Posted on 08/10/2010 5:42:30 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Friday was the anniversary of the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Monday is the anniversary of its bombing of Nagasaki.
The explosion of the Fat Man atomic device over Nagasaki is pictured. It rose eleven miles into the sky over Ground Zero.
The important thing, though, is that it—together with the Little Boy device that was deployed over Hiroshima—killed approximately 200,000 human beings. And it ended the war with Japan.
It is understandable that many Americans at the time were relieved that the long burden of the bloodiest war in human history could finally be laid down. Many then, as now, saw the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a necessary step to preventing even more casualties.
However, some of the blogging being done to commemorate the attack is most unfortunate.
Consider Michael Graham, who wishes his readers a “Happy Peace Through Victory Day.”
Today marks the anniversary of the single greatest act in the cause of peace ever taken by the United States:
Dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. That one decision, that one device, saved more lives, did more to end war, and created more justice in the world in a single stroke than any other. It was done by America, for Americans. It saved the lives of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of American soldiers and sailors.
So, obviously, President Obama’s not too happy about it. . . .
Euroweenie peaceniks and an annoying number of American liberals see the bombing of Hiroshima as a shameful act. What is it America should be ashamed for—defeating an enemy that declared war on us? Bringing about the end of a fascist empire that killed millions of people, mostly Asians? Preventing the slaughter of the good guys—Americans—by killing the bad guys—the Japanese?
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. I can even deal with the cheeky “Happy Peace Through Victory Day” headline.
But Mr. Graham’s analysis of the situation on a moral level is faulty.
It is true that, by instilling terror in the Japanese government, the use of atomic weapons prevented further and, in all probability, greater casualties on both sides.
Preventing further and greater casualties is a good thing, but as the Catechism reminds us:
The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties [CCC 2312].
It isn’t just a question of the goal of an action. The goal may be a good one, but the means used to achieve it may be evil. The Catechism states:
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. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons - especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes [CCC 2314].
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were definitely acts of war directed to the destruction of whole cities or—at least—vast areas with their inhabitants. The only quibbling could be about whether this was “indiscriminate” destruction. Someone might argue (stretching the word “indiscriminate” rather severely and taking it in a sense probably not meant by the Catechism) that they were not indiscriminate attacks in that they were aimed at vital Japanese war resources (munitions factories, troops, etc.) and the only practical way to take out these resources was to use atomic weapons.
Mounting such a case would face a number of problems. One would have to show that Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such resources (not that difficult to show) and that these resources themselves were proportionate in value to the massive collateral damage that would be inflicted (a much more difficult task) and that there was no other practical way—like a more targeted bombing—to take them out (again a difficult task).
But for purposes of argument, let’s grant all this. Let’s suppose that there were such resources, and that they were proportionate in value to the massive loss of civilian lives and that there was no other way to get rid of them.
Does that absolve the U.S. of guilt in these two bombings?
No.
You can see why in the logic that Mr. Graham used. It stresses the fact that the use of these weapons saved net lives. This was undoubtedly uppermost in the U.S. military planners’ thinking as they faced the possibility of an extremely bloody invasion of Japan in which huge numbers on both sides would die.
But notice what is not being said—either by Mr. Graham or anybody else: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such important war widgets that without those widgets Japan would be unable to prosecute the war. Thus by taking out those military resources we could deprive Japan of its ability to make war.”
Neither is anybody saying something like this: “We needed to scare Japan into surrender by showing them that we could destroy all of their military resources. We needed to make them terrified of losing all their military resources so that, out of a desperate desire to preserve their military resources, they would surrender.”
These are the dogs that didn’t bark, and they are why this line of argument is a dog that won’t hunt.
The reason nobody says these things is that they were not the thinking behind the U.S.‘s actions. The idea was not to end the war through the direct destruction of military resources in these two cities, nor was it to end the war by scaring Japan into thinking we might destroy all of its military resources. It was scaring Japan into surrendering by threatening (explicitly) to do this over and over again and inflict massive damage on the Japanese population. In other words, to make them scared that we would engage in “the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants.”
That means that, even if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had contained military resources that of themselves would have justified the use of atomic weapons (which is very hard to argue), our intention still was not pure. We were still using Japanese civilians as hostages to the war effort, still threatening to kill civilians if Japan did not surrender. That was the message we wanted the Japanese leadership to get—not, “We will take out your military resources if you keep this up,” but, “We will take out big chunks of your population if you keep this up.”
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.
Now, make no mistake. I’m an American. I’m a fan of the U.S. But love of the United States should not preclude one from being able to look honestly at the mistakes it has committed in the past. Indeed, it is only by looking at and frankly acknowledging the mistakes of the past that we can learn from them. Love of one’s country should impel one to help it not commit such evils.
Racial discrimination? Bad thing. Allowing abortions? Bad thing. Dropping nukes to deliberately kill civilians? Bad thing. Let’s try not to have things like these mar America’s future.
the real war crime would have been not to use the bomb and allow a million allied and american, soldiers to be killed and wounded and many more thousands of japanese to be killed on top of that.
Here’s my .02, which is not infallible.
The writer, a fool, cites a portion of the Catechism relating to the indiscriminate destruction of cities and areas. “Indiscriminate” is an enormous loophole, by the way, and probably intended to be.
To the best of my fallible understanding, the teaching derives from the Second Vatican Council and a pastoral document called Gaudium et Spes, which the Holy Father himself has taken exception to in some regards, so I would think it isn’t an infallible teaching.
There are parts of the Catechism that ARE considered infallible teaching, and parts that are not.
The part about indiscriminate destruction, cited here, is probably one of those that are not, and which are open to further exploration.
Isn’t that something. I remember that now that you mention it. I know that some of them surrendered decades after the war was officially over.
I think that, in the face of gut-wrenching deaths from all sides because of the Japanese vow to fight to the death, Truman made the best decision he could make.
To pretend that hindsight is better than his decision in the light of what was known and suspected at that time is a tragedy of human chutzpah.
dead on the money DC.
great thoughts O OK. thanks for you service for/to our Country. my God, men like you are few and far between. thank you.
Yes, the civilian/noncombatant excuse for moral superiority by those not involved in hell dictating those who were in hell. I wish these revisionist would actually tell us who exactly was innocent, pure, and righteous. Nagasaki was known as a vital trading post in Japan and the center of Roman Catholicism and Buddhism as well. Too bad the weather (Who controls that?) played a factor with the second target.
What exactly is a noncombatant anyway? A person working in a factory making bombs, bullets, armor and other instruments of war, say in a Mitsubishi Aircraft plant and maybe the Ohashi Arms factory? A child learning to shoot a gun with an accompanied bayonet? Who?
Self-defense, just like a pregnant woman with severe endometrial cancer who undergoes a hysterectomy due to the fact that both would not survive.
Nothing wrong with using superior firepower against the enemy, the Israelites made good use in their war with the Canaanites. Heck, they had to kill the little ones, the females, and the elderly by hand, not from an airplane.
The A bombs ended WWII, and unleashed an unbelievable amount of US effort to rebuild Japan, and Asia after the war!
??But more importantly, what - as a nation - are we now willing to do if a conventional assault on Iran or N-Korea lights up a nuclear response to us or our allies??
Have we become so wimpified that our government will cower underneath their desks, or will we have the resolve to kill their (innocent) citizens, as they will have killed ours??
The civilized world remains in the balance. Our leaders only get one vote, one time, and immediate!
This was no war crime. It was the only logical thing to do. Our military planners were expecting a million dead soldiers in their planned invasion of Honshu, which would have come after Okinawa. During Okinawa, we found that the Japanese would either commit suicide or be killed fighting, but in no case would they surrender- civilian or military. Had we plowed ahead, our soldiers would have been standing in a pile of ashes and the only Japanese who would be around today would be the children of the Japanese soldiers in China and Japanese-Americans. So we spared ourselves the horror of putting every inch of Japan to the sword, employed technology, and in fact, saved the lives of the Japanese- they lost two cities, but they survived.
War is terrible. Period. But if one comes you have exactly two choices- 1. fight and win or 2. surrender and suffer whatever the winner dishes out. Number 1 is far and away the better option.
Yes! It was a new weapon, much more powerfully destructive than any before, and that was appalling. In that regard, no different than the appalling new airplane, the appalling new submarine, the appalling new cannon, or the appalling new crossbow.
After Nanking, Bataan, Wake Island, Manila and Okinawa in the Pacific alone it would have been a war crime to not to end the war so quicky & decisively.
After the catastrophe in Italy, D-Day, Market Garden, Bastogne, the Bulge, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, battles for Romania & Poland & Hungary, and the insane standoff in Berlin just 3 months before, anything less than dropping the bomb would have resulted in an apocalypse making Stalingrad & Berlin look like picnics.
If little Jimmy had been a Marine who finally took Sugar Loaf Hill on Okinawa in 1945, which resulted in many casualties and effectively wiped out entire platoons and companies, and faced the prospect of landing on Kyushu next, he’d be damn happy that Truman dropped the bomb.
And every Marine I’ve talked to agrees.
In fact, during the Vietnam War he was in favor of using the bomb on North Vietnam.
Truman's big mistake in 1945 was letting the Soviets have half of Korea as an occupation zone.
Considering the death toll on Okinawa, I think the official estimates of how many Americans and Japanese would have died if Japan had been invaded are probably considerable underestimates. The combined death toll of Japanese soldiers and civilians on Okinawa (April-June 1945) may have been higher than the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The US was putting together invasion plans & casualty estimates while observice the Soviet invasion of an insanely defended Berlin, at a cost of 1.5 million casualties including over 500,000 dead over a mere 2 week.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
“In a study done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April, the figures of 7.45 casualties/1,000 man-days and 1.78 fatalities/1,000 man-days were developed. This implied that a 90-day Olympic campaign would cost 456,000 casualties, including 109,000 dead or missing. If Coronet took another 90 days, the combined cost would be 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities.”
“Adm. Leahy, more impressed by the Battle of Okinawa, thought the American forces would suffer a 35% casualty rate (implying an ultimate toll of 268,000).[45] Admiral King thought that casualties in the first 30 days would fall between Luzon and Okinawa, i.e., between 31,000 and 41,000.”
“A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.”
“Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[48] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.”
One Marine first lieutenant led a group of 26 reinforcements up Sugar Loaf Hill on the evening of May 14, 1945. The next morning he was the only one of them still alive.
My father is alive today because we dropped the bombs. As a Result I and my brother were born and alive today and our children are alive today. Enough said?
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