In August 1945 the United States government dropped the atomic bomb, twice. Was this morally acceptable?

Question

FYI . . . I think it was, so before you go into an ad hominem about why the asker doesn't think so, he does think it acceptable.

Answer 1

The God King, in his forbiden city probably didn't like it. But here is a good example of science, bringing down a false God. As it stands, nearly every false God on Earth has fallen at the feet of science, excepting only the few. Do you think science has had much of an effect on Covenant Religions, or Godless phylosophies?

The bombs stopped the Communists from invading, and conquering Japan, as they soon did to the largest continent on Earth. Ask the man on the street in Tokyo, if he accepts the loss of a false God. And then ask the man in Peking (not Bejing) if he has the freedom to worship God...

Answer 2

To me no.

Neither was the carpet bombing of German cities, or the London Blitz.


These bombs could have been dropped onto military sites, or onto uninhabited islands. The message to the Japanese high command could have been made very clear - surrender or next time it is the royal palace.

The deliberate targeting of civilians is terrorism. It does not matter if it is done by Al Queda, the IRA, the Stern Gang, or the American, British or German governments. It is wrong.

Edit:

Read the reason here for the Japanese surrender:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#The_surrender_of_Japan_and_the_U.S._occupation

On that day Hirohito ordered Kido to "quickly control the situation" "because Soviet Union has declared war against us".

Not because of the bombs, but because they did not want to be invaded by the Soviets.

Also for the ones that say that Japan started it, so we were justified to do whatever we wanted to stop it. I thought that WE were supposed to be better than THEM. If WE drop down the THEIR level, how do we maintain that claim. This is exactly the problem in Iraq today, and look what it has done for America's international standing. It you do not maintain the moral high ground what exactly are you fighting for?

Answer 3

Yes, -It ended the war quickly, saved lot's of money - Saved millions of both US and Japanese lives overall if an invasion of mainland Japan were to take place, with the way the Japanese would use the last man, woman and child to defend the country to the very last hut or cave, we would have had to literally tear down every city, village and the forests and bombard their mountains to hell. -Incase the US invasion would have failed, think of what would of happened to the Japanese if the Soviets invaded, then Japan would have been communist and millions more would have died there. It is sad and horrible that we had to bomb civilian cities but it was the ONLY way we could get the Japanese to surrender without an all out invasion!

Answer 4

In view of Pearl HArbor, absolutely.

We told JAPAN in advance what we were going to do.

We gave them most of a week

They gave us one or two hours and ONLY told us we were in a state of War, they didn't say they were about lay waist to Pearl Harbor

Then when we did it they didn't believe we could do it again, so we did it.

We MADE believers out of them

Japanese shouldn't blame us, they should blame THEIR GOVERNMENT

Their GOVERMENT bombed PEARL HARBOR

Their GOVERMENT said, yeah, well do it again!

All we did was try and take the easy way out of a BLOODY WAR that THEY were tenacious about.

Look at IWO JIMA!

Look at PEARL HARBOR

MEN dying in their BEDS as they SLEPT

AND WE are the EVIL ONES

Screw that

BOTH have to share the blame for that one!

BOTH have a hand in it

We have Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they have PEARL HARBOR and IWO JIMA

And thing of it is they make such Bloody good Cameras and TV SETS!

Answer 5

to be honest. at the time we felt it was. The bomb was new technology and we had no real idea about the devastation that it would create. we had no idea about fall out or radiation poisoning. it take 20 years to truly understand things like that. So, at the time with the information we had we felt it would be a greater good to drop them. hindsight is 20/20

Answer 6

I think it was probably okay because it avoided a land war, and the number of casualties looks much worse when NOT compared against the number of lives lost to conventional bombing and the number that would be lost had the U.S. invaded Tokyo.


Of course, I'm biased in favor of Korea, so I'm fairly harsh on Imperial Japan.

Answer 7

Yes, because in war you make moral judgements based on mitigation of suffering for your side. Dresden was moral, the fire bombings of Kyoto and Tokyo were, and quite frankly so was Pearl Harbor.

Recent documents show that Japan knew where we had planned to invade, and have increased there presence there. It would have been a masacre and a loss for the allies. Can you imagine a cold war with a divide japan, like germany was divided?

Also, Japan at the time of the end of the war had developed a dirty bomb and was prepared to deliver it to san francisco harbor via submarine. thankfully, our nukes put a nail in that coffin quick and saved many, many lives.

Answer 8

It would've haunted them for days, but in the middle of a war, I guess it was a split-second desicion.

What I think they should've done-
-Warn the Japanese that they had a nuclear bomb (they didn't believe it, step two)
-Drop one bomb on a not-so-populated area, then offer them a chance to surrender. If they still won't surrender, drop it on a more populated area. Keep doing it until they surrender.
-If they don't surrender, they brought it upon themselves.

Answer 9

Urf. Did the ends justify the means? I'm not so sure, but I don't know that there were any other means available. Just because it was the least reprehensible choice doesn't necessarily make it MORALLY acceptable.

But if you consider what the alternatives were, it was the most reasonable course of action.

Answer 10

An immense number of civilian lives lost. What governments do should be left for the governments to fight over, not the people.

Unacceptable.

We could've made a display of power that did not involve so much destruction.

Edit:

Brett A said it well...