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No. The end does not justify the means. Put another way, quicker results at lower cost to the victor does not justify greater long term anguish for a few, particularly if the method would encourage, give a false legitimacy, etc to callous and cruel behavior in general. This extends to other human practices well outside the warfare issue -- the end justifies the means, after all. Same with this "Damn the consequences! Results first!" approaches to problem-solving (which, btw, 99 times out of 100 means "short-term, immediately and dramatically obvious results - and never mind the long-term results".). I have several reasons for believing this.
*Not all forms of death are equally horrible, not even combat ones. Thus, it's simplistic to reduce the matter to a mere "balance sheet" type of calculation of how many are killed or injured in Scenario A vs Scenario B.
Being burned or irradiated is much worse than getting shot or shelled. Yes, the latter are also terrible ways to die, but at least the immediate effect is localized to one spot even if not necessary to a short amount of time. This is not the case with nuclear weapons, especially if dropped on a city. Even dropping the bomb on a remote military would pose problems due to the fallout spreading well beyond the immediate detonation area.
This is what makes it unclear at best whether 200,000 deaths from a nuke is less bad than 10,000,000+ deaths from direct warfare and its aftereffects (starvation, disease, homelessness, etc).
*Other ways existed to force Japan to surrender with, at most, little additional cost to American lives; and not necessarily even that. Simply set up a naval blockade of the Home Islands in the Pacific and Sea of Japan. By this time, the Japanese Navy was effectively a non-entity, and what little air force they did have was devoted to kamikaze attacks. We'd already developed techniques to detect kamikaze attacks so the US Navy and Army Air Force could shoot them down before they got anywhere near our ships. We could have still gotten the Japanese to surrender even without the USSR invading the Home Islands. Yes, it would have lengthened the war by a year or two, but with little to no loss of American lives given all we would have had to do is blockade duty.
Beyond this, the USSR's overrunning of Manchuria and northern Korea would have convinced them to surrender, bomb or no bomb. At most, we'd've had to land in southern Korea to keep it out of Soviet hands, as we'd already agreed to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel. But even this would have been much less costly not only to the Japanese but even to ourselves as an outright invasion of Japan.
Even if we did have to invade the Japanese Home Islands anyway, the fact still remains that destroying primarily civilian targets with a weapon that powerful communicates a particularly callous and cruel way to wage war that yielded no substantial military loss to the enemy that could have already been achieved by conventional means - even if by "still cruel but less so" ones.
Thus, whatever short term disadvantages incurred due to an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands in terms of greater numerical losses on both sides would have been more than made up for in the long-term by sending the implied message "Do not engage in acts of unnecessary acts of sheer cruelty toward civilians for the purpose of bringing about even quicker endings to wars, even when you are able to do so"
or to frame it another way,
Whatever short term advantage gained from a quicker in to the war by dropping the bombs is more than made up for by at least two great long-term bads: (1) the immense amount of long-term unnecessary suffering caused to civilians due to a wide-spread, indiscriminate, weapon of mass destruction and (2) giving a false legitimacy to the idea that no suffering is too severe to inflict on your enemy so long as it ends a war (i.e. using "war is hell" as a pseudo-excuse to not take any precautions to minimize civilian casualties).
For these reasons, I vote "No" in the poll above.
In a ordinary war, the Japanese leadership may have agreed to come to terms in the way you describe, such as giving up territory.
But in WW2 they would never unconditionally surrender and allow their leaders be tried for war crimes. Much like the Nazi leaders in Germany, they were willing to sacrifice millions of their own people to save their own skins. They were not going to unconditionally surrender and risk their own necks, for instance, because of a Russian invasion of Manchuria.
I understand what you are saying about the bombs and I personally have my doubts. Especially about Nagasaki coming so soon after Hiroshima or why such large cities had to be bombed in the first place. And why not a more rural area?
But it is easy to have doubts 70 years after the fact. If you were living in the 1940s, and you were aware of the Japanese war crimes across Asia, mass killings of civilians in China and the Philippines, the mistreatment of Allied prisoners including Dutch civilians, cannibalism against Australian, Indian and American POWs, chemical and biological weapon experiments, etc. - it would be impossible to let the Japanese leadership to get off scott free by giving up some territory. There had to be unconditional surrender.
No. The end does not justify the means. Put another way, quicker results at lower cost to the victor does not justify greater long term anguish for a few, particularly if the method would encourage, give a false legitimacy, etc to callous and cruel behavior in general. This extends to other human practices well outside the warfare issue -- the end justifies the means, after all. Same with this "Damn the consequences! Results first!" approaches to problem-solving (which, btw, 99 times out of 100 means "short-term, immediately and dramatically obvious results - and never mind the long-term results".). I have several reasons for believing this.
*Not all forms of death are equally horrible, not even combat ones. Thus, it's simplistic to reduce the matter to a mere "balance sheet" type of calculation of how many are killed or injured in Scenario A vs Scenario B.
Being burned or irradiated is much worse than getting shot or shelled. Yes, the latter are also terrible ways to die, but at least the immediate effect is localized to one spot even if not necessary to a short amount of time. This is not the case with nuclear weapons, especially if dropped on a city. Even dropping the bomb on a remote military would pose problems due to the fallout spreading well beyond the immediate detonation area.
This is what makes it unclear at best whether 200,000 deaths from a nuke is less bad than 10,000,000+ deaths from direct warfare and its aftereffects (starvation, disease, homelessness, etc).
*Other ways existed to force Japan to surrender with, at most, little additional cost to American lives; and not necessarily even that. Simply set up a naval blockade of the Home Islands in the Pacific and Sea of Japan. By this time, the Japanese Navy was effectively a non-entity, and what little air force they did have was devoted to kamikaze attacks. We'd already developed techniques to detect kamikaze attacks so the US Navy and Army Air Force could shoot them down before they got anywhere near our ships. We could have still gotten the Japanese to surrender even without the USSR invading the Home Islands. Yes, it would have lengthened the war by a year or two, but with little to no loss of American lives given all we would have had to do is blockade duty.
Beyond this, the USSR's overrunning of Manchuria and northern Korea would have convinced them to surrender, bomb or no bomb. At most, we'd've had to land in southern Korea to keep it out of Soviet hands, as we'd already agreed to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel. But even this would have been much less costly not only to the Japanese but even to ourselves as an outright invasion of Japan.
Even if we did have to invade the Japanese Home Islands anyway, the fact still remains that destroying primarily civilian targets with a weapon that powerful communicates a particularly callous and cruel way to wage war that yielded no substantial military loss to the enemy that could have already been achieved by conventional means - even if by "still cruel but less so" ones.
Thus, whatever short term disadvantages incurred due to an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands in terms of greater numerical losses on both sides would have been more than made up for in the long-term by sending the implied message "Do not engage in acts of unnecessary acts of sheer cruelty toward civilians for the purpose of bringing about even quicker endings to wars, even when you are able to do so"
or to frame it another way,
Whatever short term advantage gained from a quicker in to the war by dropping the bombs is more than made up for by at least two great long-term bads: (1) the immense amount of long-term unnecessary suffering caused to civilians due to a wide-spread, indiscriminate, weapon of mass destruction and (2) giving a false legitimacy to the idea that no suffering is too severe to inflict on your enemy so long as it ends a war (i.e. using "war is hell" as a pseudo-excuse to not take any precautions to minimize civilian casualties).
For these reasons, I vote "No" in the poll above.
The other methods of forcing Japan to surrender would not have worked. Japan had essentially lost the war by 1943 and Japanese leaders knew that. A normal country with normal leadership would have least attempted some form of peace negotiations with the USA. There were neutral countries in the world who would have facilitated such a process. One such country was Switzerland. Another country that could have assisted in this process was Sweden. Not until the very bitter end of the war, did Japan try to arrange negotiations.
Additionally, from a political standpoint, because the Japanese began World War II by a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that took place without a formal declaration of war, it rendered something less than an unconditional surrender practically impossible. A president would have had an enormously difficult time getting either Congress or the American people to accept such an outcome.
Surrendering or reaching an unfavorable negotiated peace was not within the Japanese character. It was an article of faith to the Japanese people that their country had not lost a war in over 2,000 years of recorded history. During World War II, there was not a single recorded instance of a Japanese troop unit surrendering. There were instances of individual soldiers surrendering, but this was rare. American soldiers learned that if Japanese soldiers tried to surrender to them, many times it was a ruse. Sometimes, they would be concealing bombs or grenades in a final effort to take down American soldiers before they died. Surrender was an incredibly dishonorable act in the Japanese culture and families taught their sons it was better to die that be dishonored. Manifestations of such an extreme attitude are present even today in Japanese society. The day after examination results are delivered to prospective college students often correlates with quite a number of suicides.
A naval blockade of Japan would not have induced surrender. The Japanese cultivated rice and and plenty of crops that would have prevented their population from starving to death. They could also fish in the sea and obtain some protein in that fashion. It is true that Japan is a resource poor nation. However, if all the Japanese had to do was avoid starvation, they had enough resources at hand to do that.
The Soviet invasion of coastal China would not have forced a Japanese surrender either. Such an invasion would have deprived Japan of bases and colonies. However, Japan had survived as a nation for years without a military presence in China.
Many people do not know that despite the dropping of the two atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion, Japanese hard line generals almost prevented a surrender. There was a last minute attempt at a military coup and an attempt to assassinate the Emperor. These moves failed and the nation finally chose to accept Emperor Hirohito's decision to surrender.
One of the strongest arguments that can be made in favor of dropping the bombs is that this action undoubtedly saved lives. If we had invaded Japan, a conventional campaign would have resulted in probably several million Japanese deaths. It was estimated there would have been a total of 1,000,000 American casualties from such an act. The Japanese would have fought to the bitter end as they did on Okinawa and Iwo Jima. An American president who failed to use the atomic bomb in this instance would have justifiably faced impeachment from Congress.
Anyway you look at it, dropping the atomic bombs was the only thing America could have done.
Gen. Anami, the War Minister, ordered the release of the slogan "One Hundred Million Dead In Defense Of The Empire." That's the ~70,000,000 people in Japan plus ~30,000,000 volunteers from other countries. I guess once they were all dead the Empire would have surrendered?
Your opinion on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Those bombs brought the war to a swift end at a time when the world was very weary of the slaughter.
It's very easy and convenient for us to sit back in comfort and safety 70 years after the fact and second guess the decision makers. None of us personally faced the prospect of a long drawn out campaign against fanatical resistance in Japan. None of us has brothers or other family members who would have gone in.
Japan had ample opportunities to avoid the bombings but stubbornly refused to surrender even though they were completely defeated. That stubbornness cost them two cities. They would have been wise to listen to reason. They didn't and they paid the price. With their horrible record of atrocities, they have no case for sympathy. They waged total war and lost badly.
I don't think they saw nukes the way we see them now. I think it was thought of as a a way to stop the war. While it was devastating back then as far as power and nothing like it was ever seen or thought of today's nukes are much more devastating. I don't feel that the US overstepped by using the nuke. Because ultimately, if the Japanese had a nuke they would of used it on us
I don't think they saw nukes the way we see them now. I think it was thought of as a a way to stop the war. While it was devastating back then as far as power and nothing like it was ever seen or thought of today's nukes are much more devastating. I don't feel that the US overstepped by using the nuke. Because ultimately, if the Japanese had a nuke they would of used it on us
We have pictures of Oppenheimer and Groves standing at Ground Zero of the Trinity Test the day after the event.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OpanaPointer
How about lower costs to everybody involved? The bombs ended the war. People in several countries stopped dying from military actions.
No alternative I've seen proposed would result in fewer casualties over the theater, including Japan.
See the rest of my post, or you might want to read the other replies below first as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LINative
I understand what you are saying about the bombs and I personally have my doubts. Especially about Nagasaki coming so soon after Hiroshima or why such large cities had to be bombed in the first place. And why not a more rural area?
But it is easy to have doubts 70 years after the fact. If you were living in the 1940s, and you were aware of the Japanese war crimes across Asia, mass killings of civilians in China and the Philippines, the mistreatment of Allied prisoners including Dutch civilians, cannibalism against Australian, Indian and American POWs, chemical and biological weapon experiments, etc. - it would be impossible to let the Japanese leadership to get off scott free by giving up some territory. There had to be unconditional surrender.
I'll address the part of your post I skipped below, as it goes well with Mark's essential point. I understand the desire for revenge, but vengeance often leads to later-regretted actions (I know I'm like that in my personal life, even if in a vastly different context). The reason to study history is that past people had similar sentiments in similar situations, they did things based on these sentiments, then realized their acts didn't exactly get the desired results (short-term OR, perhaps especially, long-term).
Quote:
Originally Posted by markg91359
A naval blockade of Japan would not have induced surrender. The Japanese cultivated rice and and plenty of crops that would have prevented their population from starving to death. They could also fish in the sea and obtain some protein in that fashion. It is true that Japan is a resource poor nation. However, if all the Japanese had to do was avoid starvation, they had enough resources at hand to do that.
The Soviet invasion of coastal China would not have forced a Japanese surrender either. Such an invasion would have deprived Japan of bases and colonies. However, Japan had survived as a nation for years without a military presence in China.
This is the crux of the argument. Without a meaningful navy and air force, Japan itself simply was not a threat. Even if they could avoid starvation, they couldn't do anything more.* They'd be a caged dangerous animal getting weaker with time. Even blockading for five, ten, and certainly twenty years, the rest of the world would have moved on technologically while the Home Islands would have regressed at least 50 years technologically, if not more. Naturally, the rest of the empire not overrun would have withered away.
* I doubt they could even fed themselves, but for the sake of argument, I'll assume they could have done so at the cost of industrial regression.
Last edited by Phil75230; 07-10-2016 at 11:26 AM..
I've read all that many, many times since 1965. I suggest you read the books on Operation Downfall by Richard Frank, John Ray Skates, Giangreco, etc. for some hard information. The HyFy channel is not your friend in this debate.
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Your opinion on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
