Can the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever be justified?

Question

Japan has got a well known tradition to never surrender. And America used Nuclear Bombs to end the war immediately. But can that be a true justification of their wrong doings since many innocent civilians died.

Get answering.

Whats your views - as it right or wrong or both?

My Opinion: Both

Answer 1

Why are you stuck on the nuclear attacks. More people died from the incendiary attacks on Dresden, Tokyo and other Axis cities than were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Answer 2

This question is asked quite often here, so..it is time to get answering this question for the third (or is it the fourth?) time!

Yes, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified and can still be justified today. The fact that the Japanese have a well-known tradition of not surrendering was only part of the big picture. Japan had its military located all over Asia, and while in certain areas they could be defeated militarily, in the home islands of Japan they could not be defeated militarily without taking hundreds of thousands more lives - both Allied and Japanese. A forced surrender saved those lives.

Now, speaking of hundreds of thousands of lives, both civilian and military - From 1931-1945 Japan's invasion and occupation of Burma, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Manchuria, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent civilians (and military casualties), yet I have never seen one person ask this question here on Yahoo Answers:

"Can Japan's invasion and occupation of Burma, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Manchuria, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam ever be justified?"

Is this not enough to prove their wrongdoings, and the justification for America's use of the atomic bombs, since millions of people died?

Answer 3

They likely saved millions of lives. The Japanese populace was told to fight to the death; even children were taught techniques to kill allied troops. Was it justified, I don't know.


Allied victory was never inevitable even late in 1945...
The Japanese plan was to fill the landing zone with suicide torpedos, suicide aircraft, etc. and destroy as many landing craft as possible. After reaching the beach allied troops would have to contend with real Japanese soldiers. Assuming they beat these forces back they now face young boys and old men rushed into service. If the allies get past these men the rest of the populace was ordered to fight back in anyway possible.

Granted the USSR in the north would have weakened the beach defenses to some extent, and would have tied down troops still in Manchuria and islands north of Japan. The Japs surrendered after Stalin declared war, not after the bombings; such an idea is ill founded at best and wrong at worst.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no worse than Dresden, and Tokyo was worse than all three...

The atomic bombings were horrific, but nothing exceptional. Almost 3 times as many people died in the fire-bombing of Tokyo as did in either atmoic bombing; so 1.5 times the combined total. The Dresden bombing killed more people than either atomic bombing. I guess it's just because atmoic bombs were used that it is even remembered. (< very rough estimates here)

The bombings saved lives on both sides...

What if even half of the Japanese populace fights to the death for the Emperor? The end result would have been massive allied gas attacks, maybe a massive air and sea barrage to destroy coastal cities? In the end the result could have been approaching 10's of millions of Japanese deaths.

On many of the recaptured islands Japanese civilians commited mass suicide, because they were brainwashed to think the Americans were barbaric rapist canibals. Who can honestly say that mass suicides wouldn't have occured in Japan, thereby causing the deaths of thousands, if not milions, more Japanese civilians.

Answer 4

Why don't you ask the families of Nan-king survivors if it was justified. Do you have any idea of the extent of cruelty and inhuman malevolence the Imperial Japanese inflicted upon all they overran and subjugated? Their brutality, only matched by that of concentration camps in Poland and Germany, is legendary. Bombing the two major cities, with their civilian populations, while cruel and sad, saved lives. Allied lives...............as well as Japanese lives. Had the U.S. actually had to invade Japan's mainland, the amount of human lives lost would have escalated into perhaps a million more lost. The Japanese died to almost the last man on Iwo Jima, obedience and honor or death was not just a battle cry to the Japanese.....it was a way of life.....of honorable death. You really should read more my friend........else it all repeats itself.
By the way,Japan had by this time invented a way to unleash bubonic plague by using fleas in a clay type device and had plans to use these in the Western U.S. At one point orders were given to the Navy to use their new submarine launched single planes to attack the West coast. IJN commanders instead brought the fleets closer to home, preparing for an imminate ground assualt. Really......not kidding here. Japan aggressively researched bilogocal weapons while having the puppet state of Manchuria as opposed to atomic research. This is all readily available for research by the way.

Answer 5

Yes, the bombings can be justified. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives were spared by the conclusion of the war and no ground invasion.

There was no justification for Japan's treatment of POW's, or of it's attack on Pearl Harbor and invasions of neighboring nations.

The war came to a speedy recovery after the second bombing. Aparently Japan didn't feel the first attack was horrendous enough to end fighting. I also have no doubt that had Japan possessed nuclear weapons, they wouldn't have had a second thought about using them on the United States.

Answer 6

Why pick on those two raids? There's really no substantial difference between those and hundreds of other strategic bombing runs during the war, in both Hapan and Germany, and the casualties, while unfortunate, were considerably less than in a bombing raid on Tokyo. As a matter of fact, one reason Hiroshima was on the target list is that so many other cities had been bombed to the point that another bombing would have been stirring the rubble, and Hiroshima was pretty well undamaged.

Answer 7

Japan had committed to fighting the war to the last man, woman, and child. Recent documentaries have pointed out that the Japanese public (civilians) would rather die than be captured by the Americans. As the Americans overtook islands of the South Pacific, the civilian population of those islands would suicide, killing their children in the process, rather than be captured.

If America had not used the bombs, countless MORE innocent lives (both military and civilian) would have been lost in the protracted conventional conflict. The sacrifice of those innocent lives saved the lives of many more on both sides.

Answer 8

The civilian death tolls and damages from the nuclear attacks were not far out of line with what the US had already been inflicting for years with its various bombing campaigns, in Japan and Europe.

If Hiroshima and Nagasake can't be "justified," then neither can much of the allied offensive as a whole. Or the axis offensive either. Whatever any of that means.

A similar nuclear attack today would be unthinkable, but that is because the strategic situation of today is very different from what the US faced in 1945.

Answer 9

If you study the history of war you will see that the only "innocents" were those who were attacked without provocation. In the wars of the 20th century, the combatants were the entire populations of the nations involved. It was just as important to stop the production of arms, fuel, and equipment, as it was to kill soldiers. The Japanese were known for their cruelty to prisoners and their killing and atrocities against civilian populations in the Philippines, China, and elsewhere. When the Allies were able to attack the homelands of the Axis, mass bombings destroyed the means of production and killed many in the cities.

Japan was subjected to several mass bombings of their cities and kept on fighting the war. The US decided that the invasion of Japan would kill several million Japanese and would also kill and maim hundreds of thousands of US troops. A single bomb that would result in the destruction of a single city seemed the best way to end the terrible carnage.

Answer 10

Why not? The alternative would have been an invasion of the Home Islands that would have caused far more casualties on both sides.
Far more people died in the conventional bombing of Japan anyway. What is so special about nuclear bombs?

Answer 11

The blame does not fall on the United States.

All blood spilled during war falls on the instigators of war, the Imperial Japanese government.

To suggest that the bombings can not be justified suggests there is a "right" way to wage war. This suggests that wars can be civil, justifiable courses of action, as long as everyone is playing by the rules. This turns war into a diplomatic tool, a game played by politicians to get what they want, and paying for it with soldier's lives.

This is an atrocious attitude to take towards war. There is only one moral reason for waging war; self-defense. And when one country's livelihood is threatened, it has the right to use whatever means to secure its livelihood against its aggressor. Any damage done in during the war is on the blame of the instigators, and to say otherwise is to victimize the guilty and place guilt on the innocent.