Ethics and The A-Bomb

[Baruch Menachem]

The atom bomb was a statement, not a piece of ordinance. Tokyo was taking nightly raids that had equivalent or worse casualties. (This is partly due to the nature of Japanese construction) The unfortunate reality is that bombing cities stiffens resistance for some reason. Just more conventional bombing would have been counterproductive. We were setting fires every night that killed off people by the hundred thousand.

 

[Madeline]

The devastation is shocking. And the aftermath, the radiation poisoning....gruesome. But the average American might not have known. There wasn't any short film footage, and they did not have television. It just is not the kind of thing radio could adequately convey.

It's hard to believe that just a few years later, Americans were driving out the the desert to watch A-Bombs being tested. Not if they really did know what had happened in Japan.

 

[midcan5]

Under the circumstances the question of ethics and morality almost have no place. The Japanese were not ready to surrender even after the bombs were dropped. The Samurai worldview was that the only noble thing to do was fight to the death. Look at the island battles as a harbinger of the death that would have occurred had Japan not surrendered. Many generals and soldiers committed hara-kiri after the decision was finally made at the very last moment to surrender.

OT What moral magic counts death and then concludes that the less is better. If I am one of the dead the argument has little meaning.

OT2 now their cars dominate our landscape and many have semper fi stickers attached. When ever I read about the island battles that irony always amazes me. My father served on a carrier in the Pacific during the war.

 

[rightwinger]

they refused to surrender after the first one.

Three days is not alot of time to make a decision. After Hiroshima we still could have bombed the shit out of them with conventional weapons while we pressured the Japanese leadership to surrender or we would drop more atomic weapons. They did not know we only had two at that time.

All I can tell you is read the documents.The Army did not care at all about the atomic Bomb, it meant nothing. The Emperor got interested but refused to get involved after the first bomb. Waiting would have just extended the war that much longer.

Extended it how long? A week? Two weeks?

How would waiting more than three days to allow the impact to sink in have altered the ultimate outcome of the war?

Why not give a deadline to surrender and threaten an A bomb a day till they did? They did not know how many bombs we had

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Three days is not alot of time to make a decision. After Hiroshima we still could have bombed the shit out of them with conventional weapons while we pressured the Japanese leadership to surrender or we would drop more atomic weapons. They did not know we only had two at that time.

All I can tell you is read the documents.The Army did not care at all about the atomic Bomb, it meant nothing. The Emperor got interested but refused to get involved after the first bomb. Waiting would have just extended the war that much longer.

Extended it how long? A week? Two weeks?

How would waiting more than three days to allow the impact to sink in have altered the ultimate outcome of the war?

Why not give a deadline to surrender and threaten an A bomb a day till they did? They did not know how many bombs we had

Read the documents.

 

[peach174]

Perfect example's right here of how badly broken our school system has become.
Can't teach true american history because true education means too many individuals having a mind of there own. Ohhhhhh!!!! no more robots? NO,NO,No, only socialism.
What ever happened to plain ol reading, writing, arithmatic, and History and keeping politics out of the schools?

 

[Dr Gregg]

Perfect example's right here of how badly broken our school system has become.
Can't teach true american history because true education means too many individuals having a mind of there own. Ohhhhhh!!!! no more robots? NO,NO,No, only socialism.
What ever happened to plain ol reading, writing, arithmatic, and History and keeping politics out of the schools?

Right, as you put forth no argument relevant to the thread, no logic behind your attacks. I guess this is your idea of brilliance?

 

[peach174]

Have you not read what is being said about the a bomb? The comment's that have been made show that they have not been taught the truth about WWII. One said that they did not know why the 2nd bomb was dropped.
We were all taught this in the 50's before govenmnet took over the schools.

 

[Quatermass]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

 

[namvet]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

the bottom line sign here​

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Midcan makes a good point. If you are one of the dead, how it happened is no longer of any interest.

We did have the history of the way the Japanese were fighting. We were looking at civilian casualties in the range of 65-95% For the living on both sides, the bomb was a lifesaver. But we aren't ever going to fight a war with an enemy like that again. And we have never fought a war in that manner since.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

And the cool thing is, Hiroshima is back, and bigger and better. There is a baseball stadium right near ground zero.

There were heaps of corpses in Mindanao, Nanjing, Shanghai, Canton, New Guinea, Indonesia, Okinawa... That is the nature of war. And the Japanese were particularly brutal. None of the people that were under them have any love for them, or any sympathy for what happened to them. The Chinese sometimes give lip service to the idea of evil racist Americans, but at the same time, the attitude is it couldn't have happened to a better set of folks. Watching Korean media, the Koreans haven't forgiven or forgotten either.

 

[rightwinger]

Perfect example's right here of how badly broken our school system has become.
Can't teach true american history because true education means too many individuals having a mind of there own. Ohhhhhh!!!! no more robots? NO,NO,No, only socialism.
What ever happened to plain ol reading, writing, arithmatic, and History and keeping politics out of the schools?

Ummm....do you have any points to make in your posts?

I can't find any

 

[Madeline]

Perfect example's right here of how badly broken our school system has become.
Can't teach true american history because true education means too many individuals having a mind of there own. Ohhhhhh!!!! no more robots? NO,NO,No, only socialism.
What ever happened to plain ol reading, writing, arithmatic, and History and keeping politics out of the schools?

peach, no one can write a history book for an American classroom without political considerations, no matter how pure their heart. What is EXCLUDED is as important in judging textbooks as what is INCLUDED. I knew more than the average kidlet about the settlement of the Hudson River Valley because I attended school in New York. But I was NOT taught anything about the A-Bombing of Japan, apart from the one liner: We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because we had to, to end the war. Period.

Now mebbe this is because I was a grade school less than a decade after the bombings occurred. But somehow I doubt today's kidlets are getting the education either...as you can see, some folks think the entire subject has become irrelevant.

 

[Madeline]

Have you not read what is being said about the a bomb? The comment's that have been made show that they have not been taught the truth about WWII. One said that they did not know why the 2nd bomb was dropped.
We were all taught this in the 50's before govenmnet took over the schools.

I attended a parochial school peach, and the government was involved in my education up to its ears. For starters, the textbooks we got had to be approved by the Board of Regents. What "government take over of (public?) schools" are you referring to? When was this supposed to have happened?

One function of a public school system in any nation is to inculcate a shared vision of history in young people -- this is also known as propagandizing. Or as China calls it, "patriotic retraining". If the kidlets are ALSO taught to make inquiry, think for themselves, do research, etc. it can be okay. If not, this "group think" can lead to a generation of sheeple.

 

[Madeline]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

It has always bothered me that we bombed cities full of non-whites, but not Germany, where the Death Camps existed. Maybe the A-Bomb was not finished before VE Day. Maybe.

But the US confined Japanaese Americans to internment camps and did NOT do so as to Italian Americans or German Americans.

It seems to me there must have been a tremendous temptation to drop the A-Bomb SOMEPLACE, just to show the world what we had. Without using it in warfare, who would ever believe this gruesome weapon even existed?

All these things, together with the second bombing, have made me uneasy. I WANT to believe Truman's decisions were ethically defensible. His comments to those around him do not offend me. It's understandable that he wanted VJ Day at any cost.

But still the doubts persist -- that we bombed a couple of Asian cities and killed millions, instantly or later by radiation poisoning, because we COULD and not because we had no other choice.

I don't know what my Daddy saw or knew. I lost him when I was quite young, and like most WW II vets, he would never discuss what he'd been through. But my Mommy and Daddy were pinkos. They sympathesized with or actually joined the American Communist Party. I rather think if he'd been all good with Truman's decisions, Daddy would not have been such a radical after the war.

 

[namvet]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

It has always bothered me that we bombed cities full of non-whites, but not Germany, where the Death Camps existed. Maybe the A-Bomb was not finished before VE Day. Maybe.

But the US confined Japanaese Americans to internment camps and did NOT do so as to Italian Americans or German Americans.

It seems to me there must have been a tremendous temptation to drop the A-Bomb SOMEPLACE, just to show the world what we had. Without using it in warfare, who would ever believe this gruesome weapon even existed?

All these things, together with the second bombing, have made me uneasy. I WANT to believe Truman's decisions were ethically defensible. His comments to those around him do not offend me. It's understandable that he wanted VJ Day at any cost.

But still the doubts persist -- that we bombed a couple of Asian cities and killed millions, instantly or later by radiation poisoning, because we COULD and not because we had no other choice.

I don't know what my Daddy saw or knew. I lost him when I was quite young, and like most WW II vets, he would never discuss what he'd been through. But my Mommy and Daddy were pinkos. They sympathesized with or actually joined the American Communist Party. I rather think if he'd been all good with Truman's decisions, Daddy would not have been such a radical after the war.

waste of time on that asshat.

 

[Madeline]

Quartermass has not given opinion in that last post, namvet. He recited facts. Either he has the facts right or he doesn't.

If he's right, what use is it to go on pretending it was all good?

 

[namvet]

Quartermass has not given opinion in that last post, namvet. He recited facts. Either he has the facts right or he doesn't.

If he's right, what use is it to go on pretending it was all good?

that's the point. no reply to back up what he says. he's using the ole copy and paste trick.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

come on. he's a troll.

 

[CurveLight]

First thing. The Atomic Bombs were not ready until Summer 1945. Germany surrendered in April. We had no reason to drop said bombs on Germany.

The reality is that it took BOTH bombs to get the Emperor of Japan to over ride his Army Controlled Government and order an immediate surrender. With those bombs we would have starved Japan through the winter killing untold thousands followed by an Invasion of a Home Island which would have seen MILLIONS of dead Japanese civilians and soldiers.

Japan was teaching her civilians to arm themselves with Bamboo spears and human wave charge any invasion. The continued invasion of Japan could have seen the potential elimination of the Japanese race.

The lie that Japan was ready to surrender is revisionist history. Japan under the Army had no intention of surrender. What they "offered" through the Soviet Union was a cease fire with Japan keeping everything she still possessed and the return of Japanese home possessions like Saipan and Okinawa. Japan was offering to let us just stop attacking them. They would retain all of their Chinese, Korean and other possessions and we would return their home island captures.

Here is a link to SOURCE documents verifying that Japan was NOT offering a meaningful surrender, that even after two atomic Bombs the Army controlled government refused to surrender, that the Emperor failed to act until after the second atomic bomb and that the Army attempted a Coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The atomic bombs were necessary unless one thinks we should have just let Japan keep everything from before the war and not disarm. They SAVED millions of lives.

You're full of shit. The proof is not in what you stated, it is what you completely avoided. There are two simple yet often overlooked fundamental aspects that prove the bombs were not meant to get Japan to surrender.

(1) We had their offer to surrender before we dropped the bombs. It was the same offer we accepted after we targeted civilians with the A-bombs and dropped them.

(2) The bombs were not dropped to intimidate Japan. There were dropped to intimidate Russia.