Atomic Bombs...A Necessary Evil?

Question

More than 50 yrs after they were dropped over Japan people are begining to think we were wrong. Some even compare it the holocaust.
This was a diffent time and different a situation. Do you think it was a necessary evil to destroy 2 cities?
Do you also think that because of this it has detered another event or worse?

Answer 1

They were necessary to help convince Japan to surrender. Between the A-bombs and the Russians attacking Japanese territory on the mainland, the Japanese realized they faced extermination if the kept fighting. If they had resisted to the end and the US had neede to invade and conquer the country, millions more people would have died.

The other thing that many people don't realize, particulary those that are blindly anti-nuke, is that the death tolls of the A-bomb attacks were not actually all that high in the grand scheme of things. The fire bomb raids on Tokyo killed more people. Yes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped out, but they would have been anyway with conventional weapons. Each city was already scheduled to be bombed because of strategic targets within.

Any comparison to the holocaust is simply idiotic. The holocaust was a deliberate and methodical attempt at genocide. The A-bomb attacks were military actions with new weapons. If the US had kept dropping nukes after Japan tried to surrender, then you could claim it was genocide.

Answer 2

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 or 80,000 killed per month 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. My beef is with the multi-national business cartels that allowed it to happen, the top being IG Farben (now BASF, Bayer, among others).

Not only did they finance Adolf, they supplied him with Zyclon B for use in the death camps. The American side of the company was not tried at Nuremburg, although they were just as culpable, go figure.
The fire bombing of Dresden by the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command, caused the destruction of 15 square kms including 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 18 churches, etc. with a conservative estimate of around 30,000 civilians killed. 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 and their wholesale holocaust of the Euopean Jews.

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. What is immoral is war itself. Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanized or civilized, and if one side attempted to do so it would be most likely to be defeated. That to me is the lesson of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Answer 3

I think that during a war both sides must use whatever means necessary to end the conflict and come out as a victor. After all, that is the point of war. While war is unpleasant and causes a lot of suffering, once engaged in a war, it is unreasonable to expect either side to "hold back" because they might kill too many people. Additionally, the holocaust killed millions of people and was unprovoked and conducted meticulously to exterminate a race. The atomic bomb was used in a war, as many times as was necessary to end the conflict. While the immediate result of the bomb is unpleasant (namely a bunch of deaths and destruction), the net result is that it ended all hostilities and other people did not lose their lives. If the US had not used the bomb, it is not unreasonable to assume that a good chunk of the US would be occupied by Japan.

Also note that there has not been a world war since. Why? Because nobody wants to use an atomic bomb except for rogue groups like Al Qaeda. I'd say it's definitely a deterrent.

Consider how many people have died as a result of the "humane war" that was and is being waged in Iraq. Some estimate the number at 600,000 people have died. Perhaps, if a small scall atomic bomb had been used, only 100,000 would have died and that would be the end of the conflict. I know this sounds completely blasphemous, but I'd rather see 100,000 dead than 600,000 dead (and climbing).

Answer 4

evade yes or no, there were 3 reasons and a plan called Manhattan.

1942 Aug, America started Manhattan plan, it was just targeting development and experiment of Atomic Bombs.
Japan was target from first, they intended to drop them on 1944 Sep but They completed the bomb on 1945 July 16th, it was just 3 weeks before Hiroshima.

3 reasons
1. America wanted to decrease death in the battle of their troops.
2. Russia was confidentialy planning participate in the battle against Japan, and America didn't want to share the victory with Russia
3. They had a mission for the experiment in Japan anyway.

These are from official documents I saw, and I don't have any comments on this. Now you think if it was a necessary evil or not.

Answer 5

The Atomic bombs weren't meant to harm them, yet to scare them into resign, and that i does no longer nesascarily call them 'evil' what they have been doing is what they concept replaced into top, evil is style of a vegetarian asserting a guy or woman who eats meat is evil, even although the beef eater believes they are doing what's organic. i think of it replaced into variety of needed, because of the fact the jap had the 'dying in the previous dishonor' motto, which meant they'd somewhat die than lose. So the U. S. used the atomic bombs to tutor the jap how effectual they have been. however the only reason the atomic bomb replaced into made replaced into because of the fact Albert Einstein expressed concern over the Germans probably making a nuclear weapon. *added* @kaps WTF dude, the freemasons haven't any faith, they permit any faith and are not area on any sigular concept, rather they consult with their 'god' because of the fact the 'divine architect' or the 'great architect of the universe' they weren't Jewish, and that they are no longer a secret society, they record their assembly circumstances interior the paper for god's sake! they seem to be a society WITH secrets and methods. your information, i'm guessing is off some 'conspiracy internet site'

Answer 6

TG has a valid point about some people knowing the devastating effects beforehand. But it was wartime, tempers were high, and reason seldom prevails in politics even in peacetime. Personally, I doubt that a demonstration would have changed anything, because we had to drop not one, but TWO bombs before the Japs surrendered. They could have surrendered after the first one. They certainly knew the devastating effects at that time, yet even after the SECOND bomb, the military was still determined to fight on. It took the personal intervention of the Emperor (who as a descendent of the gods -- according to Jap legend anyway -- wasn't supposed to engage in filthy politics) to force a surrender.

Answer 7

It didn't take 50 years. Plenty of people thought it was wrong even beofre they were dropped, including many of the scientists who worked on them. Oppenheimer and others urged the government to invite representatives of Japan and the Soviet Union to a demonstration of the bomb's power, which they were sure would have ended the war without loss of life. But Truman and his advisors decided it was better to incinerate several hundred thousand Japanese.

Answer 8

If you are a sociopath. Normal people try to resolve their problems by reaching compromise.
They have you Americans so brainwashed you can't see the similarity between the Holocaust, experimenting with nuclear weapons on civilian populations (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and the murder of 4M Vietnamese.
As for getting what they deserved.... I say, WHAT? The US was soo itching to get into war with Japan so that it could conquer the Pacific that it purposely leaked information to the Japanese in order to invite an attack. Read your history or stop spewing ignorance.
As for those claiming that anything goes in war: well, I don't agree, but under your definition terrorism is legitimate because atomic weapons are legitimate... I mean, 9/11 was not even the 50th part of Hiroshima. If a terrorist attacks the US, i guess it's all fair game, right?

one last thing. those who have weapons of mass destruction are terrorists. yeah. That's the US, a nation of terrorists.

Answer 9

Truman and his advisers wanted to see the effects it would have on a city.
You just can't build a city to test something like this.

Answer 10

I think it helped to put to an end a war that the Japanese brought upon themselves. We did not want to be in the war, so they provoked us by bombing Pearl Harbour. Don't wake a sleeping giant, and expect it not to bite really hard........In war, there is really no such thing as a fair fight.