Its by no means settled that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Lets look at who disagreed:
DWIGHT EISENHOWER
(General, U.S. Army; Supreme Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe);
Joined in this opinion by:
ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman);
HERBERT HOOVER
(former U.S. President);
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
(General of the Army, U.S. Army)
JOSEPH GREW
(Under Sec. of State)
JOHN McCLOY
(Assistant Sec. of War)
RALPH BARD
(Under Sec. of the Navy)
LEWIS STRAUSS
(Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)
PAUL NITZE
(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
ELLIS ZACHARIAS
(Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)
GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ
(In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)
BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
Moreover, Consequentialism is rejected by Catholic Moral Law: if something is in itself a grave moral wrong (as is target-equals-city bombing is , according to the Catholic Church,) it cannot be justified by a claim that good may come of it.
The Catholic Magisterium has explicitly condemned this kind of indiscriminate killing: Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." (Gaudium et Spes, 80. Also, Catechism of the Catholic Church) |
"I see the dead of Hiroshima as victims of the Emperor of Japan."
True. We are in strong agreement on that. And they were also the victims of President Harry S. Truman.
Further, even had the bombing end the war, it would have been a war crime anyway, because it was bombing of civilian targets.
A just war has to be conducted with just means or else it is no longer just.