Weren't the dropping of 2 A-bombs on Japan a form of collective punishment & therefore illegal & immoral acts?

Question

I realize that it ended the War with Japan and that it probably saved more lives than it cost, but couldn't we acheived the same result bombing military targets rather than cities full of civilians. The consequences, the ends, do not justify the means, if the means involves the immoral use of human beings to acheive those ends. The dropping of A-bombs on the cities of Japan on August 6th and 9th in 1945 were immoral as were the destruction of the Twin Towers in NY on September 11, 2001.

This is an Ethics Q and I'd be glad to hear *reasoned* rebuttals of my ethical judgement or comparison of the aforementioned events.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda declared War on the US; but this Q is not about war declarations, its about the morality of killing innocents.

Moral or ethical issues are often ugly issues. Hard to face them objectively.

I asked a morals Q and what I get are history lessons instead from people who want to ignore or refuse to think philosophically about the morality issues tied to strategic bombings using A-bombs (a euphemism) and terroristic attacks using fully fueled passenger jetliners. Is this the philosophy Category?

Answer 1

Of course it was immoral, it was probably the biggest wrong doing of the 20th century. It can be argued the first bomb ended the war which could have killed thousands more, but the second bomb which killed thousands and left many more with crippling cancer was dropped only as a scientific exercise to see what worked better - plutonium or uranium in a nuclear bomb.

Answer 2

You mentioned moral and ethical issues are ugly and therefore hard to deal with objectively but that's because you belong to a people - American people - who has to question ethics on a daily basis. But you only do that when something really striking happens,like the twin towers attack - which is nothing compared to what the US government did and still does in Iraq and who know where else. Make no mistake,though,this is not an attack to the American civilization,my point is you probably started thinking about ethics when you suffered its absence,when you were treated unethically. It is naive to ask whether the dropping of the bombs that started the WW2 was immoral,because it obviously was. Everybody has a notion of right and wrong,but that's not the point - the point is people keep acting immorally even though they know that what they do is wrong. So there's no point in wondering whether people know if what they do or did is ethical or morally correct or not - the point is: are people consistent in what they stand for and what they actually do?

Answer 3

No.....

More damage was done by incendiary bombing, than with the use of an A bomb.

The A bomb by its name was scarier.

Look up incendiary bombing.

As for ethics, there is a reason for the treaty signed, and is still current to this day.

Japan cannot be allowed to arm themselves, this is something the former Prime Minister Abe tried to turn over, though unsuccessfully.

The crimes against the people, including Japan were just too horrific.

The scary name and its result saved lives, not destroyed, and those of our allied dead, should never be forgotten.

If so, perhaps the computer you are using would not exist.

Somehow don't pigeon hole the US and England saving the world as if this happens all the time, my references are world wide and not from the state of Texas, Australia was involved in two war fronts, with the Dutch, British, Irish, Scots, French, Yugoslavia, Sweden, New Zealand, and Canada long before the US, joined in. The US involvement was for only a short time near the end.

By this time most of Europe was decimated, London blitzkrieged and Darwin in Australia, bombed before Pearl Harbor was attacked. All the South Pacific islands were being invaded.

Answer 4

Two Words - Nuclear Diplomacy. Research has shown that the often cited reason of "saving millions of Americans' lives" is erroneous. Japan had been in contact with ambassadors to other countries, in an attempt to save face while surrendering. We saved lives, but not millions. As the European Theatre of WWII was coming to a close, it became evident that the USSR and Communism would become a threat to democracy. Four days after the Potsdam Conference, Little Boy exploded over Hiroshima. Three days after that, to show Stalin that we could do it as often as we liked, Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. Why we dropped it: It ended the war immediately, saving the US billions of dollars that we no longer had after being at war for so long. It also saved the lives of our soldiers (although the millions number was greatly inflated). Dropping the bombs allowed us to set the terms of Japan's surrender, giving us free reign to re-create their political system and military order. The aggressiveness also allowed us to decide on the tone of future political dealings with the USSR. Why we should not have dropped it: We murdered civilians - people who were not our enemies. That answer alone provides you with 115,000 to 175,000 reasons (the estimated death toll). Japan was attempting to surrender, just taking a little while to work out a way to save face.

Answer 5

What really was going on here, was the rush to end the war against Japan before Stalin could get into it and claim parts of Japan for his Communist Empire. So the question isn't if the A-bombs were a moral trade off to end the war, but rather if the A-bombs were a moral trade off to end the war ahead of schedule in order to stop Soviet expansionism (they wanted the northern Japanese islands -- pre-communist Russia had been at war with Japan).

My father was poised to parachute into Japan before the bombs were dropped which then ended the war early. The bombs probably saved his life and many others and in effect saved my conception/life. In fact the A-bombs were scheduled for use in clearing the invasion areas, an almost certain recipe for radiation poisoning of US troops. Yet my father always took issue with the deployment of the A-bombs against civilians, saying they could have been dropped on sparsely populated islands as demonstrations.

mo is correct about the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, and of Dresden and other German cities. These were designed to inflict civilian deaths and were simply horrific and vindictive, doing little to end the war. This kind of bombing, it is said, does little military damage and only hardens the resolve of the people, as it did when Germans bombed the people of London.

I think the Japanese people would agree with you in your conclusions. But you have bitten off quite a bite when you attack anything about US policies in WWII. WWII is a sacred cow in this country, and most people just will not be willing to examine American war crimes.

Answer 6

Interesting question.

I won't offer an opinion, but I will ask,
and make this point, and by indirect analogy , answer the question, in todays context.

By evidence of the action of it's political leaders from both sides of the US spectrum, all duly elected, as Americans remind the world at nauseum that they live in the greatest democracy on earth, wich also apparently gives them a right to impose their will, anywhere and everywhere it suits them.

And so with the support of the population (George W. Bush was elected NOT once, but TWICE).

Why then this big retrospective attack of moral concience
over something that happened 50 years ago ?

What about what's going on now, and the myriad attrocities, Abu Grabe, Cuba, Blackwater, etc ?

So, it's ok to elect fools and war mongers, who turn war into a sustainable business model for fun and profit then ?

That's no crime against humanity is it ?

And "the US population takes no responsibility for their decisions. "

That line, will be on the epitath of American empire, huberis, and hegemony.

Good night nurse.
LuvUall, Ba-bye.

Answer 7

I guess u r totally wrong in ur judgements ... wether or not it was war crime or a form of collective punishment ... the real reason for bombing 2 cities with civilians rather than military targets was .... Experiment .... ! = |

thats true , history tells how anxious the USA was to know which bomb got more destructive power .... Yupe , there was 2 methods for splitting the atom to create chain reaction for the atomic bomb ... rather than chemical and scientific terms ...
I can tell u that they couldn't decide which one deserved mass production ... so they decided testing it in alive events ... they -sorrowfully- chose 2 cities with almost the same population and area , hiro. and naga. .... Results came after dropping bombs and it was found that atomic way at hiroshima was better as it killed more than 114 thousand at the first second and 200 thousand with injuries .... and atomic radiations ( lol it was called later ... Devil fangs.. )

hope I didn't go far from answering ur question ... ( I know I did) but I needed to show the real reason for bombing 2 civilian cities when the war was about to end for the US side... !

Answer 8

You didn't provide your justification for your statement, so "reasoned" rebuttal to your justification is not possible.

But here's some of the reasons for the bomb. Since you do not provide the reason for your position that it was equivalent to the twin towers, I'll leave it to you if there is moral equivalence for the twin towers.

The Japanese had showed signs of extreme fanaticism, including increased suicide attacks on ships, planes, and fixed positions. The army assasinated civilian refugees who attempted to surrender during island battles like Iwo Jima. Japanese and Pacific Island civilians were being slaughtered by Japanese soldiers every day that the war continued.

Bombing of military targets resulted in far higher civilian casualties than the atomic bomb eventually did (We didn't have smart bombs back then). So your assumption about military targets is incorrect.

Russia was preparing to invade Japan. Russian invasion of Japan would have resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, and the potential Russian occupation of Japan.

The war needed to end immediately, or the Japanese civilian casualties at the hands of the Chinese, Russian, and Allied forces would have been in the millions And, selfishly, those opposing forces would also avoid 10's of thousands of losses.

The atomic bomb, as horrendous as it was, was viewed in the day as the most viable alternative to a loss of life (including Japanese) on a scale never before witnessed.

I don't think that was the purpose of the twin towers, nor do I think any of the conditions listed have equivalent counterparts in Obama's "war".

Answer 9

The target had to be certain size city, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You know both cities are similar conditions.
Surrounded by small mountains, river and sea are close, appropriate city infrastructures, such as road, car, bus, tram, etc.

US could drop the bomb above the dessert island first to show its power ahead. But they didn't.
They needed gather the data of its effect and influence for 2 different kinds of bomb, one is uranium, the other is plutonium.
Actually many officials and scholars came to both cities and took data and film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JGu__2h5Co

It was war time. I think using any kind of bombs would be reasoned. But I also think they could show its power ahead of time, like demoralizing fire and warning shot of gun.

Answer 10

Imo, you are assuming that the location and timing of the dropping of the A-bombs were a matter of choice and that this is an error. I have read that the detonation of these bombs were geophysical in nature, in other words that there was a triangulation window for every location on the globe.
What this means is that detonation was only possible at those locations on those days and nowhere else. To wait for the window to arrive at say Berlin may have required waiting months. Intelligence had it that the Germans would have already used their missiles to bring the rest of the world to its knees. Decisions had to be made in a hurry. Were these decisions illegal and immoral? Yes, imo, they were. However in war, whether justified or not, legality and morality can easily go out the window, especially if the enemy is perceived as not sticking to the rules of combat.
Look at all the confusion regarding torture used on pow's at this very moment. The politicians are daily having to protect their backs for fear of landing in jail, and this is by far a minute issue compared to the mass killings and mutilations that you are referring to. Cheers!