Don’t start wars you can’t finish.
Japan was an aggressor against the US in WWII.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved countless US military lives.
No further explanation is required.
Yes. In war, your object is to win and keep your troops safe. We no doubt saved countless American lives.
Do the ends really justify the means? …That is not what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about. The entire Japanese nation was willing (for the most part, or being “morally” coerced) to sacrifice itself for a false god, namely their head of state whom they believed to be the direct descendant of another false god(dess). Therefore, as counterintuitive as it sounds to some or many, we were actually saving Japan by demonstrating that their god-king was a mortal man.
The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the “false emperor’s” palace?
And.....why are there still Japanese who lived on the islands still alive? Why are the Japanese islands still there? Why were the Japanese islands not atom-bombed off of the planet so that they would be at worst a vast wasteland/pile-of-rubble or at best a shallow sea?
Bill Whittle (of pjmedia) did a magnificent presentation on Hiroshima a few years ago and GAWD HELP US with our unremitting reservoirs of guilt if we didn’t go through the SAME THING EVERY STINKING YEAR Aug 06.
Hiroshima is taken to have killed 100K people. Call it 200K people with aftereffects, and nobody estimates that high. By obviating the need for an invasion of Japan, EASILY saved 1 MM Japanese lives and probably 150K American lives/casualties. It isn’t even a close comparison. The Hiroshime & Nagasaki bombings easily saved 500K lives.
The principle of Kokutai played a critical role in surrender. Any prominent Japanese lived within an intimate spiritual three dimensional fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. In subjection to this merging of spiritual and political authority, common citizens forfeited individuality to become a collective soul defining Japan. As soldiers or civilian militia they awaited the decree of the Empire’s ruling oligarchy. With such a national unity committed to waging a savage total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
At impasse the two atomic bombs allowed Hirohito, the Son of Heaven, to speak the Voice of the Crane in the sweltering, underground bunker. The bombs were regarded as a dramatic force of nature equivalent to an earthquake or typhoon against which human arguments collapsed. Only submission to such a catastrophe could be proportional to the absolute disgrace of surrender following over 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit, because he held the heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War Faction could now relent and no one would lose face. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence negotiations with allied belligerents.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
“Thank God for the Atom Bomb”
I have to agree with that sentiment.
My Dad was WWII Navy, Pacific Theater and would likely have been killed during the invasion. Which means I wouldn’t be posting this comment since I was never born.
Japan wanted war, they got war. Kill everyone and destroy everything until the enemy ceases to exist or unconditionally surrenders. Period.
Japan should be thankful we only used two bombs and gave them time between to surrender. We could have just as easily waited a few months then loaded 100+ bombs and absolutely destroyed Japan.
Let me see, America dropped the bomb on Tokyo on Dec 7 1941 and started the war with Japan, right. I find it appalling that it is the US that is second guessed and not the instigators of the second world war. It was Japan that started the steps toward the bombing of their cities not he US. If they suffered then they need to look at their own history and this country needs to quit wringing its hands over something that they had no control over.
Ask the Chinese how they were treated by the Japanese. Ask the Korean women how they were treated by the Japanese. I don’t think we have anything to apologize for and should not be doing so.
That's a deliberate, straight-out repudiation of God. The notion that good ends justify evil means is a moral theory condemned ever since St. Paul wrote Romans 3:7-8:
"But if through my falsehood God's truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just."
Some people say it depends on whether they thought the Japanese were on the verge of surrendering before August 6, 1945 --- or not. I would not be the one to make the call on that, because I haven't got the military experience and expertise.
But some people DO have that kind of expertise. Historians record that most of America's WWII military leadership thought Japan was already n the verge of collapse before the atom bombs were used:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3321050/posts
"Six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan “barbarous” and a violation of 'every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.'"
I don't think these American military leaders were pinkos, pacifists or fools.
But the real problem isn't not that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings were strategically unnecessary. The real problem is that, in terms of an ethic of killing, there is a difference between targeting soldiers/combatants/military assets, and civilians/noncombatants/civilian values.
Most people in the world today at least profess to recognize this distinction (except for ISIS and their ilk).
It's hard to put it any clearer than this:
"Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and humankind itself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." (Gaudium et Spes, para. 80, 1962)
Utterly crushing the Japanese military/political machine would have been justice. Incinerating civilians with a deliberately indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction, was murder. That should be clear when you consider that General Douglas MacArthur and his staff wrongly succeeded in exonerating Emperor Hirohito and all members of the imperial family from criminal prosecutions.
Thus in the end, 250,000 civilians were killed, and the Emperor Hirohito was not.
Hiroshima: Thoughts on an awful anniversary [Do the Ends Justify the Means?]
In that case, absolutely.
Sadly a lesson that America became so afraid of as to not have learned from it. Thus the Vietnam War and others.
The lesson being if you lack the spine, the willingness, the courage to win a war, then stay the hell out of it or surrender from the start............
“Do the ends justify the means?” is a loaded question vis-a-vis the bombing of Hiroshima, implying that atoms were unjustified merely by virtue of their being atoms. The ends, less death, are justified - whether by bullets or atoms makes no difference in the justification, less death is justified. If less death would be obtained by bullets that would have been the choice. It was determined that less death would result from atoms.
The question is an attempt to vilify atoms.
Do not mistake this for minimizing the enormity of this single act.
“Hiroshima: Thoughts on an awful anniversary [Do the Ends Justify the Means?]”
The question is meaningless — the ends ALWAYS justify the means for Democrats.
I don’t disagree with the decision, though. Broken clock and all....
“Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was “wrong” seem to be implying “that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs.” People holding such views, he notes, “do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots.” “
-Paul Fussell
The Japanese 'Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps', which included civilian men aged 15 to 60 and women 17 to 40 for a total of 28 million people,who would attack the Allies with sword, spears, hoes and shovels.
How would history judge us when we slaughtered millions of women and children?
The “means” were well justified in the planning and execution.
Dropping the bomb saved a million lives that would have been lost in a continuing conventional battle.
There is nothing “more humane” about killing with bullets and bombs, over an expanded period of time.