Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Justified?

Japan could have surrendered after the first Atomic bomb was dropped but they decided to carry on the fight, and even after the second bomb was dropped there was still a large section of the Japanese Military that still wanted to carry on and tried to stop the surrender broadcast being given.
People talk about the the high casualties that the Japanese suffered, but what about the all the people they slaughtered in China, Java and countless other places. In Manila they slaughtered tens of thousands people as the Americans advanced onto the City.
In China they took Allied prisoners there and tested germ warfare on them and they cut their organs from these men while they were still alive and with with out any thing to kill the pain. Yet we get people bleating that they got a rough deal, personally I can't see it.
 
LeEnfield said:
Japan could have surrendered after the first Atomic bomb was dropped but they decided to carry on the fight, and even after the second bomb was dropped there was still a large section of the Japanese Military that still wanted to carry on and tried to stop the surrender broadcast being given.
People talk about the the high casualties that the Japanese suffered, but what about the all the people they slaughtered in China, Java and countless other places. In Manila they slaughtered tens of thousands people as the Americans advanced onto the City.
In China they took Allied prisoners there and tested germ warfare on them and they cut their organs from these men while they were still alive and with with out any thing to kill the pain. Yet we get people bleating that they got a rough deal, personally I can't see it.
Click to expand...
Hello LeEnfield,

maybe the original title of this thread got lost, it was:

Can Hiroshima and Nagasaki be justified.

Off course any action can be justified - if e.g. it's Hitlers action towards the Jews (He would justify it with the Jews wanting to destroy Germany) or the British will justify their concentration camp matter during the Boer war - and Lenin and the Bolshewiks can justify their doings towards the oppressive aristocrats and serf-bond system, etc. etc.

So it is about the interpretation or personal interpretation towards "Justification". The law of war beholds an international agreed upon interpretation - and according to this - the bombs constitute a war criminal act.

So you and others are free to justify the nukes by whatever you may find personally appropriate to help with it - but it doesn't outweigh or overrule the international law of war.

Now according to certain views - the nukes were used due to the issue that Japan made no signs towards accepting an "unconditional surrender".

These views are disputed due to clear evidence that Tokyo was willing to accept surrender under the context of the Emperor being left untouched. (Which upon the surrender was granted)

In return it is IMO - absolutly valid to forward - that upon Truman accepting the Tokyo objection - the war could have ended without using those nukes. Therefore my opinion in regards to Truman forwarding an ultimatum in regards to surrender that would include all conditions towards an unconditional surrender - but to garantee the Emperor not being placed before a court.

If after e.g. two weeks the Tokyo reply would not have met the allies demands and expectations - he could have used the A-Bombs as he did anyway - and he would still have constituted a war criminal act.

So, the usage of these A-bombs can be justified by whatever personal opinion or declaration - but it remains a war criminal act. Which the intensional Firestorms or even conventional bombing of cities constitute just as well.

Yes - undoubtetly the Japanese performed all kinds of war criminal acts - so the entire justification reverts back to an eye for eye and tooth for tooth scenario.

Now besides having ended the war (By what ever means) - what did the Allies do about all these Japanese war criminal acts? more or less nothing.

So do I have to understand it as - you got the A-bombs on your country and now we are fair and square?

To make it very clear please allow me to say that ending the war was one thing - punishment for war criminal acts didn't take place since the Allies had committed war criminal acts just as well. And especially the A-bombs prevented - due to the Allies "morality"- from taking a stern action towards Japanese war crimes.

Truman was correct in regards to not being willing to accept any Japanese demands - IMO the implementation of the nukes was therefore a logical decision and would have led to the unconditional surrender - that in turn would have allowed the Allies to punish those responsible - incl. the Emperor who IMHO was the main culprit anyway. It is the Allies themseves who got caught up in their own distorted views towards morality and political missinterpretations towards Japan - that in the end they kept the Emperor untouched and more or less all the Japanese war criminal actions.

Thus allowing for the question of the A-bombs being justifiable to even arrise. If they had punished all of the war criminal acts as they did in Germany - who on earth would ever come up with that A-bomb justification?

Yes - LeEnfield, there are those who call Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and a hundred other German cities - as a war criminal act - which it indeed was - but due to the overall concept of punishing the Nazis - who started off the whole thing anyway - it is at least JUSTIFIABLE not only in regards to having helped to end the war.

Regards
Kruska
 
Kruska said:
Truman was correct in regards to not being willing to accept any Japanese demands - IMO the implementation of the nukes was therefore a logical decision and would have led to the unconditional surrender - that in turn would have allowed the Allies to punish those responsible - incl. the Emperor who IMHO was the main culprit anyway. It is the Allies themseves who got caught up in their own distorted views towards morality and political missinterpretations towards Japan - that in the end they kept the Emperor untouched and more or less all the Japanese war criminal actions.

Thus allowing for the question of the A-bombs being justifiable to even arrise. If they had punished all of the war criminal acts as they did in Germany - who on earth would ever come up with that A-bomb justification?

Yes - LeEnfield, there are those who call Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and a hundred other German cities - as a war criminal act - which it indeed was - but due to the overall concept of punishing the Nazis - who started off the whole thing anyway - it is at least JUSTIFIABLE not only in regards to having helped to end the war.

Regards
Kruska
Click to expand...

Just a couple of thoughts here, Kruska. First, I don't think the emperor was the "main culprit." I give that honor to the Japanese military and its leaders. Second, you say Germany "started off the whole thing anyway." I believe Japan "started off the whole thing" when they took Manchuria from the China in 1931. Hitler didn't begin his war until 1939.
 
Jeff Simmons said:
Just a couple of thoughts here, Kruska. First, I don't think the emperor was the "main culprit." I give that honor to the Japanese military and its leaders. Second, you say Germany "started off the whole thing anyway." I believe Japan "started off the whole thing" when they took Manchuria from the China in 1931. Hitler didn't begin his war until 1939.
Click to expand...
Hello Jeff Simmons,

I think there is enough contemporary literature around that clearly proves that HH was very well informed and instructed and indorsed more or less every military action during the war - he was very well informed about what was going on in China and in regards to human experiments. He is the main architect of a "Free Manchuco" and he was the "El Supremo" all the time - it was he, who adressed surrender of Japan and not some Tojo.

That the USA and the West due to the cold war painted him as an innocent Bonzai enthusiast is also known.

Hirohito is as innocent in that regards as a Fieldmarshall Keitel who was sentenced to death and hanged as a major war criminal.

I had mentioned Hitler in regards to commiting war crimes such as bombing cities and civilians deliberatly in e.g. England the first place.

Regards
Kruska
 
I think that any means that was used to bring WW2 to close and stop the slaughter was justified. We will never know just how many lives this saved on both sides by dropping the Atom bombs, but what ever it was it was worth it.
 
Wasn't there plans on the table to develop more bombs and use them tactically in the invasion of Japan in the event of the Japanese not surrendering?

At the time the true effects of fallout and nuclear warfare was not really explored, and in the event of tactically employed atom bombs, may have resulted in massive U.S. radiation causalities as well as a devastated Japanese population.
 
There was careful research done at the sites where atom bombs were dropped to check the effects of radiation. Most of this done by Americans doctors sent there by the US Forces
 
LeEnfield said:
There was careful research done at the sites where atom bombs were dropped to check the effects of radiation. Most of this done by Americans doctors sent there by the US Forces
Click to expand...

I am sure AFTER the bombs where dropped and AFTER the U.S. occupation, but wasn't their a short period where the U.S. still did not receive a surrender after dropping the first bomb. So how could they have monitored the sites closely? I was referring to what the Truman administration was considering shortly before the bombs where dropped.

This same phenomenon occurred in the Korean conflict, where MacArthur considered and actually recommended using bombs in that theater.
 
I believe, in some sense, the scientists working to develop the bomb understood the danger of radioactive fallout. The reason I say this is because Robert Oppenheimer (the man in charge of the Manhattan District project), suggested that the nuclear material produced could be dissipated in particles above targeted cities and have significant results in terms of radiation poisoning and its effects.
 
When Admiral Halsey came into Pearl Harbor on December 8, he said:
"When this is over, the only place the Japanese language will be spoken will be Hell" or something very close.

Veterans of the war I spoke with said things like: We were supposed to land in the first wave, and we expected 80% of our forces to be killed.
Most of the men I talked to said that they did not expect to survive X-day, but they expected the US would exterminate the Japanese. Some of these men were Japanese.

Oddly, quite a number of Japanese expected to fight until they were killed. They did not expect to sap the American will, they expected the US would kill them all, but they were going to take as many round-eyes with them as they could.

When any culture justifies war, the hatred, the bigotry, the waste, the horror, the very worst of what humanity has to offer, well, they can justify anything. (I've been to Auschwitz. Humans can rationalize and justify anything. Made we want to deny my humanity.)

It has been over 60 years since atomic weapons were used.

Never again would be about the best.
 
hardlec said:
When Admiral Halsey came into Pearl Harbor on December 8, he said:
"When this is over, the only place the Japanese language will be spoken will be Hell" or something very close.

Veterans of the war I spoke with said things like: We were supposed to land in the first wave, and we expected 80% of our forces to be killed.
Most of the men I talked to said that they did not expect to survive X-day, but they expected the US would exterminate the Japanese. Some of these men were Japanese.

Oddly, quite a number of Japanese expected to fight until they were killed. They did not expect to sap the American will, they expected the US would kill them all, but they were going to take as many round-eyes with them as they could.

When any culture justifies war, the hatred, the bigotry, the waste, the horror, the very worst of what humanity has to offer, well, they can justify anything. (I've been to Auschwitz. Humans can rationalize and justify anything. Made we want to deny my humanity.)

It has been over 60 years since atomic weapons were used.

Never again would be about the best.
Click to expand...
Hm,on this last ,I am not sure :why should 'little' tactical atomic weapons not be used ?
 
General Roman said:
Hiroshima was maybe nececary, but Nagasaki? Why?
Click to expand...

Because the Japanese hierarchy did not care about the average Japanese citizen. They had ample time prior to the second bomb to surrender.

The Japanese had been preparing for an US assault by drilling every man, women, and child to resist the invasion. The people that were killed at Hiroshima were insignificant to the Japanese hierarchy.
 
It 's simple :the allied demand was :unconditional surrender,the Japanese answer was :surrender under certain conditions,result :Hiroshima;the Japanese answer still was :surrender under certain conditions .result :Nagasaki .
No one on allied side was accepting that Japan would made conditions :they considered it as arrogance .
 
Re: Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Justified?

lljadw said:
It 's simple :the allied demand was :unconditional surrender,the Japanese answer was :surrender under certain conditions,result :Hiroshima;the Japanese answer still was :surrender under certain conditions .result :Nagasaki .
No one on allied side was accepting any demands or conditions Japan made :they considered it as arrogance .
Click to expand...
The three conditions of surrender the Japanese demanded the most were of;
The emperor would remain their sovereign leader.
No foreign soldiers on Japanese soil.
Any accusations of war crimes, a Japanese tribunal would investigate and try the accused.

Earlier on August 15th, the day the Japanese agreed to the terms of surrender, President Truman had signed the document, authorizing the use of the third atomic bomb. Remember, the invasion of the Island of Kyushu (Operation Coronet) was set for the first week in November!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top