Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2014)
ahf.nuclearmuseum.org
ahf.nuclearmuseum.org
Unlike the vast majority of people, I will say that I wasn't moved in any special way from the exhibits and memorials I saw there compared to other war memorials I have also visited.
A weapon of mass destruction was used, many people died, a city was leveled. What happened isn't any different from what has been and can be seen from and during any other war or armed conflict. My takeaway still was and is that warfare and human tendency towards violence are the true root evils that must be extinguished to reduce human suffering, nuclear weapons are merely a symptom.
No, I do not care if you are offended from reading this. I do not share the mainstream "nuclear bad" narrative.
As far as I'm concerned, a person killed by nuclear weapon is just as tragic as a person killed by any other weapon of war. Wars are tragedy incarnate, be it World War 2 or any other war. Those who wage wars of aggression are committing crimes against humanity.
In light of that statement — and your thoughtful comment generally — I am curious how you view the United States’ involvement in WWII.
Specifically, do you consider the U.S. to have been an aggressor in WWII?
No, the US responded to hostility from Germany and Japan. The US's involvement in WW2 was, at least fundamentally, defensive in nature.
Some would argue the State Department orchestrated Pearl Harbor to set the stage for US response and involvement in WW2, but that is perhaps besides the point.
The best way to simulate that in the 2020s is to read “Hiroshima” as the last article (of 70) in the compilation The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, 1947 republished 1988. It’s out of print, but affordably available in the used book market. Something about being embedded in truly major world events brings out the best in writers, so all 70 magazine articles are easy reads of sometimes difficult content. By the time you reach “Hiroshima” after 500+ pages of WWII articles starting in London 1939, you will have gained a bit of the mindset of the educated war-weary-but-victorious 1946 American reader for which the essay was written. And you will read the essay a bit differently.
[edited for Hersey, not Hershey…idiot autocorrect…]
However… 70-80 million people died in WWII, or about 3% of the population of the world.
I don’t agree with using nuclear weapons. But… how many Japanese lives were spared with a quick end to the war? That’s not a justification, it’s the counterpoint to “we can never do x”.
[1] https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshi...
They had been firebombing and eradicating whole Japanese cities for days/weeks. (Another topic to discuss -- that the pressure was applied to the civilian non-fighting population, regardless of the method.)
The late Japanese surrender is a failure of diplomacy -- the two sides could not communicate and neither side could swallow the whole "emperor question."
When the Russians started moving and declared war to Japan, both sides gave up something: "unconditional" surrender and emperor got to stay and not implicated in anything related to the war.
See the whole background behind the following trials, where a lot of people either did not get prosecuted or chose to die instead of implicating the emperor in any way.
I don't.
EDIT: Deleted a segment which is probably untrue. Here is what I said:
~However, I don’t think the people that decided to use the nuclear bomb on cities cared that much about justice for the crimes of the Japanese army. If they had, they probably wouldn’t have given the war criminals high positions at the US army after the war.~
The bombings were justified for revenge?
* It was a formality, the Soviets were about to invade Manchuria, we should have just blockaded the Japanese mainland and let events play out, not evaporate 100k civilians.
(There is nothing particularly special about the use of nuclear weapons here, the bombing of Dresden is just as indefensible).
This is certainly wrong because the first bomb wasn't enough for them to surrender. In fact, the general didn't want to surrender at all and commited suicide after the emperor forced them to stop. It isn't clear under what other conditions Japan would surrender. In my view Japan would probably still control Manchukuo today if not for the bomb.
We can debate after the fact whether using a nuclear bomb was correct but the brutal Japanese regime had to be stopped immediately. We don't have the privilege of knowing the future when making difficult decisions.
It’s potentially very important to know that the terms of surrender changed after the dropping of the second bomb. The new terms allowed the emperor to remain. Which is a huge deal. Maybe the Allies could have offered that before dropping two nukes?
https://homework.study.com/explanation/why-did-japan-reject-...
I may have misremembered reading about this years ago. I don’t think the terms changed, but there’s an argument that if the US was more clear about the emperor’s position post-surrender, the Japanese would have surrendered much sooner.
Civilian casualties were not a huge concern when waging war for anyone (and certainly not for the Japanese military!) in that particular era so bringing that up is anachronistic thinking.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...
Edit: the article link was https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/08/09/why-nagasaki/
I've only seen the contrarian opinion coming from westerners. Perhaps because there's barely any media from Hollywood about the pacific theater, and if there was (eg. HBO's The Pacific), it does not show the horrors of it.
If one is more interested in an objective take on history, especially those using the argument that the Japanese were already "defeated" before the bombs came, then the book Downfall by Richard B Frank is a good book to start with for those who hold a firm anti-nuke stance.
"If one is more interested in an objective take on history,"
There is no such thing.
I think it's a close book. The book details the decision process from both sides. Japan's plans to continue the war. The way the high command coped with the first atomic bomb, etc. It does not sway you into thinking any side was justified, but it expands one's perspective to help you understand the other's side.
I personally don't see the world in terms of revenge and murder, so it's hard for me to understand how such specifically personal behaviors factor into the first Atomic attack.
>I've only seen the contrarian opinion coming from westerners.
Not even Japanese believe otherwise. When John Hersey (discussed elsewhere) revisited Japan in the 1960s, the Japanese he met with were amazed by the notion that the US should apologize for the atomic bombs. They viewed it as an understandable thing to do in wartime.
Most would prefer not think about it, of course. Amongst those that sometimes do, the majority are opposed to nuclear weapons' possession and use.
In contemporary Japan it would be hard to find either a dove or a hawk or anything between who'd say bombing those two cities was justified. Hawks are more likely to say Japan was minding its own imperialistic business, just as Europeans had been doing for centuries prior. So Japan didn't deserve those bombings. Doves will be opposed to any kind of nuclear weapon and tend to showcase their compatriots' suffering in order to help prevent further proliferation and destruction.
Some Japanese Buddhists believe that their constant prayers for peace have been directly responsible for averting annihilation of the world since 1945. I'd guess that's 15% of the population.
I haven't read Hersey, but I could easily believe that in the 1960's he was told what people thought he wanted to hear. Not deceptively, but non-confrontationally.
The handwringing tends to be more of a white westerner thing.
The common justification that I have read is that the bombings shortened what would have otherwise been a protracted defeat, potentially saving many more lives than were taken. A Utilitarian argument. However, if we were to take a Kantian point of view, the bombed civilians were used as an “ends” to achieve victory. Or more simply, an immoral act can never be justified, whatever the outcome.
So which is right? I enjoyed a recent Star Trek episode that examined the Utilitarian philosophy taken to an extreme (spoilers follow). In it an advanced utopian society is powered by the suffering of one child, chosen before birth. The joy and happiness of millions, at the expense of one innocent. Utilitarian philosophy (and modern economic theory), would call this an obviously acceptable trade-off, but Kant would argue that it is immoral as a person can never be used as an ends.
In the real world, we saw this argument play out in regards to whether the torture of terrorists was acceptable if it meant the extraction of information that would save lives.
Personally, I am of the Kantian view point, and I think the nuclear bombing of the two Japanese cities can never, and should never, be justified as moral acts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_...
Kant never had to choose between 225,000 dead (Hiroshima + Nagasaki) or 70,000,000 (the rest of the population who showed every sign of willingness to fight to the last child).
Japan was routinely fighting all the way to 80-90% casualties in battles, which is AFAIK completely unheard of in modern warfare. That number was going up as they got closer to the homeland, not down like when most militaries are clearly losing.
It’s not my point though. Regardless of the actual trade in lives and human suffering between the two alternatives, a deontological viewpoint judges the rightness of an action by the action itself - no matter the outcome.
So that’s my point. The bombing of civilians (whatever the prevailing norms, and no matter the consequences), is always wrong, and can never be justified on the grounds of “it shortened the war“ or “it would have saved millions of lives”.
However, it’s not a simple and clear cut argument, and perhaps it can be justified in other ways. I reject the utilitarian arguments, but I’m open to considering other justifications.
The real world has many more real variables and tradeoffs than any ethical system could reasonably account for even abstractly. The systems provide a surface to bounce new cases off of, but IMO if an ethical system says it's preferable to pick near-certain death of say 1 million people (a mere 1.4% hypothetical casualty rate) over the certain death of 250,000 people, it should very obviously be discarded for that case.
No ethical system, including Kantian, says it’s better to pick a million dead over 250k. Kant says “you can’t kill 250000 people to save a million, and call yourself righteous”. A man can sell his soul to save his family but the price must be paid.
I see an argument that nuclear bombs are 'too easy to use', making their existence horrible. But I don't see why the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki get a special place (other than symbolic) when compared to other mass bombings of population centers. All such bombings are horrifying and evil.
Yes, they are. Aside from a few scientists and engineers who witnessed Trinity, the entire world changed after 8/6/45. It wasn't just the immediate impact of those two bombs, but recognising the potential of all the to-be constructed bombs that would surely (and did) follow.
The best response to all criticism of the bombings is "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" by Paul Fussell, The New Republic, August 1981.
<https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/unde...>
Other GIs have expressed similar emotions. Tears of relief.
My FIL who was wounded in the Balakpapan campaign felt much the same. My uncle who fought in Burma and was a member of the CP also. McCarthy was not a communist nor was Graham My FIL, the unity of feeling across the political spectrum is marked.
None of them would deny or seek to minimise the horrors wreaked on the civilians. My parents who were in London during the blitz felt much the same about Hamburg and Dresden.
When the allies did target critical supply chains like ballbearings and oil, it had real economic consequence. Postwar bombing survey write-ups are fascinating. "From Apes to warlords" by Solly Zuckerman is well worth reading.
Len Deighton has argued German military directed economic production actually continued to rise until very late in the war, bombing notwithstanding. And "Britain can take it" campaigns attempted to maintain the domestic temperament and arguably undermine a belief the bombing campaign against Germany would work: there is no uniquely British "stiff upper lip" and bombed out German workers (and slave workers) continued production under the rubble. Dispersed factories were common both sides.
<https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/unde...>
The Japanese testimonials are gut-wrenching. “Night came and I could hear many voices crying and groaning with pain and begging for water. Someone cried, ‘Damn it! War tortures so many people who are innocent!’
How can humanity live without wars. That's the biggest and the most important goal probably. I wish someone succeded in solving it.
Next science or tech breakthrough can result in even more powerful weapon (biological or whatever) than nuclear. And it can be more accessible.
If you're going to hold war to a moral standard, at least consider the alternatives.
"The Japanese army's atrocities in Asia should not have been done" is not a controversial statement. I think anyone with a brain will agree with it.
So, what point is made by comparing these things? Even if there is wide agreement that Japan's atrocities in Asia were in some way worse than the atomic bombings, the only question that settles is the question of whether the USA behaved even more repugnantly than Imperial Japan. Which is hardly a relevant question at all. The people who are aghast at the atomic bombings already hold the US to a higher standard of conduct.
Under Emperor Hirohito, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) perpetrated numerous war crimes which resulted in the deaths of millions of people. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 3[2] to 30[6] million through sexual slavery, massacres, human experimentation, starvation, and forced labor directly perpetrated or condoned by the Japanese military and government.
If you click through to find that paragraph you will see 7 additional sources cited for this claim.
I said possibly 20M which is probably on the high end but within the range. It is hard to know for certain how many people were killed because the Japanese army was, to paraphrase, worse than the Germans at keeping records and better than the Germans at destroying records of how many people they killed.
However, outside of the fringe neo-nazi / holocaust denier / Japanese ultranationalist crowd, which is a very small group, you won't find anyone who thinks this was anything other than Very Obviously Bad, to the point that there's not really much discussion worth having about it. If there's a controversy to be argued, it might revolve around whether Japan has done enough to apologize or pay reparations; whether Japanese civilians deserve blame for the actions of a military dictatorship; whether ethnically Japanese young people today should feel ashamed of their country or their heritage; whether it's unfair to single them out for something their grandparents did; whether these injustices are being used today to foster hatred and resentment instead of good-will and understanding; or something like that.
But I don't see any insight that can be gained from a discussion of "was the USA's atomic bombing a less super-villainous action on the scale of other, universally condemned super-villainous actions like the holocaust or the rape of Nanjing?" Because on any objective scale the answer is obviously that it's not as bad. But since everyone will instantly agree about that, we can then move to a more interesting conversation of did the nuclear bombing of civilian populations fall below the moral standard we should hold ourselves to?
As a child, I was taught that these bombings stopped the war in Asia. For decades, I thought it the truth. Then I learned that most historians thought it false, and they had facts to assert that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little impact on the war itself.
Japan knew the war was lost, but wanted to negotiate with the USA in order to keep their oldest colony, in Korea, and also keep their imperial ruler. They knew that a democracy would get reluctant to send their soldiers to fight on the ground, even more so against fanaticized civils. The Japanese government thought that the deaths in the bombings was a price to pay for these objectives (Korea and emperor), and anyway the incendiary bombings of cities built with wood killed more civilians than the nuclear bombs.
What ended the war was that the USSR suddenly broke their no-aggression pact with Japan. On that same day soviet troops invaded Japanese Mongolia. Then Korea. Then the north islands of Japan. At this point, the Japanese government knew that the soviet power did not fear sending their troops in a bloody occupation and that the only alternative was an immediate surrender to the other side, the USA.
The story of the bombs that stopped the war was a lie that pleased everybody. The Japanese government could claim it was protecting its population, and setting Japan as a victim was a way to shift the focus far from their war crimes. The USA government could claim it detained the most powerful weapons and that their sole power could end wars.