Replies

Okay, fine. People were saved and you were born. Goody for you. I just wish we had not used the A-Bombs on non-combatants. There are alternatives. There's probably not much difference between a flash and an all-nighter, but can't you even consider the superiority, in ethical terms, of keeping warfare within boundaries for the preservation of innocents? That's my point, and this thread seems like a relevant place to make it, thank you very much.

I just wish we had not used the A-Bombs on non-combatants. There are alternatives.

The actual, specific target of the Hiroshima bomb was the headquarters of the Japanese Eighth Army - a legitimate combat target - and not the civilian population of the city. That was the military installation to which Mr. Truman referred in his announcement that the bomb had been dropped. Not a one of us here would ever favour the loss of non-combatant life, but wish though we might the bitter reality of war is that people die. By no means was the Hiroshima bomb targeted primarily toward the city's civilian population. The absence of a Japanese surrender following the Hiroshima bomb prompted the Nagasaki bombing, a bombing that said, essentially, You thought we were kidding around? Guess again - we mean business here..

Harry Truman was hardly without his faults, but I have no doubt, based upon my entire reading of the era, that had the Japanese surrendered after Hiroshima, Nagasaki would not have gone down. And, if you consider the argument that without the atomic bomb the war might have dragged on more interminably, requiring a ground assault upon the Japanese mainlands which would have delivered far more lives lost - not to mention, a Japanese adversary which tended to count its wars in decades, not years, and would likely have fought deeply enough that civilian casualities would have been unavoidable no matter how the battles were traveled - it is small wonder that, among other writings, the critic Paul Fussell could write an essay of the bombings with the title that also became the title of an anthology of his which this essay led: Thank God For The Atom Bomb.