Was the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan Justified?

I'm sorry, but your view on the situation is very immature. Let's look at each number and I'll explain why you have an immature view of the war.

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1. america intercepted messages from Japan to Russia indicating JAPAN WANTED to SURRENDER.
2. Japan had already considered surrendering if america would just allow Japan's Emperor to keep his seat on the throne. america said no, but AFTER bombing Negasaki and Hiroshima, america gave into Japan's request.

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You keep referring to Japan this and Japan that as if it was one entity. The fact of the matter is there were many factions involved. There were certain elements of the Japanese government that wanted to surrender. There were certain elements that wanted to fight to the last man. The majority decided to make it extremely costly for the Americans to win so that America would be forced into accepting peace terms where most of the remaining Japanese Empire would remain intact.By late 1944 and early 1945 most of the Japanese government had already given up hope of winning the war against the US. Yamamoto foresaw the industrial superpower that was the US in wartime. That's why he promised the emperor he could only win the war for 6 months. The hope was that heavy losses would make the American populace to force the US government to seek out peace terms.By 1944, the predominant goal in the Japanese government was to keep the war going as long as possible. After all, no democracy could survive a war longer than 7 years, or so the saying goes, because the people wouldn't have it. And that's what most of the Japanese government was hoping for.

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3. america knew japan would surrender unconditionally when Japan found out that Russia would join the fight. So, america hastened the two bombings BEFORE Japan COULD surrender for an american show of power toward Russia.

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By the time Russia was ready to go to war with Japan, the military faction that wanted to fight to the last man had prevailed. Remember that island hoping didn't affect the Japanese forces in other parts of the empire. The Japanese still had a large number of forces on Mainland China. And this was what the Japanese wanted to save.Russia's attack on Manchuria was nothing more than Stalin's show of power. There was absolutely no long term planning on Russia's part to carry out the war to the end.

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3. america knew japan would surrender unconditionally when Japan found out that Russia would join the fight. So, america hastened the two bombings BEFORE Japan COULD surrender for an american show of power toward Russia.

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No. Nobody expected Russia to do much beyond the attack on Manchuria.The reasons why Truman wanted to drop the bombs were:(1) Casualties of the invasion of Japan was projected to go as high as 1 million.(2) American intelligence knew about the Japanese military training Japanese civilians to defend the homeland. Japanese boys were trained to appear innocent and then go for American crotches.(3) The last thing anybody wanted was the soviet union to get a foothold of Japan.(4) The war was already going on too long and there was no sign at all that the Japanese was even considering the possibility of surrender.

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4. if ANY regards towards human life was any factor at all, america could have detonated the first bomb over water as a deterent/warning.
5. The second, even more unnecessary, bomb was completely and utterly criminal. All communication was broken in Japan and america gave no time for the Japanese to assess the first bomb's damage before detonating the second.

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After the first bomb was dropped, the Japanese military was convinced that America only had 1 bomb.America, in fact, only had 2 bombs. And it would have taken months for more bombs to be manufactured and transported to the front. The US government wanted to give off the impression that America had more than that. That's why they dropped 2 bombs.Again, think about it this way. Would you rather lose 200,000 people and win the war today or would you rather lose 1,000,000 over the course of 6 months? Invasion of Japan was a statistical nightmare.Furthermore, even after the 2 bombs were dropped, the Japanese military was still convinced they could save the rest of the Empire by fighting to the last man. There was even an attempted coup to stop the surrender. I know what you mean. I've played the scenario over in my head hundreds of times over the years. And each time I can't make myself make the decision to drop the 2 bombs. But everything else points to dropping the 2 bombs as necessary.Don't forget that Europe was still fresh in everybody's mind. How did the allied win the war in Europe? By walking over it. Without dropping the 2 bombs, winning the war in eastern asia would have meant swimming and walking over it, too.Yes, it was wrong but necessary to drop the 2 bombs. But it was criminal for the Japanese leaders to make the moves that lead to that inevitable result in the first place.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Don't forget the impact that a prolonged naval blockade coupled with the destruction of Japan's railway system would have had on Japan's ability to feed its population building up to and during a land invasion. Without the ability to transport the small percentage of its own food that it produced or the ability to import food via their annihilated merchant fleet, millions of civilians would have starved.All this, of course, ignores that virtually all allied prisoners of war would have been executed, as well as the nightmare of a Russian invasion leading to a divided Japan in the coming Cold War.

Utilitarian decisions are not always so obvious. One must look past the horror of the specific event and actually compare the results of each alternative and choose the one that causes the least harm or most benefit.Nuclear weapons are terrible. Their use was terrible. But an actual boots-on-the-ground invasion of Japan would have been far worse, for Americans and Japanese, including civilians. What sort of absurdity is this? Do you not understand the word "war?" This is exactly why war should be declared in only the most dire need; a war is an attempt through force of arms to sufficiently eliminate the means and will of an enemy to resist that a surrender acceptable to the "winning" party is offered.Japan's ability to make war on the US and its allies were significantly degraded by the August of their surrender, yes. But in war, hostilities may continue, and arguably must continue, until one party surrenders. That's the whole point of a war - to force certain concessions through surrender to force of arms. Yet they didn't surrender. True or false: Japanese civilians frequently engaged American military forces during the campaign in the Pacific.If this is true, it would be reasonable to conclude that Japanese civilians would similarly become combatants during an invasion of the mainland, and that they would arguably do so in greater numbers to defend their home from invasion, as well as defending their Emperor, who had religious significance at the time. This would result in significant civilian casualties, on top of what would obviously be extremely high military casualties on both sides.How many died during the invasion of Normandy? Why would an invasion of Japan be significantly less deadly? Bullshit.The nuclear weapons targeted military and construction facilities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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During World War II, the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.

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The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.

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The cities were targeted for their military significance, not just to murder a bunch of civilians. Your assertion that civilians were deliberately targeted is baseless and ridiculous; collateral damage, while terrible, is inevitable when targeting military assets in a city, especially in WWII when "precision guided munitions" meant "drop a whole lot of bombs to make sure you hit it." Or in this case "drop a really BIG bomb to make sure you hit it."The civilian deaths were the result of massive overkill, not deliberate targeting; and in fact as I stated the civilian deaths were far higher than anticipated by the US because the Japanese bomb shelters were underutilized, having not even sounded an air raid alarm at the sight of an "insignificant" threat.Far more importantly, how many civilians would have died during an invasion? This is what it all comes down to: a utilitarian comparison of the alternatives and their costs and benefits. We can both very obviously agree that the use of nuclear weapons was horrible, but given the projected casualty numbers at the time of decision and without the benefit of hindsight, we should also be able to agree that the alternative to the use of nuclear weapons, invasion, would have been worse.Just as a bit of reality, allow me to remind you if Iwo Jima:

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The battle was the first U.S. attack on the Japanese Home Islands and the Imperial soldiers defended their positions tenaciously. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, over 20,000 were killed and only 1,083 taken prisoner.

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That's around 5% of the Japanese soldiers who actually surrendered. 95% were killed. And this isn't even mainland Japan, where resistance would arguably have been more fierce.And some of the other Pacific battles:

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According to The official Navy Department Library website (Error - Page Not Found) The 36-day (Iwo Jima) assault resulted in more than 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead. To put that into context, the 82-day Battle of Okinawa lasted from early April until mid-June 1945 and U.S. (5 Army and 2 Marine Corps Divisions) casualties were over 62,000 of whom over 12,000 were killed or missing, while the Battle of the Bulge lasted 40 days (16 Dec 44 — 25 Jan 45) with almost 90,000 U.S. casualties of; 19,000 killed, 47,500 wounded, and 23,000 captured or missing.

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LOOK AT THOSE CASUALTY NUMBERS.Those were not pulled out of the air; they are real numbers of dead, injured, and missing Americans. ONLY THE AMERICANS! It doesn't even mention the Japanese casualties, or the civilians! It would seem that your definition requires that all acts of war are war crimes. That's just not so.Wars are not fought exclusively by military personnel. Wars are not fought "over there," in some vast undefined desert where civilians won't get hurt. Civilians manufacture war materiel; civilians provide the economic backbone that supplies the war effort. And while targeting civilians simply to cause death would certainly be a war crime, it is acceptable in war, if still abhorrent, that civilians will be killed when the militarily significant assets they work in or live near are targeted. Destroying a major shipping harbor and weapons manufacturing center is a major military target, and is fully legitimate. If the weapons technology of the time reduced options to "drop a lot of bombs to make sure it's destroyed" or "drop a really big bomb to make sure it's destroyed," the civilian casualties are inevitable; and while regrettable, it's not a war crime.Specifically targeting civilians is a war crime. Killing civilians, even many civilians, while targeting a military asset is not a war crime. The weapons technology of the 1940's was incapable of reducing civilian casualties to a minimum while targeting military assets in population centers. I'm a utilitarian. I researched for a paper on this exact subject some years ago in school for a history class. I remember the relative casualty projections - hundreds of thousands of Americans dead alone in an invasion, plus Japanese military (with a well-supported 90%+ casualty rate), plus Japanese civilians. I remember the projected casualties for the nuclear weapons - some 50-75,000 dead for each weapon. If I knew exactly what Truman knew at the moment of decision, the utilitarian choice would be the use of nuclear weapons.That the casualties due to not sounding air raid alarms, not using bomb shelters, and radiation (an unknown until after the fact) proved to be far higher than those projected has nothing at all to do with whether the decision was justified at the time it was made. People can be wrong, even with terrible consequences, and still have made the right choice given what they knew at the time.Now again - we could instead debate whether continuing to insist on the Allied terms rather than simply accepting the Japanese terms for surrender was justified. We can debate whether hostilities should have continued at all at that point, and we would likely even agree that the war should have ended in talks rather than nuclear initiations.But that's not a discussion about whether the use of nuclear weapons was justified. That's a discussion of whether hostilities in any form should have continued.Given that hostilities were going to continue, there were two options: invasion, or nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were projected to cause significantly fewer casualties for everyone involved, and thus end the war quickly and with the minimum loss of life possible for all sides.Given those two choices, Truman made the correct utilitarian decision.

Do you not understand the word "war crime?" (and, thanks for publicly stating that you are pro-collateral damage. It's all starting to make sense to me now) "military significance?" Oh puhlease, what were Japanese producing near the end of the Pacific war, thumbtacks, sharpened paperclips? Besides two rowboats and a dingy, what use was Japanese's "military" harbor? Are you kidding me? The vast amount of people targeted were civilians.I'll need to find the paper addressing the false casualties you "researched" regarding your invasion scenerio.And as for as comparing previous island fighting casualties between MILITARIES and possible casualties from defenseless and starving women and children, what sort of absurdity is that?And no, there were more than just two options. C'mon Rahvin.I should not be on EvC today, I am really busy with a deadline. Thanks for all who wrote, I'll get back to you with more details next week. Sorry.

dronester, I'm going to reply only by stating that you're not being very convincing. Your level of debate thus far has exclusively consisted of mockery and personal incredulity. Show me that the casualties from an invasion were projected at the time to be lower than the projected casualties of using nuclear weapons.I'm a utilitarian. Show me that the alternative would have been less harmful, and I'll change my tune - but they had to have that knowledge at the point of decision, not after the fact.Until then, all you've done is say "nu uh" and "that's ridiculous." I don't care about your opinions or beliefs; back your shit up with numbers and data or concede that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Also - what, did you leave your brain at home today?"Pro-collateral damage?"Recognizing that something is inevitable and not necessarily a crime is rather different from supporting it.Collateral damage is, in fact, largely why I'm anti-war. The rest being that I'm against wasting money on military budgets and losing the lives of military personnel as well.

Nu huh . . . you may have missed some of my supporting evidence where the topic started fromMessage 128Ok, more on the way.Have a good weekend.Edited by dronester, : No reason given.

Inevitable lol so if i know you are going to shoot a number of people and i shoot you 2 days before you do that then suddenly i have not committed murder??Deliberate targeting of civilians is now a ware crime, back in the day when you dropped the bombs it wasn't well at least not an agreed upon ware crime.There where 1001 ways to avoid leveling 2 cities and still get japan to surrender. Whit out mass casualties !!!America just had to show the world its new toy and not only once but 2 times that is the only reason you dropped the bombs everything else are excuses.

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Defense preparations

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Faced with the prospect of an invasion of the Home Islands starting with Kyūshū, and also the prospect of a Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan's last source of natural resources, the War Journal of the Imperial Headquarters concluded:

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We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan's one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight.[9]

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As a final attempt to stop the Allied advances, the Japanese Imperial High Command planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū codenamed Operation Ketsugō.[10] This was to be a radical departure from the "defense in depth" plans used in the invasions of Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Instead, everything was staked on the beachhead; more than 3,000 kamikazes would be sent to attack the amphibious transports before troops and cargo were disembarked on the beach.[8]

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If this did not drive the Allies away, they planned to send another 3,500 kamikazes along with 5,000 Shin'yō suicide boats and the remaining destroyers and submarines"the last of the Navy's operating fleet"to the beach. If the Allies had fought through this and successfully landed on Kyūshū, only 3,000 planes would have been left to defend the remaining islands, although Kyūshū would be "defended to the last" regardless.[8] A set of caves were excavated near Nagano. In the event of invasion, these caves, the Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters, were to be used by the army to direct the war and to house the emperor and his family.

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wikiIt appears they still had quite a few ways to kill our troops left. My uncle Richard was on Okinawa, women and children jumped off the cliffs as opposed to being captured, the propaganda they had been indoctrinated with had convinced many were were baby eating raping killers and it would be better to die then be captured.

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Mass suicides

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With the impending victory of American troops, civilians often committed mass suicide, urged on by the Japanese soldiers who told locals that victorious American soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping. Ryukyu Shimpo, one of the two major Okinawan newspapers, wrote in 2007: "There are many Okinawans who have testified that the Japanese Army directed them to commit suicide. There are also people who have testified that they were handed grenades by Japanese soldiers" to blow themselves up.[27] Some of the civilians, having been induced by Japanese propaganda to believe that U.S. soldiers were barbarians who committed horrible atrocities, killed their families and themselves to avoid capture. Some of them threw themselves and their family members from the cliffs where the Peace Museum now resides.

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What do you think would've happened if we had of invaded and not used the bombs?I think it has more to do with the fact that you and many others demonize our use of those particular types of weapons. I wish it wasn't even possible to make them at all, I like nuclear power but would happily live without it if it meant all nuke weapons would be gone forever. History would be much different if we had not of used the bombs, many of us wouldn't be here at all.We learned from what we did, I am glad we didn't use them in Korea like Douglas wanted to. It would take a lot of convincing to make me believe they didn't save countless lives of Americans and Japanese alike though.

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"No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten."
Hunter S. ThompsonAd astra per asperaNihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.

When yo drop a bomb, you will likely damage more than your target. Collateral damage is inevitable.Frako, provide some evidence of "1001" alternatives to the use of nuclear weapons. The two options seriously considered by Truman were invasion or nukes. Explain which other options there were, don;t just refer to undefined alternatives. If you dont say what those alternatives were, then the rest of us don't know about them.Destroying major shipping ports and manufacturing facilities is not and was not a war crime. Killing civilians in the course of destroying those military targets is not and was not a war crime. Unnecessarily killing more civilians than necessary would be a war crime, and you'd need to present evidence that, using WWII technology, those military assets could have been destroyed with a lower casualty rate than the projected, not actual, casualties from nuclear weapons (since hindsight is irrelevant, we can only judge a decision based on what was or should have been known at the time).So far all I see is yet more incredulity and no fact.

One would be that you drop the bomb in to explode above the ocean for the emperor to see then accept his surrender that had the condition he remains in power.Do you relay think after seeing a mushroom cloud for himself that he would not surrender? Yea thats like saying destroying new york is not a war crime because it has a port and factories. Carpet bombing would have yielded much fewer casualties then an A bombAnd the primary targets in Nagasaki the port and the steal works where already destroyed by regular bombs So the nuke just gave the final blow to the city and leveled everything else the hospital that has already been hit too the school and civilian houses. And as for how informed the Japanese where about the A bomb the air raid siren was called off because they believed that the plane they see is only on a reconnaissance mission.

Evidence? BULLSHIT.

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Nagasaki had never been subjected to large-scale bombing prior to the explosion of a nuclear weapon there. On August 1, 1945, however, a number of conventional high-explosive bombs were dropped on the city. A few hit in the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest portion of the city, several hit the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, and six bombs landed at the Nagasaki Medical School and Hospital, with three direct hits on buildings there. While the damage from these bombs was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and many peopleprincipally school childrenwere evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the nuclear attack.

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There was a small-scale bombing, part of the plan to make the Japanese disregard the small flights of bombers as a minor threat. The facilities were not destroyed - damage was minor. Which I specifically mentioned as the reason the nuclear weapons caused so much more death than was projected before their actual use - nobody was in the bomb shelters. That's a foolish use of a military weapon as powerful and expensive as a nuclear weapon. You don't just show what you can do in war. You use weapons to damage the enemy's will and ability to continue to resist, full stop. The Allies never bombed an uninhabited forest and said "see what we did there? surrender or we'll do that to a city;" they just bombed the damned city, because otherwise the "example" would have been a waste of expensive and powerful weapons. WWII was a war of absolute survival, not any of the idiotic games we've been playing in the 21st century. The Axis powers were a real existential threat to the Allies, and the word "attrition" had real meaning. We didn't have a mountain of nuclear warheads ready to go - we had two. You don;t waste a limited supply of a powerful weapon in an existential war by throwing it into the damned ocean.Irrelevant. If negotiation on terms of surrender had been allowed, even a demonstration of a nuclear weapon would have been unnecessary. Read what I post again, Frako - given that the Japanese did not surrender, among the options under consideration, nuclear weapons were projected to cause fewer casualties on both sides than an actual invasion. I can agree that the Allies should have been more interested in negotiating surrender rather than their hardline "unconditional" position, but that's a completely separate debate from whether or not nuclear weapons should have been used given that hostilities were going to continue in some form or another. Well, they didn't surrender after Hiroshima, did they. They had three days before Nagasaki, they could have easily sent a message of surrender after seeing a mushroom cloud for themselves, and they didn't do it. SO I think your demonstration would have done shit-all except waste one of two nuclear weapons in existence without destroying a single enemy military asset.So, "1001" alternatives, and all you provide is a shitty one that we know wouldn't have worked because a "demonstration" on an actual city wasn't enough to force a surrender.Have anything else?

Look, the point of dropping the 2 a-bombs wasn't to kill people or to destroy equipments. The point was to shock the Japanese into surrender.Again, the question on everyone's minds was this. Should they kill 100,000 people now and end the war or should they slowly kill 1,000,000 in the course of 3 months?You weren't there. You didn't have to make the decisions. This is bullshit and naive. After 2 bombs, much of the Japanese government would still not surrender. Even after the Emperor ordered to surrender, certain elements of the military still tried uncuccessfully to stop the announcement of surrender.WW2 was a real war, not some game you've been playing. The more the anti-Abomb crowd talk, the more naive you guys sound.Added by edit.Much of Germany was in rubbles and the Nazis would still not surrender. How do you explain that? Even as the Russians were walking over Germany, the SS were still roaming around killing their own civilians for giving up. You'd think that they'd surrender to avoid annihalation, right?The Japanese were even worse. They were training their own women and children to how to fight American soldiers. They were readying everyone in their population to fight to the end. Surrender was never an option until the Emperor finally made it an option.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

[qs]Should they kill 100,000 people now and end the war or should they slowly kill 1,000,000 in the course of 3 months?[qs] Firstly 200 000 peoplejust not all of them instantly the efects of the bomb killed anoter 100 000 people after the first 100 000 died "instantly"Secondly how many of those where civilians you know fishermen rice farmers .... 90% 95% ???? Like they had any other choice all the other Axies where defeted by the allies japan was the last one left you realy think they would hold out against the whole world for 3 months I know i wouldent nuke a city at worst an army base but not a city. Firstly after the first bomb they dint know what the hell happened all they knew was that a city with large stockpiles of explosives got erased from the map if someone suspected that the enemy droped one bomb and destroyed the city they would probably think he is mad there was no such weapon known at the time.And you had to fight those for 3 months loosing countless lives they surrendered in every surrender there are some extremists that want to fight on Yea that real ware was alredy ending the germans where defeated the italians changed the direction they where pissing as the winds changed ..... The only one left was Japan against the armies of the world you could have freeking capret bommbed the entire island with the militery power that was at japans doorstep.To reply to the above post tooThe Americans had a 3d bomb projected in august and another 3 bombs in September wasting one bomb to spare 100 000 CIVILIAN lives of a country that knew it was going to loose is too high a price to pay?

And you know this because you're looking back at history. Remember that none of the leaders knew exactly how an atomic weapon worked. Nobody knew anything about radiation or the after effects. One general even suggested using the bomb on the beach to "blind" the enemy right before a landing on the Japanese homeland.If you're at it, why not suggest that people were dumbasses for not inventing the computer much much sooner? After all, it's a relatively simple concept. Again, it wasn't a game. Yes, given the opportunity, the Japanese would have held out much much longer. Their goal was to grind the American advance to a halt until they gave up. The Japanese wanted to keep what's left of their empire. Are you seriously suggesting carpet bombing the whole country over the months and then ending it with a spectacular invasion was better than dropping 2 bombs to get an immediate surrender? Didn't you read everything we've said? The Japanese had demonstrated up till that point that men, women, and children would rather die than surrender. Yes, they knew they were going to lose, but they'd fight to the last man. If it was a slow and arduous campaign, they would have fought to the death.That's why Truman decided to go for a shock tactic. And it worked.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.