Was the atomic bombing of Japan ethical

We also told them to evacuate the cities...

I am now known as Flyboy.

It was unethical.

The US would only accept total and complete surrender. The US had no imperative to occupy Japan, except revenge.

As one American soldier putted at the time "after Pearl Harbour we all wanted revenge... but when we heard what had happened to Hiroshima, all those civilian casualties in a non-military target, we all felt pity."

edited 7th Dec '11 8:00:45 AM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Then please suggest what the US should have done instead.

Demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan was no less ethical than demanding the unconditional surrender of Germany. The Japanese were given reasonable terms of surrender, they refused to accept them, and so, they faced the consequences.

Reasonable???

What is reasonable???

Reasonable would have been... complete whitdrawal of Japanese forces from non Japanese territories.

The terms the Americans proposed was complete occupation and "we might or might not execute your emperor if we gets our hands on him" which to them was like king/pope.

edited 7th Dec '11 8:06:04 AM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

In other words, the same terms that were extended to Germany.

@Baff

Reasonable would have been to just give up and don't risk more deaths. It's not the US' fault that the Japanese were fanatics.

Ahem. You would expect that court of Samurai relics to be reasonable? Really?

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

That's why I used Conjunctive mood.

Sorry, talking to Baff.

Also, someone in government would've been lynched by angry parents if they had found out about the bomb following Downfall. Probably multiple someones.

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

WHICH JAPANESE? The Emperor and many of his advisors wanted to surrender. The hardliners in the government wanted to continue fighting and some elements threatened a coup. When the Emperor surrendered after the bomb, they attempted a coup anyways.

The bomb was unnecessary. An invasion would have been unnecessary. Once the Soviets took Manchukuo, it was over. Just blockading Hokkaido to keep it out of Russian hands and waiting a few months would have done the job.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

The point was to force a quick, unconditional surrender of Japan; all a blockade would have done is had the exact same result (ie; massive civilian casualties), but over a longer period of time. What possible reason would there be to blockade Japan (which would still come with a heavy death toll), when they had a way to achieve the same thing, but faster, and with potentially fewer casualties? Not to mention the obvious facts that:

• The Japanese were given reasonable terms of surrender, which they refused.
• As a result, the US proceeded to nuke Japan.
• After getting nuked, the Japanese accept the previously refused terms.

Now, what changed between the refusal, and the surrender? I think it's obvious, here.

No atomic bomb, no anime.

See here.

They wanted to surrender. They were covertly asking the Soviets to negotiate a surrender. We had intercepted those messages and knew how much they wanted to surrender.

What was the point of this "quick unconditional surrender" we got?
Was it to arrest and try the Emperor? We didn't do that.
Was it to prevent a coup attempt by the hardliners? Major Hatanaka Kenji attempted his coup anyways.
Was it to dismantle the industrial base that profited off of the war? Mitsubishi and Toyota are selling us cars today.
Was it to frighten the Soviets away from invading Japan? Why not make a waterburst happen a few hundred miles away from Vladivostok?
Prevent loss of life? You honestly want to tell me that three months of blockade, at the most, would have killed more people (not counting those who would have starved anyways) than nuking two major civilian population centers?
Demonstrate our power? We did more damage with the firebombing, which should have been restricted to military targets also.

What was the motherfucking point?

To quote the survey linked above:

That's the best strategic analysis the War Department's planners could assemble at the time.

It was unnecessary. Period.

We discussed it at length in this thread. On this page I put in my strongest arguments.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Did they ever ask us directly?

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

What they wanted to do was prevent the Soviet Union from invading. Surrender is a misleading term, here; they wanted to negotiate a peace agreement on their own terms, quite different from an unconditional surrender.

[1]

Newsflash; when the link you provide to argue against the bombs explains why they were the best option, it significantly weakens your argument.

edited 7th Dec '11 9:59:20 AM by tropetown

Well, it seems that we're suddenly experts on strategy today.

If I may be permitted a few moments of your time...

The decisions to prosecute the war was based off of a myriad of reasons. Some selfish, some not. Selfish ones include Indonesian oil access as well as other resources in the Indonesian area. The Japanese expansion cut off Allied access to several resources, as Japan needed those resources in order to further fuel their development. There is only so much to go around, isn't there...? Selfless ones include stopping the Empire of Japan from expanding their Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (which would've included at full planned extent all of China, most of India and a huge portion of the USSR - everything east of the 70-degree longitude - Germany was to get everything west of that line) any further, and to liberate areas they had conquored.

As mentioned, the US military planners looked at the tremendous casualties sustained as the fighting neared the Home Islands (Okinawa was particularly bloody) and made the decision to send a clear signal that "enough is enough".

Also mentioned, the firebombings on the industrial production centers proved to be far more damaging than the atomic bombs themselves did. Japanese arcitecture proved to be very suseptible to incendiary attacks, and our bombing accuracy of the era left much to be desired.

This was a Total War. Gone are the days in which armies marched forth to meet at a pre-arranged battlesite and after a brief meeting to discuss the weather and other incidentals, marched towards each other for glorious battle. Total War involved every signle person into the war effort. WWI saw this first-hand. Remember how bloody that ended up being? WWI was just a prelude for WWII...

The Japanese people were being asked by their leadership to suffer hardship over hardship in order to continue an increasingly futile fight. Workers living in the factories, next to the production lines. Slow starvation due to ever-decreasing rations. Watching their young men march off to a certain death. The horros of Kamikaze - Divine Wind - attacks - literally throwing pilots and their explosive-laden planes into our ships as a last-ditch effort to turn the tide of battle. Setting their planeless carrier force as bait for our battleships, so that they could send what little remained of ther surface navy to drive us off the beachheads in the Phillipines. Fighting to the last bullet, the last man, time and time again.

Their naval air arm was demolished, their surface navy was increasingly irrelevant, and their submarine force proved worthless and their army was left abandoned on island after island as our Pacific island-hopping campaigns uprooted them one island at a time.

A twisted form of Bushido was being taught to the line troops - that surrender was tantamount to treason - and thus, they fought. Offers of honorable surrender were given at Iwo Jima for example, but Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a Wester-trained General, refused.

They fought with great courage and bravery.

But they would not give up.

So, what is a military planner to do? The political climate of the time made surrender unlikely under other means, although I think we could've worked something out. We needed - the Japanese people esppecially needed - the war to end. And end quickly.

Given that the two options on the table were the use of a weapon of unquestionable instantaneous destructive force or an amphibious invasion of possibly far greater destructive potential dragged on for another year or more, the planners took the first option.

Ethical? Depends on how ethical you consider the result - the capitulation of the Empire of Japan, which was the goal. Yes, two small cities were obliterated, but city-wide obliteration wasn't a new thing at the time. What did that surrender achieve? It spared millions of japanese civilians and soldiers from a brave, courageous, glorious - and ultimately futile death.

The capitulation didn't just stop the fighting. It also opened up the nation to recovery efforts. We poured a lot of resources and effort to helping them rebuild. We placed them into the GATT (forerunner to the World Trade Organization) in 1947, in and effort to bolster their economic recovery.

And now, they are our friends.

Today is the 70th anniversarry of the attacks on Pearl Harbor. I do not celebrate this date - I only remember it. We paid back that attack, in full, with interest. Therefore, I see no need to celebrate it.

I'm not looking for an argument here. I'm only asking that those here consider just what it is they're even debating.

My grandfather fought in the Pacific theater. But he would not talk about it. What horrors did he see? I don't know, he took them to his grave. There is a family in Japan, somewhere, that is missing a Sword. Once it's mine (it's in the will to go to me), I'd like to return it, and close a chapter in my familiy's history.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Let's take a close look and see what it actually argues. Going back to the survey and selecting the passages emphasized by the secondhand source you have just linked. Translation: the atomic bombing provided ample political cover for the Japanese leadership. Wasn't disputing that. I was disputing that it was necessary; all the political cover in the world wouldn't have prevented Major Hatanaka's coup attempt. Translation: we were kicking their asses in diverse and sundry ways. Okay. Hmm. That's not exactly arguing against my point, is it.

Let me look now at anesi.com's summary.

I'll grant that. We could only expect eventual surrender because their capacity for retaliation was destroyed. To prevent them from reconstructing that capacity would have required attacks on shipyards, factories, etc.

I'd be willing to gamble that against the guaranteed odds of flash frying two civilian population centers and leaving their respective areas radioactive. Somewhere between 150,000 and 246,000 died because of the bombings, that's a hell of a head start.

I'll grant this. I don't like it that war departments automatically err on the side of bloody revenge versus civilian targets when unsure of information, especially after diplomatic documents exposing how badly they wanted to surrender had been intercepted. But I'll grant this. Doubtless. So would have accepting an offer of conditional surrender, note. Admittedly the Survey did not make that argument. I'm making it now.

As for the list of continued casualties, they mention:

• Japanese military and civilian casualties resulting from continued air attack.
• Civilian casualties from malnutrition and disease.
• Japanese military casualties in bypassed areas.
• Civilian casualties in Japanese-occupied areas.
• United States military casualties.
• Economic cost of continuing the war.

I've bolded the stuff that probably continued even after the atomic bombing; we didn't turn Japan into a reconstructed functioning country by September, and many of the more remote outposts dismissed reports of the surrender as Allied propaganda. I've also italicized factors that seem to assume an Operation Downfall scenario. With the invasion of Manchukuo and a blockade of the Japanese islands, every Imperial army outside of Honshu was logistically fucked up the ass. And every Japanese commander aware of this that possessed the brains God gave a fish was surrendering. Start hearts-and-minds reconstruction efforts in China and Indochina, cooperate with the local armies in evicting the Japanese (yes, that probably means some coordination and discussion with Mao's Communists) and we could clear out the remainder without an incredible amount of difficulty.

That leaves items one and six. I can't contest six. Wars are damn expensive and that's a mark against starting them in the first place. Sure, some people would have liked a few more months of war economy to bomb Honshu with. Ideally, the atomic bomb would never have been developed in the first place; that might have saved some cheddar.

As for the first point? Much of the civilian casualties came from bombing runs on civilian areas. We should have done that with any bombing, be it atomic or incendiary. As for preventing Japanese military casualties, that's just not easily done. But if I had to make that call, I'd still go against the use of the Atomic Bomb. Quite possibly I'd save more lives; again, I have a 150,000 casualty head start.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

@Thread Hop, Tittle: Are wars and killing in wars ethical because they are legal? I don't think so. So yeah, its not ethical.

Well, considering the fact that the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than either atomic bomb did, there wouldn't be a significant reduction in civilian casualties; in fact, casualties would likely skyrocket as a result of an extended bombing campaign. Granted, the casualties would have been even higher if the weapons used were nuclear, rather than conventional, but that isn't being debated, here.

I'm assuming that you meant to say shouldn't; unfortunately, once total war has been established, every single person in that country has now become a part of the war effort. That means that every single person was now, in effect, a military resource adding to Japan's ability to wage war, so attacking them was meant to cripple the Japanese industrial capabilities; any extended bombing campaign would have continued to target civilian populations, if it had this goal in mind. This isn't an argument for or against the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs, I'm just pointing out the reasons why civilians were being targeted in previous attacks, and why they would have continued to be targeted in the Navy's alternative plan.

The biggest problem is that, before the nukes were dropped, the US had been going the route of conventional bombing; the best case scenario, in the report you linked, assumes a surrender only after a continued bombing campaign, a campaign which would involve civilian targets anyways. Plus, like I mentioned earlier, the firebombing of Tokyo had already claimed more lives than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, when taken as singular events; it's reasonable to assume that higher death tolls would have been likely, if the bombardment continued to target densely populated areas (as they no doubt would) over a greater period of time.

I skipped most of the thread, so I don't know if this has already been brought up. If we hadn't used the bombs, we be asking each other "Why didn't the U.S. use the Nuke?"

Imagine for a moment that we hadn't used the Nuke, and suffered the casualties the alternatives would have inflicted. A few years after the war ends someone reveals to the public that the U.S. had spent massive amounts of money on a bomb that could level cities instantly, had it complete and ready for deployment during the war, and didn't use it. There would have been outrage at the needlessly lost lives and wasted funds during the war, especially since the general public would view Nukes as simply being a bigger bomb, being unaware of the radiation without Hiroshima to display the effects.

So basically, the decision to use Nukes is a Catch-22. If it's used, it's unethical because of all the civilian casualties and radiation poisoning. If it's not used, it's unethical because of wasted military and civilian lives.

Byte Me

Isn't the radioactivity from the bomb still causing health problems in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today?

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Cancer rates are actually lower than average, due to hormesis effects. Same reason why cancer rates are lower for populations that live at high altitude, like Denver - a little bit of boosted background radiation forces your immune system to adapt, and it gets better at fixing the genetic damage that causes cancer. Beyond a certain point of course it becomes harmful to you, but a little bit extra is actually beneficial.

@OP Ethical? Not really. Lesser of two evils? Yes. Other wise an invasion would have had to be launched. Millions upon millions would have died. Some say they would have surrendered, but the main reason they did was because the coup was stopped. Without the atomic bomb, many more likely would have wanted to continue fighting.

Constant fighting like that would have devestated japan far worse then the two nukes did.

I'm baaaaaaack

@anne,

I think there are still residual problems, but in the grand scheme of things what we dropped in WWII was small time compared to modern weapons, and doesn't have as much staying power.

It's the equivalent of modern tactical nukes, actually.

I am now known as Flyboy.