrate his birthday every year. | |
ATOMIC weapons, actually. And yes, justified, but not for the reasons most say it was. I have no sympathy for the country on the basis of how it treated China, Vietnam, Indochina, Manchuria, as well as American POW's. The head of their infamous Unit 731 death camp was lauded as a hero and recieved honors from Japanese royalty. Far as I'm concerned, Japan deserved exactly what it got for being and behaving like racists beyond even what the Third Reich perpetrated. But I don't believe it was tactically justified. Japan's military was decimated. Their manufacturing was flattened. We'd already firebombed them till the whole country was a barbecue pit. The notion of zealous civilians willing to fight with bamboo spears till the end isn't believable to me. Despite what propagandists and rabble rousers like to think, when a people are starving and destitute, they're more likely to simply want to feed their families than bravely take up arms. | |
Not much fighting you can do when you can't load your guns or feed your soldiers. I know you have some idea that every JP civilian was some samurai spirit possessed berzerker who was willing to charge a rifle line with a bamboo spear, but the behavior of civilians who have been bombed into the stone age suggest that was not a likely scenario. I don't care what your nationality is, most people when given the choice of surrender and avoid death by starvation or commit combat suicide, they're going to choose to eat. | |
It genuinely shocks me when I see so many people coming forward and claiming the strikes were totally justifiable. I think that's hogwash. The use of the bombs on Japan was nothing more than the USA saying "back off" to Russia and exerting their dominance. The Cold War was already rolling. This belief that it was either drop the nukes or commence an invasion is nonsense and unwarranted.
First of all, I will say I completely agree with your last paragraph. But the stuff I quoted seems a little shady to me. You're essentially saying that the mass annihilation of civilians is warranted because their government was responsible for horrible things. That doesn't sit right with me. I don't believe for a second that the average Japanese citizen was responsible for the numerous war crimes their military committed - nor did they probably even know the full extent of it. They weren't fed open information like we are today. They were only given propaganda and were understandably filled with nationalism. I don't think that warrants their death. If you wanted to punish Japan's war crimes - you hunt down the people responsible and give them a trial (which is what happened). You don't kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. What is that achieving? | |
Except it wasn't. It wasn't a case of a people not knowing what it's government was doing, they knew and were fine with it. Survivors and military personnel from that age still alive in Japan make no bones about what they did, and show no remorse. and I dont' claim it was even the right thing to do as a remedy. I just say that I have no sympathy for the generation that got hit. | |
the US military expected so many casualties that they made 500,000 purple hearts in preperation for the invasion of japan. to put that in perspective. when an american soldier is wonded in action today they get a purple heart from that stock pile and there is still over 120,000 left. the initial invasion of the island of kyushu was expected to face 3 japanese divisions but the choice to drop the bombs was made after intelligence discovered the landing would be opposed with 13 japanese division.in comparison the allied forces were expected to land 14 divisions. if the japanese hadnt of surrendered and the invasion went ahead then in the initial landings 7 atomic weapons were scheduled to be used to support the landings with a further 5 ready for use the following month. after kyushu was eventually taken the plan was to blockade japan and to use the new airbases for bombing japan with an amphibious invasion of the plains around tokyo in 1946. as for the expected numbers of casulaties.. the battle of okinawa was 82 days long and ended in june 1945 cost 72,000 allied casulties. some people have mentioned unit 731.. they were a japanese biological and chemical weapons development unit that used live humans as test subjects including vivisection. the american government after the war made sure the scientists not only recieved immunity from prosecution but were also paid money, given expensive gifts and hotel holidays in exchange for their research on the advice of mcarthur estimates of the death toll from the weapons developed by unit 731 is upwards of 100,000 chinese civilians. as for subjects they directly experimented on. around 6500 people men, women and children mostly chinese civilians but also russians and allied POWs including 200 americans. the american pows that survived the death camps were forced to sign non disclosure statements after the war. | |
Please provide a source which proves that the average civilian in Japan during the 1940s knew the full extent of the war crimes their military was committing. I know several Japanese people (my brother's girlfriend is Japanese) and I've spoken with her grand parents who were teenagers at the time of the bombings. They both had no idea that Japan was massacring, torturing and committing war crimes to innocent people. They thought their military was fighting with honour and were doing the right thing. That's all they were told. So unless you can prove otherwise, I don't think you are justified in making those claims. | |
Well, right now, it's purely anecdotal on your end, so it'll be on my end. Filmmaker TF Mous made a film back in the late 80's called "Men Behind the Sun". It was pretty controversial on the Asia side of the Pacific since it uncomfortably straddled the line between documentary telling and gore exploitation regarding the Unit 731 story in Manchuria. TF actually, as part of his research of the film, did interview Japanese veterans, citizens, and those who were part of the youth auxillaries deployed in the area. The vast majority of opinions was "It was war. War is hell. Nothing to apologize for." The only people who seemed ignorant were (then) current generation Japanese students. | |
It was truly grotesque us how we handled it. Strange how so many German wastes of humanity were prosecuted, but we let people like Unit 731's director in bed with us. | |
Nope. You're the one making the claim that civilians knew about the war crimes going on. Burden of proof is on your end, my friend. | |
Considering the Japanese were the Nazis of the far east and that it'd have been simple enough to leave the Russians to decide their fate, I'd say the nukes were merciful. Blockade, persistent bombardment, starvation and possibly the better part of a century of communist rule isn't as easily visible as the couple of unfortunate victims that lived through the nuclear strikes but the numbers game says nuke 'em. | |
they did prosecute and execute alot of japanese war criminals after the war. but if one of them had information that could be of use then german rocket scientist or japanese biowarfare specialist they got a get out of execution free card. in case anyone is interested in some of the documents for the invasion of japan you'll find them on my site at: as for unit 731 the following link is the offical reports on theinfo the us government got in exchange for immunity: | |
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My first response to this when I first heard of the event was one of shock and contempt: who in their right minds would use nuclear weapons at all? We know the story: massive short term loss of life and property, even greater long term loss due to radiation and radiation related conditions.
However, as taught in history lessons all across the UK at least, there is another side of the coin. This we all also know, the kamikaze mentality, the likelihood of invading Japan to end the war and the massive death almost guaranteed by doing so.
This is quickly beaten down by the standard response. The bombs killed many, many civilians, a toll which is absolutely and completely unacceptable in any circumstances.
I don't know how common this next jump is, but I thought about it some more recently and I came across a 'what if' I had never considered.
What if the US had invaded Japan, and won? They probably would have won by sheer overwhelming numbers at the very least. The world would never have seen the effect of nuclear weapons applied to situations outside of testing. I presume the cold war would still have happened, and there would still be a nuclear arms race globally. However, there would be nothing stopping the use of the weapons. All the learning from the use of the weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never have happened. It's not too much of a leap to presume that nuclear weapons would definitely be usedat some point. But not the early weapons of the '40s. The weapons would be on a much bigger scale by that point. Their use would kill so many more people all over the world, causing devastation all over.
Is it possible to suggest that the effect using nuclear bombs early on and seeing their destructive potential then, rather than when they were more developed and deadly, was to prevent death and destruction on a global scale?
I have not made up my mind yet, but it has pushed the issue into more of a grey area for me, and I would like to see everyone else's opinion and response.
TL;DR Use of early nukes prevent later nukes from being used. Does this help justify their use?