The author above is an Hiroshima cultist if ever there was one.
Posted on 08/10/2010 5:42:30 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Probably the saddest aspect of the article is that he thinks it's well-reasoned and he's proud of it.
I was in the Navy in WW2. So my view is certainly affected by what was going on at the time.
I understood that even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military wanted to continue to the last man, woman and child, both military and civilian. And as I recall, after Nagasaki, Hirohito finally overruled them.
I didn’t know at the time what an “atom bomb” was, but two of them sure put an end to an unbelievably ferocious war. So I cheered what Harry S Truman had done, and basically still feel the same way 65 years later.
The author redefines the legal structure of war by pointing to the indiscriminate killing of military and civilians and then claims in his hand-wringing conclusion: That made these attacks war crimes.
1. The earlier fire bombing exacted a higher toll of civilian deaths but was not regarded as inappropriate.
2. The Japanese War Lords did not believe the first A-bomb meant they had lost the war and ignored our peace demands.
3. Russia was massing forces and by prior agreement was moving to invade Japan in a matter of weeks - which would have caused an otherwise avoidable blood-bath, extinguished the nation of Japan and given the USSR a warm water pacific port.
4. Truman would have been charged with a war crime at home if he had needlessly squandered the lives of hundreds of thousands American lives while holding the weapon that would end the war.
It was speculated at the time that there would have been close to 1,000,000 American combat dead, and at least 10,000,000 Japanese combat dead.
Also, let us not forget the Japanese started the damned war and all we did was finish it, so by dropping the bombs, we saved 1,000,000 American lives and at least 9,500,000 Japanese lives.
By forcing an unconditional surrender, we were able to rid the Japanese of their militarists which were responsible for multiple atrocities, such as the Rape of Nanking, the activities of Unit 731 (the Japanese unit which used local civilians and POWs for chemical and biological weapons experiments and the Bataan Death March. We institute a Western style form of government and Japan has prospered since the end of the war.
I am personally sickened by the number of apologists we have regarding how the war was forced to conclusion. Had Truman not ordered the use of the A-bombs, both me and my wife would not be here, because both our fathers would have undoubtedly been killed during the invasion and it's subsequent fighting.
“What are your thoughts?”
~~~
I think this guy is a moron,,,
My Dad was WIA on New Guinea in ‘43,,,
His life was shortened by his wounds,,,(died at 61yo)(RIP).
I think Gen. LeMay should have bombed Japan into a hole
in the water!,,,
Then gassed it,,,
Then bombed it some more,,,
No Quarter...
As a side note, I thought that nuclear warfare was supposed to render ground zero uninhabitable for hundreds of years?
Civilians of a country that starts a war are not innocent. The Germans of 1930s overwhelmingly supported all of Germany's wars, and it is a mistake to pin that on Hitler. They also voted in Hitler, thus delegating to him to decide on war and peace. So did the Russians of the Soviet Union. So do Islamic mothers, fathers and entire communities that raise children to be terrorist. So do "innocent" civilians who invite Taliban into their villages.
They don't like the casualties of Hiroshima? Well they shouldn't have started the war and taken the lives of Americans who were merely defending their families. The cost of Hiroshima, however large, was the least cost of ending the war (in terms of the avoided Japanese casualties as well, not only American). Thank G-d we followed through with that and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The critics here do what all naive people do: focus on only one side of the cost-benefit balance. They look only at the casualties of Hiroshima (cost) but hardly ever discuss the lives saved (benefit). Needless to say, this is illogical: if you only focus on the cost of food, for instance, then you should never eat anything. This is obvious in the case of food but, for some reason, people the same conclusion in the case of Hiroshima.
His assertions are baseless!
“The reason nobody says these things is that they were not the thinking behind the U.S.‘s actions.”
This is pure, uninformed garbage!
There is plenty of documentation regarding the target selection and prioritization. In fact a preferred target was bypassed due to weather.
He’s attempting to assign guilt by way of ignorant mindreading. He is WRONG!!!
And, I will write him directly, with documentation to prove that point!
We did not kill enough of the Japs to pay for the atrocities which they perpetrated.
If you will check the article, you'll see that it's neither the "atomic" aspect nor the "bomb" aspect that Jimmy Akin is objecting to per se. From the article,
"I am not a Euroweenie or a peacenik or a political liberal or even someone opposed to the use of nuclear weapons in principle. I can imagine scenarios in which their use would be justified."
His precise point is the one made by the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, a major teaching document of the Second Vatican Council: that when the noncombatants constitute the target; when their deaths are part of the intended impact of the act; then their deaths are not justified as collateral damage.
He backs it up with this quote from the Catechism:
"Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation." The Link to the Catechism is well worth looking at for context.
It is not true that, war being bad, it's either "all" bad or it's not. The just use of military force, including lethal force, targetting military aggressors in order to force them to cease aggression, is a positive and honorable thing, however bloody it may be. It is not murder.
The unintended but foreseeable collateral deaths of civilians is likewise morally tolerable, if it is proportionate and not directly intended. (By way of analogy, this would be like the death of an unborn baby because of a doctor doing a hysterectomy on the mother's cancerous uterus.)
The intentional killing of noncombatants is murder. (Analogous to direct abortion.)
The difference between justified killing in war, and murder, is pretty well spelled out in the U.S. Army Field Manual. That's a traditional American military principle I consider essential to defend.
Yes, you are right. I reposted the criticism after I realized what he was up to. He kind of led me down the primrose path there, but it’s my duty to be sure before I post.
I wonder how Japan would have liked being the Western Pacific’s Berlin.
My father spent time in Japan shortly after the end of the war. He told me how polite the people were to him. He even had pregnant ladies try to get up and give him their seat on public transportation.
One lady told him they didn’t hold the U.S. responsible for the actions it had taken.
And now we have some blithering idiot trying to set the record straight about 65 years later.
Makes my blood boil.
The author above is an Hiroshima cultist if ever there was one.
You are assuming that our Commanders did not know the Japanese mindset which had an ultranationalist government and a state religion which worshiped the emperor.
Our Commanders knew how radical those people were and how willingly they would kill—even themselves in battle. They were brutal, inhumane and ruthless to all their enemies which made a joke of the Geneva Convention and made water boarding look like paradise. ANY regard for individual rights, life, women, and their people, was non-existent.
Our Commander knew that they would probably give up only under a dire situation and he was willing to drop that bomb and create that situation to get the insane Japanese to surrender. They didn’t care about their own people, but, our Commanders DID care about their people. They had to force the Japanese to give up and, thus, not only saving many of our men from a brutal insane tortured death, but also theirs. “Them or us” was Truman’s ONLY decision. He said “Them!”, thank God.
I see no moral ambiguity at all. Neither did my father who went onto the Island after the surrender. He was the next in line to engage in battle, and would have probably been killed, if the bomb was not dropped.
That meant that the U.S. leadership was formally participating in evil. It does not matter if the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could (through some stretch of the imagination) be justified in themselves. The fact is that they were used to send a message telling the Japanese government that we would kill massive numbers of the military and civilian population, without discrimination. That message is evil, and to knowingly and deliberately send that message is to formally participate in evil.
That made these attacks war crimes.
The above paragraph is where the essay turns to bunk. It is gratuitous to say that America is guilty of War Crimes. I gratuitously deny that fact.
The Japanese were a totally mindless mass, bent on and rejoicing in the act of suicide. Their treatment of Nanking alone gives credence that they deserve to cease as a people. But we do not think such things nor do we say such things.
America, as a nation, is not guilty of War Crimes in WWII.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
I think the author forgot to mention that the US dropped leaflets in both cities and the surrounding areas telling people to leave! The leaflets told the civilians that a horrific weapon was going to be used on the city!
Too bad they didn’t believe us, maybe they could have saved a few more of their people.
This was NOT a war crime!
My dad served in Europe and his unit was on the way to the Far East when the bomb was dropped.
It is a fact that about 50% of the casualties in the Pacific Theater came after the start of officially sanctioned suicide attacks (kamikaze etc.), it is a fact that the Japanese authorities were preparing their women and children to conduct suicide attacks against invading troops and it is a fact that the die-hards were hoping too incur such horrendous losses to Allied invaders as to force a negotiated settlement in 1946-47.
The stark choices facing the Allies 65 years ago were an invasion with millions of casualties and a real possibility of stalemate, a blockade and de facto low-level war-without-end that would have civilian starvation in Japan going into incredible numbers OR the SHOCK of a new weapon that could wipe out large cities without using more than a single airplane. It took the latter to break the military dictatorship and allowed/convinced the Emperor and the civilians to surrender. Thus I disagree with the author, a weapon is a weapon is a weapon and while ideally a civilized person does not want innocent deaths, war is a profoundly uncivil activity and all of his rationale fails to convince me.
The entire argument decorrellates into a diatribe against atomic energy, and is rendered invalid by its own subterfuge.
Nice of the author to clarify. Because the author could not possibly be more wrong.
There's no doubt that the atomic bombings were a horrible human tragedy. But virtually everyone in a position of responsibility with the Japanese government admitted that without the atomic bombings, Operation Downfall, or the invasion of the Japanese mainland, would have been necessary and that the Japanese nation might have been completely destroyed.
The cost in human lives, both Japanese and Allied, would have been infinitely worse had an invasion been needed to end the war. The moral responsibility of everyone involved in war is to end it as soon as possible. That meant using the atomic bombs.
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