Opinion of the atomic bombings of Japan

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Probably Option 1 or 3.  While it was certainly a horrible event, it was necessary to end the war in the Pacific as soon as possible.  Without it, the war would have continued indefinitely at a potentially greater loss of life.

The Occupation ended on substantially similar terms to what the Japanese government expressed willingness to end the war on before the bombings.

[Cory]

It by definition does mean that.

No, I mean the implications. When you say "eugenics" people think Nazi Germany, not voluntary genetic manipulation in the future. It's taken on a buzzword status.

Again, no one refuted what I actually said.

[afleitch]

I had hoped that was one of the 'obvious exceptions'.

On further consideration I should probably edit the original post.

My problem with your definition is that you applied it to probably the only war of the modern era (and indeed at any point in history) that was generally very clear cut as to what and whom was 'right and wrong'. Focus is often given the the Dresden's and the Nagasaki's (though disturbingly less to the Londons, Stalingrads and the Oradour-Sur-Glanes) in part I guess because the Allies (most of them) should have been held to a higher standard. Though why they should have been held to a higher standard culturally than the Germans or the Japanese makes little sense. In any event it is easier to have more of a moral outrage at big booms created by shiny things conceived by scientists, like the atomic bomb, than say the Battle of the Somme during World War 1 which mowed down half a million men in each side using good old fashioned guns and gunpowder.

It is also easy, as we are to be removed from the psyche of the times; five years of war, millions dead, relatives holed up in POW camps. Why should a Londoner, or a citizen of Warsaw or Leningrad, or one of the relatives of up to two million Vietnamese that died in the 1945 famine at the hands of the Japanese think to themselves, You know what? Those Japanese who like the Americans have been generally untouched by 'total war' (and who won't be suffering several years of in many cases a literal famine once it's all over), let's leave them alone. Let's just negotiate, or hop island to island and prepare for a land invasion. Why should we think they would think the way we do?

I wouldn't drop the bomb because I'm not of their time but if I was alive at that time would I have supported it? The answer comes easier that many people are prepared to admit.

If there was no 'big bomb', we'd have still have dropped lots of little bombs; yet more Dresdens until the Japanese surrendered. It just so happened that the atomic bomb was the weapon of choice. Nothing more.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had hoped that was one of the 'obvious exceptions'.

On further consideration I should probably edit the original post.

My problem with your definition is that you applied it to probably the only war of the modern era (and indeed at any point in history) that was generally very clear cut as to what and whom was 'right and wrong'. Focus is often given the the Dresden's and the Nagasaki's (though disturbingly less to the Londons, Stalingrads and the Oradour-Sur-Glanes) in part I guess because the Allies (most of them) should have been held to a higher standard. Though why they should have been held to a higher standard culturally than the Germans or the Japanese makes little sense. In any event it is easier to have more of a moral outrage at big booms created by shiny things conceived by scientists, like the atomic bomb, than say the Battle of the Somme during World War 1 which mowed down half a million men in each side using good old fashioned guns and gunpowder.

Oh, of course this is truer of World War I than it is of World War II; the fact that any of World War I occurred in the first place is inexcusable.

I think one thing about World War II that has to be kept in mind is that, because of the obvious wrongness of the 'cause', such as it was, of the Germans and the Japanese, they are held to lower standards than the Allies (which is the obvious converse of the Allies being held to higher standards). I think the extent to which they've become a byline for evil can actually disguise the full significance of the crimes that they perpetrated. Casting moral aspersions on a lot of the things that the Allies did towards the end of the war, and then applying the same standard to the Axis, properly necessitates casting stronger moral aspersions on most to all of what the Axis did throughout. If anything, I see this as a reason to do so.

Most of what is done in any war is criminal--circumstances (the fact that there's a war on) being what they are.

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Of course it does. Condemning out of hand (rather than simply observing the morally distressing nature of) everything that happened in the history of human warfare that was criminal in retrospect is a depressing exercise in condemning vast swathes of humanity and human history. That isn't what I was trying to do.

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Yes; that's almost certainly what would have happened, and would, likewise, have been horrible.

[Ban my account ffs!]

They should've been given more time to surrender.  Of course that's easy to say with hindsight.

The bombs quickly and unexpectedly ended the war.  The sheer power and scale of the destruction wrought by the bomb literally left the Japanese bleary eyed and blinking in shock and disbelief.

For example, the government found out about Hiroshima when communications from the city suddenly ended.  Erratic reports of a massive explosion started streaming in so the government finally sent someone in a plane to check it out... imagine his reaction when he saw the entire city shrouded in a thick pall of smoke.. and the parts he could see were completely leveled.

The atomic bomb, I honestly do believe, saved more lives than it ended.  And only with 20/20 hindsight could one ever say they shouldn't have been dropped.

[kikka]

Why USA didn't drop an atomic bomb on Tokyo is that they wanted accurate experimental results of atomic bombs.At that time Tokyo was greatly destroyed by many air attacks while Hiroshima wasn't. Since Hiroshima had been never bombed before the atomic bomb,damages by atomic bombs were very clear. Hardly had the war ended when they sent an investigating commission (not doctors) to Hiroshima to investigate atomic bomb victims.
Japan was astonished by invasion by Soviet Union rather than atomic bombs, I think. This is because Japan wanted Soviet Union  to mediate between Japan and allies.

[Peeperkorn]

Freedom bombing.

An invasion of Japan and more incendiary raids would had been translated in a much more terrible massacre for yank soldiers, jap soldiers and jap civilians.

Anyway, kikka has a point. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria was as significant as the atomic detonations for the Japanese surrender.

[Velasco]

Dear God. I think anvi made a good point pages ago. The minimal thing would have been waiting for the complete collapse of the Japanese front in Manchuria. To consider atomic bombings anything different from an aberration -even if it was a "necessary" aberration, which is at least debatable- is morally (suspension points)... Why Truman didn't want to wait, given the fast advance of the Soviet army? Open space for controversy

[7,052,770]

More people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than both atomic bombs combined, and mass bombing of civilians was done by everyone in WWII -- Germans, Japanese, Italians, Americans, British, Russians, etc.

It's not really fair to single out the atom bombs without simultaneously condemning all of the atrocities against civilians which occured during the war.

[opebo]

It does make one wonder what a similar chastening might do for Chinese culture, and the Chinese relationship with America.

[Repub242]

The atomic bombing of Japan was a necessary evil for the war to end.