Was it "justified" the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Question

Most people in this country "think" that the nuclear bombings of Japan was justified. Now I am not going to say the Tokyo government was "goody-goody". They were not. And I accept that the Japanese goverment of those days started the war against China in 1937 criminally. And, yes, they committed mass killings [Nazis I would have fear them more, however!]. But let us not fool ourselves. Japanese military machine was financed from the US in the thirties by selling them scrap metals. And most Yanks paid almost no attention to Nankin rape of 1937. Neither the British. We thought that was "Asians' business.
And Truman had other reasons to bomb the hell the Japanese: blame scientists, Fermi and Oppenheimer who created the bomb and wished to be drop on Japan. And wanted to impress Stalin and claim hegemony of USA on the world. So it was not just "save some lives and stop the war". And dropping those things on women and children smack for me MURDER. What do you say?

Answer 1

I disagree. They got what they deserved at the time. Moreover, not dropping the bombs would've cost thousands more American servicemen to die had we attempted an invasion of the Japanese homeland.

Answer 2

When a soldier or warrior goes to war, they are fully aware of the risks involved yet most of the time it is their choice. Most of the non-combatants in both Japanese cities did not make the concious choice to be involved. Just look at how our governments go to war despite gross public objection in these days. I would feel that in a similiar manner the innocents who died in those bombings to save a few more soldiers on either side got the muddy end of the stick, most of them not wanting to be part of the war in the first place. Do you really think that the bombs would have stopped the war had they been deployed in 1941? It was not in my opinion justified by any means. Saddly a lot of things man does aren't even when they think they are. We can be so easily brainwashed to thinking that murder is justified, weather it is to blow ourselves up in the name of religion or dropping the largest bomb known to mankind at the time into a civilian populated area to end a already ending war. The only war that I deem is justified is when protecting your own life and land, strangely that is what the soldiers in Irak, or any other invaded country where doing.

I suggest future wars be fought on a playing field or a battle of champions and our governments to leave us uninvolved plebs to carry on with our lives. May the better man win.

Answer 3

One lesson in history says we must not measure the past using the yardstick of the present. The American military authorities who ordered the atomic bombing on both Hiroshima and the Japanese militarists who insisted on fighting on until death did what they thought was best. To understand both sides of the equation, we need to read the prevailing mood of the time and this can be done by archival research. The Americans were both tired of war and convinced they had to carry on till the end. The Japanese thought it the most honorable thing to do resist till the end, in fact they created the kamikaze at the time and trained both women and children in hand to hand combat and - to give them concrete examples - reminding them what thousands of their their brave countrymen did when the Allies captured Saipan and Okinawa -jump off cliffs in mass suicides. Even if the Americans did not bomb to oblivion 150,000 people in two Japanese cities and the war dragged on until 1946, the Japanese people would all have died anyway because of the culture of sepukku- suicide rather than surrender. Surrender was never an option for them, that's why they treated the Allied POWS in Bataan and Corregidor with such inhumanity because soldiers who surrender to the enemy are deemed the lowest of vermin, and in those heady days, when the fate of the Emperor was uncertain and military-controlled media kept hammering at the value of loyalty, the stage was set for a Japanese Masada. It would sound too simplistic to say the two bombs brought the Japanese to their senses, but they did, for now they realized they were not just talking of communal self-immolation but a total annihilation of the thousand-year old culture of the descendants of Jimmu Tenno. Faced between the choice of honor and survival, the Japanese chose not surrender but survival. This analysis is not meant to absolve the Americans, instead this should strengthen our conviction that war is always ugly and so we must always endeavor to walk the ways of peace.

Answer 4

well I agree with you that dropping an atomic bomb on a city is flat out irresponsible.

Buuut the atomic bombs weren't nearly as bad as the firebombing campaign we did there. People don't remember that... look how many people died. One of the most horrific events in the history of mankind (est. 500,000 deaths and 5 million homeless.... that's 9/11 x 150) that's not including the atom bombs. Then on top of that we dropped a couple atom bombs...

Actually if you look at history the Japanese were ready to surrender when we dropped the second one and we dropped it anyway. Pretty barbaric.

Also to everyone that said oh we warned them... listen look at the link I provided... we destroyed 67 japanese cities... we leveled tokyo. Imagine if a foreign county leveled NYC. We're not talking losing the WTC we're talking the entire city. Would you care if they had warned you before they did it? Just look at Katrina the residents of New Orleans new that was coming a few days before and many couldn't leave. Those same type of citizens in those two cities fried, there is no way to justify that.

Answer 5

In my mind and heart such a thing can never be justified and I mean NEVER!

Major General "Colonel" Billy Mitchell warned the Armed Forces, during his detestable Court Martial that we would one day be attacked at Pearl Harbor...and by air! They laughed and actually called this learned man a fool for having the foresight they didn't! We got caught with our pants down around our ankles on that fateful Sunday morning in 1941. It incensed the powers that were to such a degree that the U.S.A. finally declared war on Japan. Prior to that, despite the cries of Jews, refugees from other nations and the information the U.S. had on Germany, F.D.R. wanted nothing to do with the war in Europe. In the end, and because they could not defeat the Japanese by any usual means in war-time, the U.S.A. dropped the bombs that would "GO DOWN IN INFAMY" as the most perverted and cowardly act this nation has ever perpetrated on people of another country.

Not only did they murder and grotesquely disfigure the people of Hiroshima & Nagasaki and beyond...they gave birth to the truth of the most frightening means of weaponry the world has ever known...and the battle of nuclear "power" still rages on as I write this! Make no mistake...if the people of the world do not fight against these and other types of weapons of mass destruction, we'll go on living in terror of the day it strikes again!

Answer 6

Oh, get off of it. Wonderful HINDSIGHT. Every soldier in WW2 feared the day of having to invade mainland Japan, which was expected to cause millions of lives on both sides. When the bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered, everybody was happy, including many of the Japanese. The people today sniffing at the use of the atomic weapons just don't want any of the guilt smeared on their clean shirts, but who cares about that? They weren't THERE during WW2.

Answer 7

it truly is beneficial to discover the 'trial run' component in that when spending the equivalent of 40 billion in todays words coming up this technologies no be counted if the prospect to purpose it out on a populated aim and garner the information on after outcomes of the bomb grew to become into too enormous a temptation to omit inspite of the jap already exhibiting a willingness to offer up and truly there grew to become into actually no choose for the 2nd.The Russians have been in basic terms a week or thus faraway from getting into there first and this might even have helped the Hawks to push for it relatively is use leaving the jap no time to contemplate renounce.

Answer 8

Not to mention the fact that we dropped leaflets in the days before warning every man women and child what was to come and to leave. I don't like the fact that we had to do that, I don't like the fact that nuclear weapons today are 100 times more powerful that fat man and little boy. But when you consider how long that war went on, it needed to end. No one, could anticipate the extent of the damage. Our government knew it would be severe, but at the time the Japanese were in talks with the US, IN the US, while at the same time their attack on Pearl Harbor was underway. It is really easy to play Monday morning quarterback.