I think that CLUSTER BOMBS and NAPALM are prohibited and classified as war crime!!

Also I would like to add a fact. When Truman decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima he had hundreds of planes fly over Hiroshima and drop thousands upon thousands of slips telling them that they need to leave because destruction is coming. They also did this at Nagasaki a day before it was to bombed. So saying the USA bombing those 2 citys as a war crime in a way isn't. We gave them proper warning telling them to leave and they didn't.

Another thing, what was so frightening about the Japanese is that they would not surrender one man. They fought to the death and less than 5,000 soldiers surrendered out of teh entire war in the Pacific! When they knew they were beginning to lose they were training women and children to fire guns and carry live grenades to American troopers. They would of fought to the last Japanese because when it came down to conquering Japan thats what you had to do. Kill every last one of them.

So dropping the bomb on those 2 citys when you think about it took away military troops who would of been used against the U.S. because the Japanese were so desperate. Any comments?

Originally Posted by Marksman

I think that CLUSTER BOMBS and NAPALM are prohibited and classified as war crime!!

Well it could be...if you used them on non-combatants, like civillians and such.

Perfectly legal to use on combatants though...because they are combatants.

I wouldnt like one to be dropped on me, combatant or non-combatant.

Originally Posted by IrishWizard

Also I would like to add a fact. When Truman decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima he had hundreds of planes fly over Hiroshima and drop thousands upon thousands of slips telling them that they need to leave because destruction is coming. They also did this at Nagasaki a day before it was to bombed. So saying the USA bombing those 2 citys as a war crime in a way isn't. We gave them proper warning telling them to leave and they didn't.

Another thing, what was so frightening about the Japanese is that they would not surrender one man. They fought to the death and less than 5,000 soldiers surrendered out of teh entire war in the Pacific! When they knew they were beginning to lose they were training women and children to fire guns and carry live grenades to American troopers. They would of fought to the last Japanese because when it came down to conquering Japan thats what you had to do. Kill every last one of them.

So dropping the bomb on those 2 citys when you think about it took away military troops who would of been used against the U.S. because the Japanese were so desperate. Any comments?

I believe that American casualty estimates for an land invasion of Japan were conservatively put at one million men on the US side alone.

IMO without use of nuclear weapons Japan never would have been fully under control. 70% of that country is hilly or mountaineous and pockets of Japanese resistance would have been able to hide for years. Man for man Japanese troops were probably the toughest in the world with martial arts such as Ju Jitsu part of their basic training.

Here is an interesting link:

http://www.waszak.com/japanww2.htm

So droping those 2 atomic weapons on Japan saved a WHOLE lot of grief for both sides.

Yeah man I forgot to say that. It was said that we would of needed at least 5 million men in THE FIRST WAVE just to take the beaches of the home island of Japan. And as he said, there was an estimated loss of 1 million people with in the first 48 hours. Those 2 bombs saved alot of American lives.

The question remains: is it ok to kill non- combattants to save the lives of combattants?

At 2000 hours tonight (Pacific Standard Time) on the History Channel there is a show celled "Hiroshima: Decision to Drop the Bomb". It is about exactly what we were discussing.

Originally Posted by FutureRANGER

At 2000 hours tonight (Pacific Standard Time) on the History Channel there is a show called "Hiroshima: Decision to Drop the Bomb". It is about exactly what we were discussing.

Cool, but I can't get that here I'm afraid.
I hope you'll post it if they have anything usefull to add to this discussion.

I dont have tiem to check all of them, but there are alot of offtopics.Incase you guys did not notice, its against forum rules and I really hate it . So stop. Next off-topic will be deleted.

I believe that one of the constant threads in this post is the question "what is a war crime"? Since the Geneva accords weren’t developed until the 1949, the charter that empowered the winning allied nations to try the Germans, Italians, and Japanese at outset of peace established the definition.

The full charter and trial can be researched here:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj.../nuremberg.htm

The charter for the Nuremberg trials defined the following items as legal reasons to try the leadership for war related acts:

(a) Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;

(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

(c) Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war,or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

When it came to the destruction of London by the Germans, it fell under the clause of wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

When it came to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well, unfortunately the cities industrial and economic complexes were too interwoven into the city population to effectively separate them from the military necessity clause. There were actually six target cities selected by the presidential council composed of civilian and military leaders: each bombing mission had one primary and at least two secondary targets picked, in case bombing could not occur at the primary site. In the case of Nagasaki, it was actually Kobe that was the primary that day. Extensive cloud cover kept it from being bombed. Nagasaki had an immense allied POW camp, and technically shouldn’t have been considered for the primary target. If the bomb hadn’t gone off target and landed on the opposite side of the hills where it detonated, they would have had 1500 allied troops less to get back from Japan that year.

The really sad thing was that with the constant bombing of the Japanese cities with conventional explosives and incinderarys , most of the Japanese cities were burned out shells anyway. Even with this tactic, the will of the Japanese to fight had not been broken, and the suicide tactics shown at Iwo Jima and Okinawa indicated that the main assault on the mainland would be much, much worse for the allies.

A sad decision? yes. A war crime? In my opinion, no.