The Atomic bombing of Nagasaki

[Stu Monty]

I don't think you're getting my point. I don't mean somwhow we have better or more evolved morals, but that the likes of us - people living quite comfortable lives - can't really moralise on the rights and wrongs of how that generation chose to wage war considering the suffering it had undergone and witnessed.

 

Oh right. I disagree then. Being removed from the emotion and the suffering gives a more objective view in my opinion. The same way I can moralise about other things going on today without having to be on the end of the suffering they produce.

 

Moralise is not really the word I'd use but we can make judgements.

[Rico1304]

Oh right. I disagree then. Being removed from the emotion and the suffering gives a more objective view in my opinion. The same way I can moralise about other things going on today without having to be on the end of the suffering they produce.

 

Moralise is not really the word I'd use but we can make judgements.

What would you have done then Stu? I'm assuming that there were only two choices, use the bomb and increase the likelihood of the war ending in weeks or don't use the bomb, invade and more than likely have larger numbers of dead.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

What would you have done then Stu? I'm assuming that there were only two choices, use the bomb and increase the likelihood of the war ending in weeks or don't use the bomb, invade and more than likely have larger numbers of dead.

There are two moral arguments on this thread that shouldn't be conflated.

 

Firstly is this one - Is the dropping of the bombs justified as "the lesser of two evils"?

 

The second is - Is the dropping of the bomb justified as retribution for Japanese atrocities?

 

For the first one, I'm unconvinced, because I don't believe that the argument that the war would have dragged on and killed millions has been proven.  Even if it could be proven, then to take a moral view you'd have to weigh all the repercussions of the two courses of action.  I won't pretend to be qualified to do that.

 

For the second one I'm absolutely convinced that it wasn't - and I think the fact that my judgement hasn't been seared by suffering actually makes me more likely to make a clear call on that one.

[M_B]

 

There are two moral arguments on this thread that shouldn't be conflated.

 

Firstly is this one - Is the dropping of the bombs justified as "the lesser of two evils"?

 

The second is - Is the dropping of the bomb justified as retribution for Japanese atrocities?

 

For the first one, I'm unconvinced, because I don't believe that the argument that the war would have dragged on and killed millions has been proven. Even if it could be proven, then to take a moral view you'd have to weigh all the repercussions of the two courses of action.  I won't pretend to be qualified to do that.

 

For the second one I'm absolutely convinced that it wasn't - and I think the fact that my judgement hasn't been seared by suffering actually makes me more likely to make a clear call on that one.

 

There is plenty of historical evidence that shows the Japanese were intending to make any invasion costly.

 

But that is not the point. At the time of the decision the Americans had no Ultra intelligence to suggest the Japanese were going to surrender (they didnt even want to surrender after the second bomb - the Emperor forced the issue and even then there was an attempted coup to continue the war), every island up to that point had been massively costly both in manpower and shipping and the Americans were running out of cash to continue the war.

 

The decision to try the atomic bomb to end the war was a no brainer. It's only revisionist historians or folks who know nothing about the war who think otherwise.

 

 

[Rico1304]

There are two moral arguments on this thread that shouldn't be conflated.

 

Firstly is this one - Is the dropping of the bombs justified as "the lesser of two evils"?

 

The second is - Is the dropping of the bomb justified as retribution for Japanese atrocities?

 

For the first one, I'm unconvinced, because I don't believe that the argument that the war would have dragged on and killed millions has been proven.  Even if it could be proven, then to take a moral view you'd have to weigh all the repercussions of the two courses of action.  I won't pretend to be qualified to do that.

 

For the second one I'm absolutely convinced that it wasn't - and I think the fact that my judgement hasn't been seared by suffering actually makes me more likely to make a clear call on that one.

Ok, what evidence do you need to convince you? What is missing from the countless books on the subject or what counter evidence do you have?

 

I never mentioned the second point.

[Bjornebye]

I don't know the answer but I am convinced that dropping atomic bombs on two cities killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people is not the right answer to any question ever. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Ok, what evidence do you need to convince you? What is missing from the countless books on the subject or what counter evidence do you have?

 

I never mentioned the second point.

You did mention the second point: Secsh suggested revenge was a valid motive; I said it wasn't; you said "Christ" in response to that point about revenge.

 

As for the evidence I need to convince me, all I can say is I'd need to read up a lot more.  As it is now, I've heard conflicting versions of who was negotiating with whom and what the various intelligence services knew, etc.  (The YouTube interview I posted earlier gives a reasonable summary of the "counter evidence" to the narrative I was brought up on.)  Until I learn a lot more, I just have to say the jury's out.  

[neko]

Pointless discussion now - people want to take the moral high ground without any clear understanding of the history and decision-making involved.

 

Moralizing about an issue that occurred at another time in history without the proper context, arguing against the overwhelming support of the entire population of countries directly involved at the time (which undoubtedly we all would have cheered as well), is just, well....a bit ignorant and sanctimonious.

 

The best that can come out of an historic (and tragic) event like this is the hope that humanity doesn't doom itself by repeating it.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Pointless discussion now - people want to take the moral high ground without any clear understanding of the history and decision-making involved.

 

Moralizing about an issue that occurred at another time in history without the proper context, arguing against the overwhelming support of the entire population of countries directly involved at the time (which undoubtedly we all would have cheered as well), is just, well....a bit ignorant and sanctimonious.

 

The best that can come out of an historic (and tragic) event like this is the hope that humanity doesn't doom itself by repeating it.

Isn't that the point of discussing the morality of historical actions?

 

Plenty of Germans in the Thirties were more than happy to go along with the oppression of the country's Jewish population.  Are we being sanctimonious if we now try to understand what was wrong with that and why?

[neko]

That's fine AT, but sometimes the facts (and popular opinion at the time) kind of render the discussion pointless.

 

The decision to, and reasons for dropping the atomic bomb are considered logical, factual and largely accepted as the right decision at the time. I very much doubt the example of the holocaust (or Stu comparisons to suicide bombers) holds up to the same scrutiny.

[Dougie Do'ins]

The Americans have an uncanny ability to rewrite history in their favour, how can anyone forget Tom Cruise in the Battle of Britain saving the hapless British from the Germans, or U-571 where the Americans captured the enigma machine. You only have to look at their depiction of the 'Red Indians' in Hollywood to see how they paint systematic genocide.

 

Only they could somehow spin the genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians into a celebration of them saving the world. The irony seems to be lost on them when the annual outpouring of grief happens on 9/11, a similar scenario on a much smaller scale. 

Oh I don't know, the Germans were well on their way until, well you know the rest. Yeah, the Americans stepped in.

 

I'd always heard of how the Americans had the belief that the rest of the world owes them big time but had no idea how engrossed in it they were until I went there. As soon as anyone in a service uniform walks in to a bar people just couldn't wait to say 'thank you for your service'. I got into a conversation with a primary school teacher in her 50s who referred to Obama as 'the president of the free world'. Is it any wonder their kids grow up believing if it wasn't for them there'd be no peace anywhere in the world.  

[Bjornebye]

Pointless discussion now - people want to take the moral high ground without any clear understanding of the history and decision-making involved.

 

Moralizing about an issue that occurred at another time in history without the proper context, arguing against the overwhelming support of the entire population of countries directly involved at the time (which undoubtedly we all would have cheered as well), is just, well....a bit ignorant and sanctimonious.

 

The best that can come out of an historic (and tragic) event like this is the hope that humanity doesn't doom itself by repeating it.

 

Yet you carried on. 

 

Sorry if it sounds ignorant, and I guess I see the argument but fucking hell. Fucking. hell. 

 

Lets all be thankful that the world is a more humane and happy place since.... 

[Bobby Hundreds]

What's the backstory to Godzilla. Did radiation create the monster or was it an awakened dinosaur. Much like that film with the giant robots I felt the depth of the water both machines and Godzilla treaded so far out, to be unrealistically shallow and then almost instantly fully submersible.

 

Why where Hiroshima and Nagasaki specifically chosen. Where both places of huge military importance or was it just a way to kill a lot of innocents whilst the real fuckers in charge stay relatively safe. Were they chosen to cause the least amount of human damage but still send a hell of a message.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

All good questions. (The second paragraph, I mean.)  Also, I don't think we've bottomed out the OP's main question - even if you think circumstances of the time, etc, justify the bombing of Hiroshima, was there really any call to flatten Nagasaki three days later?

[cochyn]

Yes, and yes again.Let's turn the tables: Had Japan the means to nuke L.A., do you think for a second they'd moralise and ponder the consequences? Exactly, they'd have flattened it in an instant and crushed it's remains under their jackboots as they pillaged the US from west to East.

 

That is war. and there is no way in my mind that anyone can fake moralise the outcome in victory with 'what-ifs'. The allies were thrust into a conflict they did not invite, and prevailed through massive sacrifice and endeavour. Why some people feel the need to pick away at he very actions that facilitated their freedom to ask those questions is beyond me.  

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Yes, and yes again.Let's turn the tables: Had Japan the means to nuke L.A., do you think for a second they'd moralise and ponder the consequences? Exactly, they'd have flattened it in an instant and crushed it's remains under their jackboots as they pillaged the US from west to East.

 

That is war. and there is no way in my mind that anyone can fake moralise the outcome in victory with 'what-ifs'. The allies were thrust into a conflict they did not invite, and prevailed through massive sacrifice and endeavour. Why some people feel the need to pick away at he very actions that facilitated their freedom to ask those questions is beyond me.  

I don't think anybody is picking at the reasons to fight the war or the importance of defeating the Axis powers.  The question is whether the bombing of Nagasaki was necessary.

 

As I've said, I'm not even convinced that the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary to defeat the Japanese. (It seems to me that it was all about striking the first blow in the Cold War - whether or not that was worth the deaths of thousands of civilians is another question for another thread.)  The second bomb was surely even more questionable - the Japanese knew by then what the Americans could do and they knew that the Soviets were on their way; surely there could have been more efforts towards negotiating a surrender without killing Nagasaki.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Incidentally - why is it that those of us who find the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a bit iffy get dismissed as sanctimonious fake-moralisers?  Anyone who defends the use of those bombs is equally spouting their own moral judgements, from a safe distance.

[Jairzinho]

When did all this trouble happen and if Kay Burley and Sky news weren't there it never happend.

 

If it's any consolation to them I wish they had been.

[cochyn]

Incidentally - why is it that those of us who find the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a bit iffy get dismissed as sanctimonious fake-moralisers?  Anyone who defends the use of those bombs is equally spouting their own moral judgements, from a safe distance.

 

As Neko said earlier - context is everything: At the time, Russia were 95% committed to the Eastern front and it was debatable at the time whether they had enough left to go again against the Japanese. Also, the Japanese held sway over a huge geographical area across the Pacific with little opportunity for counter-intelligence to successfully ascertain their strengths. Call it the fog of war, but the Allied withdrawal from the Pacific left them blind to how things were on the ground. Tactically, the A-bomb ticked many boxes.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_War#Landings_in_the_Japanese_home_islands

 

Hard-fought battles on the Japanese home islands of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and others resulted in horrific casualties on both sides but finally produced a Japanese defeat. Of the 117,000 Japanese troops defending Okinawa, 94 percent died.^[97] Faced with the loss of most of their experienced pilots, the Japanese increased their use of kamikaze tactics in an attempt to create unacceptably high casualties for the Allies. The U.S. Navy proposed to force a Japanese surrender through a total naval blockade and air raids.

 

Towards the end of the war as the role of strategic bombing became more important, a new command for the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific was created to oversee all U.S. strategic bombing in the hemisphere, under United States Army Air ForcesGeneral Curtis LeMay. Japanese industrial production plunged as nearly half of the built-up areas of 67 cities were destroyed by B-29 firebombing raids. On 9–10 March 1945 alone, about 100,000 people were killed in a conflagration caused by an incendiary attack on Tokyo. LeMay also oversaw Operation Starvation, in which the inland waterways of Japan were extensively mined by air, which disrupted the small amount of remaining Japanese coastal sea traffic.

 

On 3 February 1945 the Soviet Union agreed with Roosevelt to enter the Pacific conflict. It promised to act 90 days after the war ended in Europe and did so exactly on schedule on 9 August by invading Manchuria. A battle-hardened, one million-strong Soviet force, transferred from Europe,^[109] attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria and quickly defeated the JapaneseKantōgun (Kwantung Army group).

 

******************************************************************************

Basically, Japan was fucked.  There's nothing debatable about a million Red Army soldiers pouring into Manchuria on the day they had said they would.  The Japanese had lost their grip of the Pacific, Japan itself was being routinely bombed to bits and they were being rolled back across Asia - going as far and as fast as they did was a massive gamble and by the summer of 1945 it was clear that it hadn't paid off.  Maybe it took the twin shocks of the Hiroshima bomb and the Soviet mobilisation to drive home the realisation that the country was defeated.  (Or maybe either one of those things would have done - who knows?)  But the fact is that the Japanese War Cabinet met in the wake of the Soviet entry into the war to discuss the terms of surrender which had been proclaimed at Potsdam.  Nagasaki was bombed while that meeting was in session.  There's no reason to assume that the bombing of Nagasaki did anything to hasten the end of the war.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/victory/

 

The thing with recognising context is you also have to acknowledge that context doesn't forgive everything.  As I was trying to allude to earlier, we can also consider the context of a German people, shattered by defeat in WW1 and the humiliation of Versailles and the burden of war reparations, crippling inflation and depression, etc. Don't these people need someone to restore their national pride?  Don't they need a strong leader who can promise them a better future?  Don't they, psychologically, need someone to blame?  Doesn't uniting the German people against the "International Jewish-Bolshevik Conspiracy" tick all the boxes?

 

Context can make terrible things understandable.  It doesn't (on its own) make them morally justifiable.

[neko]

Incidentally - why is it that those of us who find the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a bit iffy get dismissed as sanctimonious fake-moralisers?  Anyone who defends the use of those bombs is equally spouting their own moral judgements, from a safe distance.

 

 

Context can make terrible things understandable.  It doesn't (on its own) make them morally justifiable.

 

But that's the thing - most people (given all the evidence and understanding of the situation) are willing to accept that it was a necessary or understandable act given the circumstances. Nobody has said (yet) that they were pleased to see Nagasaki reduced to rubble. It is part of war...a very, very ugly and protracted war.

 

You simply cannot place modern values, and modern equivalents on something like this. 

[Anny Road]

What's the backstory to Godzilla. Did radiation create the monster or was it an awakened dinosaur. Much like that film with the giant robots I felt the depth of the water both machines and Godzilla treaded so far out, to be unrealistically shallow and then almost instantly fully submersible.

 

Why where Hiroshima and Nagasaki specifically chosen. Where both places of huge military importance or was it just a way to kill a lot of innocents whilst the real fuckers in charge stay relatively safe. Were they chosen to cause the least amount of human damage but still send a hell of a message.

I think when he gets a certain distance out the director had him kneel if you turn up the volume to max you can just about make out the director

shouting ひざまずきます which is Japaneses for kneel. Godzilla doesn't speak English.

[Section_31]

I don't think I did say revenge was a valid motive, I said the actions of these unspeakably evil empires meant people at the time probably wouldn't have had any moral qualms about using such methods against them.

[Stu Monty]

Pointless discussion now - people want to take the moral high ground without any clear understanding of the history and decision-making involved.

 

Moralizing about an issue that occurred at another time in history without the proper context, arguing against the overwhelming support of the entire population of countries directly involved at the time (which undoubtedly we all would have cheered as well), is just, well....a bit ignorant and sanctimonious.

 

The best that can come out of an historic (and tragic) event like this is the hope that humanity doesn't doom itself by repeating it.

 

You're out of order there Neko.

 

I'm not even arguing that it was the wrong thing to do or that I wouldn't do it (I probably would). I'm arguing that it's perfectly reasonable to make moral judgements when removed from the events and that the ethics of the thing can quite easily be discussed without having to have been on the end of nasty treatment or threat from the people you are nuking. In fact it allows you a better, more level headed view of events. I'm also not ignoring context either. 

 

The fact that we would have cheered something doesn't add any moral value to it. Plenty of people would cheer the leveling of the middle-east tomorrow, it doesn't add any moral value to it being done.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Why where Hiroshima and Nagasaki specifically chosen.

 

Hiroshima was of huge military and historical significance. Nagasaki was actually an alternate target, Kyoto was supposed to get hit but weather and pollution changed plans. Nagasaki was heavy on the port side of things, which is why it got attacked.