Surely the pilots were briefed about the destructive power of the weapon they were going to drop on civilians.
He knew. He had a choice. He could have chosen not to fly that mission.
Even with the risk of being court marshalled. Even if somebody else would have done it anyway.
He could have stepped aside and chosen despise or even punishment over glory.
But he didn't. He went ahead and pulled the trigger on women and children. He chose the glory.
Saying later that "those were the times" does not exonerate you from the sins committed.
--
This is a good example of choices that we might face in our lives.
We all have a choice not to participate in the insanity (or "immorality") of war.
In fact, if we all did, wars wouldn't exist at all.
Refusing to go to the battlefield and kill other young people is not immoral.
It is the most moral and humane thing you can do.
If you ever need to make that choice, remember this.
I highly recommend reading Tolstoy's "The kingdom of God is within you", were he does a very deep analysis of war, state, violence and Christianity not as religion, but as a non-violent philosophy of life.
Thoughts on the matter might be different when fighting an enemy that has more or less threatened to wipe out all who disagree with them. Including the fact they have no problem killing your women and children before you've even decided to fight back.
You should really speak to some Chinese that are old enough to remember what they survived before you start judging with your modern sensibilities.
It was total war not declared by the side that eventually won. Consider yourself lucky.
If a person is faced with a choice of ending ongoing bloodshed at a cost of participating in that bloodshed ... then it is a coward and a despicable man who doesn't act.
Those who were a part of that mission acted with the intention of ending the war. And that's exactly what happened.
There would have been many, many more dead on both the Japanese and the American side if those bombs didn't drop. That was painfully obvious. Every single Axis power fought to the last man up to that point. Japan was the most fervent, fanatical of them all. There isn't a single shred of evidence to suggest that a ground invasion of Japan, which would have been necessary if it wasn't for the bombing, wasn't going to be an absolute horror worse than any nuclear bombing.
They didn't know of the effects the bomb would have on the hibakusha.
In a total war scenario, civilians who are engaged in support activities for the war effort are valid targets.
If the Germans or the Japanese could have, do you think they wouldn't have bombed American steel factories and weapons plants?
After what the Japanese military did to the people in Nanking, they have NO right to stand on moral high ground and complain about what happened to their civilians.
Americans didn't force children to watch their mothers being raped, the Japanese did that. Americans didn't give children candy laced with anthrax spores, the Japanese did that. Americans didn't force Japanese women to endure hundreds of rapes as "comfort women", the Japanese did that. Americans didn't force Japanese civilians or POWs to take part in lethal experiments, the Japanese did that.
Dropping those bombs was right. Dropping those bombs was just. Yes, those were the times and the existential threat of nuclear weapons was the only message that particular enemy was prepared to receive.
I totally agree, that it's immoral to participate in war, but how to reconcile that position with current world? Imagine you are a Kurd and ISIS is attacking your home. What would you do? The only way I see is to flee, but it's not scalable.
>We all have a choice not to participate in the insanity (or "immorality") of war. In fact, if we all did, wars wouldn't exist at all.
Refusing to go to the battlefield and kill other young people is not immoral. It is the most moral and humane thing you can do.
That's just a defense of the status quo, though.
Going to war is automatically immoral if we are at a global maximum for, I don't know, whatever quantity you're trying to indirectly adjust by going to war.
The easiest example to use is probably WW2 (it also happens to be relevant to the article): If you want to minimize oppression, and you judge the morality of actions based on whether they increase or decrease the amount of oppression in the world, then refusing to go to Europe and fight the Nazis is not the most moral thing you can do - it's an act that doesn't decrease oppression as much as agreeing to fight the Nazis, and since you rank the morality of actions by the change in oppression, then going to Europe to kill young Wehrmachts is more moral than not going to Europe to kill young Wehrmachts.
I'm not sure what the point of your post is. The whole discussion happening around the atomic bombs dropped on Japan is - have they actually prevented more deaths, because Japan would not have surrendered otherwise? More people have died in firebombing of Tokyo, yet Japan was not willing to surrender.
Of course, you could shield yourself behind morals and just say "well, they could have chosen not to go to war and not to kill other people!", but it's no different than a 5 year old child saying "people just shouldn't kill each other", without real understanding why people do it. To err makes us human.
> Saying later that "those were the times" does not exonerate you from the sins committed.
Exonerate? Perhaps not. But context does matter, and people make decisions with the information they have available at the time.
One thing I have found helpful in understanding what you describe as "the insanity of war" is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. He has an episode on this very topic, which he entitled "Logical Insanity[0]" regarding the build up to the dropping of the atomic bombs, and how the incremental escalation of savagery in WWII might gradually alter people's perspectives on morality.
what i fail to understand is why female lives are worth more than mens?
while i agree that war is despicable and we all have the responsibility to work against systems and circumstances that will lead to war i think you coose the easy way.
from your comment I doubt you have ever been in the army- I have it's compulsory where I live so I can understand the pressure a bit better than somebody who never experienced this system.
another thing: during WWII in the Nazi regime it was not only your live that was forfeited when refusing to join the army but your family had to face repressions too.
I consider myself very lucky to not face such grave circumstances and decisions...
The US dropped incendiary bombs in dozens of japanese cities, so an atomic bomb didn't really add much to the brutality of the situation.
Furthermore, if the objective of these bombs was to simply convince the japanese to shorten the war, couldn't they have been dropped off the coast of Tokyo?
The US actually did consider this, but were worried that it would embolden the Japanese if the demonstration ended up being a failure(i.e. the bomb didn't properly detonate, yield was less than anticipated, etc.
He addressed this: "Later, another person questions using the atomic bomb at all. Why not drop it as a show of force in a rural area far away from people? Why didn’t America prove it had a superweapon then ask Japan to surrender?"
“What would be lost?” Beser says. “The integrity of your threat is gone … the ability to carry out your threat is paramount. You do not win a war by just threatening to do things and then go ‘poof.’
Think about the range of preferences held by Nazi high command as it became apparent they would lose the war: Some were prepared to go to their deaths and take as many of their own citizens with them in the name of ideology. Some desperately wanted a way to save their own skin, some were really trying to the greatest good for the greatest number.
A 'preview bomb' announced through diplomatic channels would lend itself to debate among the top leadership that had everything to lose in defeat: life, power, and "face".
Given that time to debate, there's more room to compromise with the hawkish view of adapt to the new weapon and keep resisting through rural and guerilla means. Japan's main play was to "rip off the steering wheel in the game of chicken" by saying we have every last person on this island ready to go kamikaze, you sure you want to walk into that? The actual bombings were probably necessary response of "ripping off our steering wheel" too. Basically, leaving no doubt as to the ruthlessness was essential to achieving the desired end - surrender without negotiation. Otherwise the US would be the impossible position of basically valuing the lives of Japanese citizens more than their own government which was prepared to use them as pawns.
"I say war by its very nature is immoral. If you are going to prolong a war by using a lesser weapon, that is an immorality. But I do not see any special immoralities where it comes to using the best weapon to get it over with in a hurry."
More quickly doesn't always equal less casualties, for instance. And even where more quickly does equal less casualties for your side, it could mean vastly more for the other side, or less military deaths but more civilian one. Or how about the potential for ongoing damage to both environment and survivors health.
This isn't to say that a nuclear attack, or any other weapon that could bring a war to a swift close, is automatically worse - just that's not automatically and unassailably better either.
Unassailable? That short-sited philosophy essentially legitimizes the use of any weapon if the goal in using it is to finish a war faster. The goal of each side in a war is to dominate and win as fast as possible, but there are degrees of immorality, and to stoop to deplorable means (gas, nukes, biological) to bring about a quicker end is to lose the high ground and very likely inspire surrounding nations to unite against you. Thankfully, our leaders have realized this, otherwise we'd have kept on using nukes when in conflicts since dropping them on Japan.
The major premise of the statement, that war was a given, is effectively 'unassailable' in this case, but it isn't difficult to imagine such a calculus being abused. I think it was especially a danger when one compares the apparent flight of talent from the public sector when you compare the people working for the federal government in the 30s and early 40s to the personality types and intellectual capacity of people behind the red scare in the 50s.
Furthermore there are even worse imaginable scenarios than occasional use of nuclear weapons, namely, complete compliance from everyone else without nuclear weapons. In my opinion, many of the people in government in the 50s and 60s really were motivated by an anger toward people who they thought were their inferiors displaying insufficient deference, and I think tools to demand greater compliance can have a self-reinforcing effect—"these animals don't respond to x level of force, so we use y level, which is much softer than z level" et cetera.
And yet with hindsight we see that after ending the war in the Pacific, nuclear weapons were a significant factor in keeping the Cold War "cold" long enough for the relative strengths of the two systems to matter as much as how the balance of military power happened to lay at the end of WWII.
So my point isn't that I think the end didn't justify the means in this case, but that it is because of the specifics rather than the value of the rule. As a general rule, it is a horrible one. Just as sometimes fighting a war is better than not, the opposite can also be true, and whether or not its important to insist on supremacy, even when there is little cost, is a discussion that should come long before the analysis of different weapons' impact.
The danger is the implied generality of the rule. It is tempting to shift the conversation to quantifiable metrics like lives lost, because it is easier than the very difficult, soft discussions about whether pursuing various policies do anything to create the world we want to live in.
Seriously? He basically says that it's better that many innocent civilians die than that even more soldiers (but fewer civilians) die, over a longer span of time.
It's a pretty sane opinion to hold: basically, it boils down to "in war times, value(civilian) == value(soldier)". But I wouldn't call it "unassailable", and I'm sure many will disagree with it.
It makes sense in the context of WWII, where conventional bombing campaigns killed people at a slower rate that atomic. Also, it just took a localized atomic campaign to cause that war to cease everywhere, whereas increased conventional bombing in all theaters would have not ended the war so quickly.
There might be a modern analogy to be drawn: "It's more moral to torturously murder a few enemies on internet video, such that the rest of your enemies are sufficiently scared to engage, than it is to try to engage them all in battle."
All new evidence points to the fact that the Japanese were thinking of surrendering and that the Americans new it, before the bombs were dropped. Also it shows that the bombs had little to no effect on their reasoning.
They whished to surrender on their own terms which they did, more or less, despite the "unconditional surrender" bs.
What new evidence? I searched for this a couple of months ago and found that the "Japanese were close to surrendering" is one more recent 'internet myth' that's been propagating lately, with no real hard, substantiated evidence. Please help me correct myself on this issue.
What are you talking about? Japan completely gave up on declaring their own terms. Taking away the godhood of the emperor was a colossal blow. If Japan surrendered on their own terms, there would absolutely have been no occupation.
Japan for a decade after the war was a completely occupied, controlled, planned state (by the US). They got NONE of their own terms. What about "unconditional surrender" is BS?
What is your source for this new evidence? There is overwhelming evidence that is quite the contrary to what you are saying at the time it happened (which is why they dropped the bomb) and even now in retrospect.
> All new evidence points to the fact that the Japanese were thinking of surrendering and that the Americans new it, before the bombs were dropped.
What new evidence? This doesn't even make sense. There were fighting until the last man on every island up to that point. What signs of surrender were there?
9-10 March "Operation Meetinghouse", six months prior to the nukes: "Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of the city was destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died." This was more deadly than either of the atomic bombs, it just required far more planes and pilots.
Plenty of US leaders at the time opposed it (some privately). Here are quotes from Dwight Eisenhower, Admiral William D. Leahy (Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman), Herbert Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur, etc:
Accepting that a nuclear weapon was the best way to end the war, was it really necessary to use 2? It's the second one that doesn't sit well with me. Even by the logic in this account, the first bomb made the threat of subsequent attacks real. At least it is still being discussed and debated.
What's crazy is that they planned to continue using them as they became available. So 3, 4, 5 ..., 20, etc. 100? It's hard to know at what point they would have stopped had the regime not surrendered (which they were already planning to do).
So it's not really "it's better that 200k Japanese civilians die than x US soldiers" (which is a despicable view and is based on the false views that massacring civilians is OK and that unconditional surrender was necessary), because they didn't know two bombs was the magic number. It could have been 10, or 50. Basically they were probably willing to kill a whole lot more civilians than they did.
They dropped the first and Japan did not surrender. Only after the second. So, accepting it was the best way to end the war, it was necessary to use 2. From what I've read, many high officials still didn't want to accept the surrender, even after the second bomb.
Its likely that they used 2 because they only had 2. If they had a dozen or the thousand they have today they would had used them all.
The real effects of such weapons were unknown and the public opinion didnt really care about killing all those inocent civilians(it is not that different from the mass bombings done in the war, with "conventional weapons")
I think the arguments are valid for his paradigm. Some of us may have problems even entertaining such ideas, but then again we grew up to a docile, friendly japan. Just to make it more contemporary, swap Japan with Iran.
(Disclosure: I'm not in anyway against Iran or something)
What most people in the west neglect about Japan was what it was doing to China and south-east Asia during the war. Their killing of civilians was greater than what the atomic bombs did. That's where the good came from - saving the rest of Asia, not saving America.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were industrial cities making the weapons that the Japanese were using to kill the Chinese civilians. The residents were civilians but not entirely innocent. They were part of the war machine.
I don't follow your logic. He said it justified a quick end to the war against a strong adversary. Iraq barely put up fight against the American war machine. If anything, Bush and Cheney wanted it to go on a little longer so they could funnel some more money to their military-industrial buddies. I'd hate to sound like some talking-points liberal but at this point I think that part is already accepted as fact.
[+] [-] codeshaman|10 years ago|reply
Saying later that "those were the times" does not exonerate you from the sins committed.
--
This is a good example of choices that we might face in our lives.
We all have a choice not to participate in the insanity (or "immorality") of war. In fact, if we all did, wars wouldn't exist at all.
Refusing to go to the battlefield and kill other young people is not immoral. It is the most moral and humane thing you can do.
If you ever need to make that choice, remember this.
I highly recommend reading Tolstoy's "The kingdom of God is within you", were he does a very deep analysis of war, state, violence and Christianity not as religion, but as a non-violent philosophy of life.
[+] [-] talmand|10 years ago|reply
Thoughts on the matter might be different when fighting an enemy that has more or less threatened to wipe out all who disagree with them. Including the fact they have no problem killing your women and children before you've even decided to fight back.
You should really speak to some Chinese that are old enough to remember what they survived before you start judging with your modern sensibilities.
It was total war not declared by the side that eventually won. Consider yourself lucky.
[+] [-] maratd|10 years ago|reply
Those who were a part of that mission acted with the intention of ending the war. And that's exactly what happened.
There would have been many, many more dead on both the Japanese and the American side if those bombs didn't drop. That was painfully obvious. Every single Axis power fought to the last man up to that point. Japan was the most fervent, fanatical of them all. There isn't a single shred of evidence to suggest that a ground invasion of Japan, which would have been necessary if it wasn't for the bombing, wasn't going to be an absolute horror worse than any nuclear bombing.
[+] [-] LordKano|10 years ago|reply
In a total war scenario, civilians who are engaged in support activities for the war effort are valid targets.
If the Germans or the Japanese could have, do you think they wouldn't have bombed American steel factories and weapons plants?
After what the Japanese military did to the people in Nanking, they have NO right to stand on moral high ground and complain about what happened to their civilians.
Americans didn't force children to watch their mothers being raped, the Japanese did that. Americans didn't give children candy laced with anthrax spores, the Japanese did that. Americans didn't force Japanese women to endure hundreds of rapes as "comfort women", the Japanese did that. Americans didn't force Japanese civilians or POWs to take part in lethal experiments, the Japanese did that.
Dropping those bombs was right. Dropping those bombs was just. Yes, those were the times and the existential threat of nuclear weapons was the only message that particular enemy was prepared to receive.
[+] [-] monort|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pliny|10 years ago|reply
That's just a defense of the status quo, though.
Going to war is automatically immoral if we are at a global maximum for, I don't know, whatever quantity you're trying to indirectly adjust by going to war.
The easiest example to use is probably WW2 (it also happens to be relevant to the article): If you want to minimize oppression, and you judge the morality of actions based on whether they increase or decrease the amount of oppression in the world, then refusing to go to Europe and fight the Nazis is not the most moral thing you can do - it's an act that doesn't decrease oppression as much as agreeing to fight the Nazis, and since you rank the morality of actions by the change in oppression, then going to Europe to kill young Wehrmachts is more moral than not going to Europe to kill young Wehrmachts.
[+] [-] gambiting|10 years ago|reply
Of course, you could shield yourself behind morals and just say "well, they could have chosen not to go to war and not to kill other people!", but it's no different than a 5 year old child saying "people just shouldn't kill each other", without real understanding why people do it. To err makes us human.
[+] [-] JeremyNT|10 years ago|reply
Exonerate? Perhaps not. But context does matter, and people make decisions with the information they have available at the time.
One thing I have found helpful in understanding what you describe as "the insanity of war" is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. He has an episode on this very topic, which he entitled "Logical Insanity[0]" regarding the build up to the dropping of the atomic bombs, and how the incremental escalation of savagery in WWII might gradually alter people's perspectives on morality.
[0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-l...
[+] [-] verinus|10 years ago|reply
while i agree that war is despicable and we all have the responsibility to work against systems and circumstances that will lead to war i think you coose the easy way.
from your comment I doubt you have ever been in the army- I have it's compulsory where I live so I can understand the pressure a bit better than somebody who never experienced this system.
another thing: during WWII in the Nazi regime it was not only your live that was forfeited when refusing to join the army but your family had to face repressions too.
I consider myself very lucky to not face such grave circumstances and decisions...
[+] [-] morkfromork|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happyscrappy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forinti|10 years ago|reply
Furthermore, if the objective of these bombs was to simply convince the japanese to shorten the war, couldn't they have been dropped off the coast of Tokyo?
[+] [-] artmageddon|10 years ago|reply
http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-15-3-b-...
[+] [-] rubidium|10 years ago|reply
“What would be lost?” Beser says. “The integrity of your threat is gone … the ability to carry out your threat is paramount. You do not win a war by just threatening to do things and then go ‘poof.’
[+] [-] stillsut|10 years ago|reply
A 'preview bomb' announced through diplomatic channels would lend itself to debate among the top leadership that had everything to lose in defeat: life, power, and "face".
Given that time to debate, there's more room to compromise with the hawkish view of adapt to the new weapon and keep resisting through rural and guerilla means. Japan's main play was to "rip off the steering wheel in the game of chicken" by saying we have every last person on this island ready to go kamikaze, you sure you want to walk into that? The actual bombings were probably necessary response of "ripping off our steering wheel" too. Basically, leaving no doubt as to the ruthlessness was essential to achieving the desired end - surrender without negotiation. Otherwise the US would be the impossible position of basically valuing the lives of Japanese citizens more than their own government which was prepared to use them as pawns.
[+] [-] adnam|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veidr|10 years ago|reply
That's a pretty unassailable statement.
[+] [-] prof_hobart|10 years ago|reply
More quickly doesn't always equal less casualties, for instance. And even where more quickly does equal less casualties for your side, it could mean vastly more for the other side, or less military deaths but more civilian one. Or how about the potential for ongoing damage to both environment and survivors health.
This isn't to say that a nuclear attack, or any other weapon that could bring a war to a swift close, is automatically worse - just that's not automatically and unassailably better either.
[+] [-] RankingMember|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rz2k|10 years ago|reply
Furthermore there are even worse imaginable scenarios than occasional use of nuclear weapons, namely, complete compliance from everyone else without nuclear weapons. In my opinion, many of the people in government in the 50s and 60s really were motivated by an anger toward people who they thought were their inferiors displaying insufficient deference, and I think tools to demand greater compliance can have a self-reinforcing effect—"these animals don't respond to x level of force, so we use y level, which is much softer than z level" et cetera.
And yet with hindsight we see that after ending the war in the Pacific, nuclear weapons were a significant factor in keeping the Cold War "cold" long enough for the relative strengths of the two systems to matter as much as how the balance of military power happened to lay at the end of WWII.
So my point isn't that I think the end didn't justify the means in this case, but that it is because of the specifics rather than the value of the rule. As a general rule, it is a horrible one. Just as sometimes fighting a war is better than not, the opposite can also be true, and whether or not its important to insist on supremacy, even when there is little cost, is a discussion that should come long before the analysis of different weapons' impact.
The danger is the implied generality of the rule. It is tempting to shift the conversation to quantifiable metrics like lives lost, because it is easier than the very difficult, soft discussions about whether pursuing various policies do anything to create the world we want to live in.
[+] [-] skrebbel|10 years ago|reply
It's a pretty sane opinion to hold: basically, it boils down to "in war times, value(civilian) == value(soldier)". But I wouldn't call it "unassailable", and I'm sure many will disagree with it.
[+] [-] MrBuddyCasino|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] euroclydon|10 years ago|reply
There might be a modern analogy to be drawn: "It's more moral to torturously murder a few enemies on internet video, such that the rest of your enemies are sufficiently scared to engage, than it is to try to engage them all in battle."
[+] [-] mclee|10 years ago|reply
Both seem to claim they are the only one who flew both missions though, I can't tell if they are correct.
[Edit: Changed the link to a wordpress site for easier reading.]
[+] [-] ioanpopovici|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dabeeeenster|10 years ago|reply
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japa...
[+] [-] sanoli|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpodgursky|10 years ago|reply
Japan for a decade after the war was a completely occupied, controlled, planned state (by the US). They got NONE of their own terms. What about "unconditional surrender" is BS?
[+] [-] davidjeet|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jeema101|10 years ago|reply
That seems to me to be the most powerful evidence against the notion that it had 'little or no effect' on their reasoning...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyokuon-h%C5%8Ds%C5%8D
[+] [-] maratd|10 years ago|reply
What new evidence? This doesn't even make sense. There were fighting until the last man on every island up to that point. What signs of surrender were there?
[+] [-] ant6n|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
9-10 March "Operation Meetinghouse", six months prior to the nukes: "Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of the city was destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died." This was more deadly than either of the atomic bombs, it just required far more planes and pilots.
[+] [-] vadman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottjad|10 years ago|reply
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm
[+] [-] swehner|10 years ago|reply
A person who thinks they know lots, but actually don't. Especially with age they think they are owed respect, but no
[+] [-] dade_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottjad|10 years ago|reply
So it's not really "it's better that 200k Japanese civilians die than x US soldiers" (which is a despicable view and is based on the false views that massacring civilians is OK and that unconditional surrender was necessary), because they didn't know two bombs was the magic number. It could have been 10, or 50. Basically they were probably willing to kill a whole lot more civilians than they did.
[+] [-] sanoli|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leojg|10 years ago|reply
The real effects of such weapons were unknown and the public opinion didnt really care about killing all those inocent civilians(it is not that different from the mass bombings done in the war, with "conventional weapons")
[+] [-] stonewhite|10 years ago|reply
I think the arguments are valid for his paradigm. Some of us may have problems even entertaining such ideas, but then again we grew up to a docile, friendly japan. Just to make it more contemporary, swap Japan with Iran.
(Disclosure: I'm not in anyway against Iran or something)
[+] [-] fatjokes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asbostos|10 years ago|reply
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were industrial cities making the weapons that the Japanese were using to kill the Chinese civilians. The residents were civilians but not entirely innocent. They were part of the war machine.
[+] [-] whitenoice|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatjokes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verinus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatjokes|10 years ago|reply
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