Were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes?

Question

Conventional WW2 bombs were primarily destroyers of property. People had air raid warnings and shelters so it was undoubtedly dangerous but it was possible to avoid being killed and it was even possible to move away from regularly bombed areas.

Nuclear bombs, on the other hand, totally eliminated all life and property within the blast area and then carried on killing and mutilating future generations of the survivors within the fallout area for decades afterwards. Nukes are therefore spefically indiscriminate life takers even more than they are destroyers of property.

With the soldiers away fighting and the cities primarily populated by women, chiildren and old people, would dropping these bombs have been seen as a war crime if it had not be done by the winning side?

ScoreBore. There were plenty of war crimes trials concerning WW2, much of the Nazi leadership were tried.

Dropping a nuke on kids to save lives, eh? Novel idea. Kill them first before someone else gets the chance to do it. I wonder if the many nuclear powers of today, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and more to follow would use such casual reasoning when deciding whether or not to enforce their will on the world.

Interested, the subject may be boring you but it is not so old. The justification for Iraq's nuclear program was justified by its prime minister at a meeting in the UN boycotted by the USA delagates only this week. He said that he didnt see why his country should be lectured about peaceful use of nuclear energy by a the only country that had actually used nuclear warfare technology against another country. That history is less than a week old.

MohammedF, Yours is by far the best answer so far though I don't agree with the philosophy that it supports, that being that you can justify nuking another country on the excuse that it will save your own armies lives. If that were an acceptable justification then there is not one country in the world who could not use it in time of war.

Hi DaveStar. You could escape the firestorms in an air raid shelter. You couldn't escape a nuke that way. The nukes were indiscriminate by being inescapable. The Japanese you think 'chose' not to go to the shelter had no idea what was going to hit them and if they were not so scared of the conventional bombing they had already experienced then that emphasises the difference between that and a nuke. The pictures you refer to were not from tha blast area, they were from the fallout area,

Orange, You are right, I have seen the light. I am just a ***** liberal who can't see the way to justify killing a few thousand innocent kids for any cause. I wish I was tough like you. They wouldn't have caught you crying if it was them nuking your kids, would they. Not a real man like you!

Answer 1

The justification for dropping the bombs was that it would have cost too many lives (American soldiers lives) conducting a land invasion, as was evident from previous land invasions of islands off the coast of Japan.
The same rationale could have been used for Vietnam, but wasn't. It seems obvious that between the two wars America had become somewhat P.R. conscious.
Regardless of what crimes the Japanese leaders were or were not guilty of in WW2, the majority of the people who were rootlessly killed and injuried when the bombs were dropped were innocent civilians like you and me. They were innocent in the same as the majority of British people were innocent of atrocities the British army were involved in, in forgien countries in the past.

Innocent people were knowingly killed so a crime was committed.

Startegic prolonged bombing of Japans Arms making facilities and Army compounds and a sea barracade to curb the import of necessary raw materials would have been a slower but probarbly a successful solution or at least they could have tried it first before letting Trigger Happy Truman press the button

Answer 2

Indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilians is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

It's true we lost the moral high ground after use of the nukes on Japan, but looking at what Truman faced in 1945, i probably would've done the same thing. To compare the moral depravity of state sponsored genocide where the death ovens at Aushwitz/Birkenau were topping out at 2,600 per day & the Japanese atrocities and the aerial bombardment of civilians is looking at different scales.

The "Final Solution" was the policy of only one country during the last century, and it wasn't the U.S.

The fire bombing of Dresden caused more civilian casualties than the nukes. At the time, the Germans used it as propaganda to advocate against following the Geneva conventions and to attack people's perception of the Allies claim to absolute moral superiority. The military claimed the railroad center was a military target, which it was, altho it was up and running a week later. Feb 1945 was only 3 months away from May 1945 (end of the Euopean war), the outcome of the war was not in doubt, so why bomb a 'cultural' medieval city of 600,000?

The firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, genocide should also include civilian victims of aerial bombardment. Even after saying this, i still don't think the Allies were close to the moral depravity of the Nazis & Japanes and their wholesale holocaust of the Euopean Jews & conquered states.

The bombing of civilians is a great tragedy, none can deny. It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane.

Answer 3

It seems that this question is asked very often on this forum..

There are a few items that need to be taken into account.

The first is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities with large industrial complexes designed to produce war material. This makes the cities viable military targets. It was these industrail areas that were the targets, not the civilians themselves. Had the US military been seeking a large civilian death toll, there were other cities that provided higher, more densly packed populations. This differs from what happened in Isreal and Lebanon as civilians were being specifically targeted.

Second, the bombs were dropped as an alternative to other means of forcing surrender. There were other options under consideration at the time. The first of those was a conventional invasion of the islands. An invasion on that scale would have killed more Japanese (civilan and military) than the bombings. The other choices were to employee the use of chemical weapons or simply to beseige the island. The latter of which would have killed move civilians than any of the others combined.

Thirdly; it seems rarely mentioned that the Japanese were working on their own atomic weapon project. Japan had also shown the willingness to use chemical and biological weapons with their campagne in China. There is little doubt that had the war not ended when it did, the Japanese would have been able to employ their own nuclear weapon against Allied powers.

And finally, Qatari is incorrect concerning Japan attempting to surrender prior to the bombings. In fact, once the emporer of Japan let the military leadership know he was commited to surrendering after the 2nd bombing there was an attempted coup to prevent the surrender.

Answer 4

I guess you've already forgotten about the firestorms caused by "conventional bombs" during WW2, which actually killed more folks on both sides of the war than both A-bombs combined.

Nukes are not "specifically indiscriminate", they're just much bigger blasts for the size of the munition. And the Japanese decided **not** to go to bomb shelters the days the A-bombs were dropped, because they saw no threat from a single B-29 when the entire rest of their experience had been air fleets of hundreds of bombers raining death and destruction on their heads. And they did NOT "totally eliminate all life and property" You obviously haven't looked at any of the photos from the results afterwards.

War crimes are declared by the WINNERS of wars, not the losers.

Answer 5

If the U.S. had lost the war, it is likely that the bombings would have been considered war crimes. However, the U.S. won the war, and therefore we get to write the history. The bombings spared the U.S. a land invasion of Japan that would have cost the lives of 100,000 American soldiers. Who is to say whose life is more valuable? My grandfather was a soldier in WWII. If he had been forced to invade Japan he could have died and I would not be here today.
The fact that you are so concerned with this question tells me that you are probably a liberal. I don't think you understand that people on this planet want to kill you and eradicate your free way of life because they think you are evil. When you think of the U.S. and Bush as evil instead of the terrorists, you are doing a great disservice to your future on this planet. If you don't stop being such a puss and start defending yourself the terrorists will succeed and then you will truly know the definition of suffering.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE JIHAD!

Answer 6

Now it would, but to be honest, there was no other choice, this seriously, was the most humane way and not nearly as many people died, as if a seige had happened or a land invasion.

The reason for that, is because of the way the Japs, fought so terrible and would kill their own family instead of letting them get captured. So that basically means they would have fought until the last child.

Who cares if it was cosidered a war crime? Why isn't the UN going after the people who behead? I don't think it was a war crime then because they did not have the Geneva Convention until after WWII

EDIT: Your right, but i guess that gets rid of my last part, but the bombs were still justified. And if that children statement is towards me, no. Kill some children to save the rest... I know that sounds sick, but there was no other choice

Answer 7

This topic, the argument/s have been hashed up, talked up, thrown about and discussed until the gums have bled and tongues have been frayed at the edges.


However........

Perhaps ....just perhaps to NOT use them and allow hundreds and THOUSANDS of people to die in the defeat of Japan and the Pacific and Sth East Asian War, then that would be seen in itself as a 'War-time Crime' - against your own nationals.

Those same nationals (generally and on the whole, American) whose very taxes were going towards supplying a war with arms to prosecute it in order to defeat an enemy who not only BEGAN a WAR against you, but had the intention of enslaving you.

Although not a combatant, I know which option I'd have voted for. But then, the Japanese people were not asked to vote on the topic, they simply believed what they were told to believe.

Basically it was

Your Emperor is a "God"

and can therefore can NOT be anything but 'Right.'

To that enemy, 'face,' pride, was everything. Defeat was something that only came about because you were Dead.

Sash.

Answer 8

No they saved millions of lives.
Emporer Hirohito needed an excuse to chuck in the towell and this gave him the excuse.

Why do you think women and Children were more innocent that the conscripted men, bizarre.

The Le May firebomb raid on Tokyo was after all more desructive than the atom bomb raids.

As a general rule War Crimes are only committed by the losing
side.

Only the British sucessfully convict people who had not actually committed War crimes of war crimes, equally bizarre.

Answer 9

Every now and again some plonker comes up with this question. I doubt if he or her knows much about the second world war. The Americans did the whole world a big favour when they dropped the two atom bombs on Japan,probably saved millions of lives.(including Japanese ones) They certainly saved my brothers life. He was on his way with his battalion to the Far East when ,thank god,the Japs surrendered.
It's all very well for Graham H to pontificate sixty years after the war. He should educate himself by reading some books about what went on.

Answer 10

Hell no. Those crazy bastards killed, mutilated, raped and tortured(just to name a few of their crimes)through Asia and people today still whine about how we nuked them. How about asking the Chinese people this question. Or those POWs that they used as living experiments. Those poor women and children ate a pilot that had been shot down over their village.(Its documented) These people brought us into the war(not the Nazi's) In 1937 they went berserk in the city on Nan king in china. Nazi's living in the city at the time were horrified by their actions and wrote back to Hitler about the barbarism being commited. This of course was hushed up because of Hitlers final solution. These people got what they deserved. And because of people like you most of these Japanese war criminals have gone unpunished. Imagine becoming a millionaire because of the medical research you did on POWs.