Does every WW2 film from any nation's perspective have to cover it's war crimes?

[Lightknight]

I raise this obviously over the issue of "The Wind Rises" which has been accused of being Japanese WW2 apologism because a film focused on a military plane designer does not make note of Japan's atrocities in WW2. I am not claiming Japan did not commit such atrocities, indeed there is little I have ever read as horrifying as accounts of the rape of Nanking BUT

Every major nation in WW2 has war crimes under it's belt, the US has not only the intentional targeting of civilians with nuclear weapons but also Operation teardrop, the Biscari massacre, The massacre of Audouville-la-Hubert etc. etc.

Britain (and the US) intentionally targeted civilians during the bombing of Dresden etc. etc.

The Soviets have the rape of Berlin etc. etc.

Yet "Saving Private Ryan" was not condemned for not skipping over to Italy or Hiroshima to show us these atrocities. They simply aren't relevant to the film and the fact that a Japanese film (by a pacifist no less) is being criticized for not doing so demonstrates rampant hypocrisy and a serious lack of self analysis.

You've heard the saying that the victors write the history books, right? Something historical that favors the losers has historically performed poorly.

The difference in our eyes is that Japan and German were the aggressors. We would not have been at war had it not been for them. So yeah, people get more touchy in literature that doesn't call them out and even glorifies elements of what contributed to their actions. There is also the concept that Japan carried out an unjust war in general whereas you've got to pick smaller misteps here and there for the Allied forces. That Japan was acting along with Germany doesn't help their case when discussing warcrimes.

The fault of the Dresden bombings was that we used fire bombs which maximizes the loss of human loss. The problem was not that it was targeting civilians since the actual target was the train and factory depos. Perhaps they felt that a fire would be more destructive to those things and went ahead with them despite the human element. I would call the cities bombed valid targets because of their strategic positioning for supplying German troops and manufacturing military goods.

Operation Teardrop was the bombing of German U-Boats approaching the East Coast of the US that they suspected had certain weapons that they did not. It was literally while we were at war with Germany. How do you call this a War Crime? They killed 126 US/Canadian troops and 218 Germans were killed. That's part of war between multiple war vessles. Complaining about this would be like complaining that US troops were being big meanies when they attacked German pill boxes while they were being gunned down. The only thing I can think about this one is that the German captives got "interrogated abusively" to determine if the U-Boats really were carrying those rockets. But that's because they had reason to fear that the Germans were trying to strike New York. That's also not universally considered a war crime.

The massacres though, no one can justify those. I will mention that some of our Massacres were when we walked into concentration camps and saw first hand what the Germans had been doing to Jews. Can you imagine catching soldiers red handed with piles of dead civilians that they had brutalized over the war? I can understand the US soldiers' thinking that these men were evil and deserved every bullet they got even if I am morally against shooting surrendered and unarmed people. Still a warcrime? Absolutely. But a warcrime against the perpetrators of the worst offense against humanity in recent memory if not ever. They were people who would have and should have been executed but in a much more humane manner than they allowed the Jewish captives. Hell, even the bullets were more just than what they'd been dishing out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

You've got a lot of other things to choose from, though.

 

[Lightknight]

(As an aside, I don't know if bombing civilians for military purposes is a war crime as such)

It was until Sherman started burning cities during the American Civil War. Once he got away with it, attacking civilian targets kind of became SOP for most militaries.

So far as showing various country's war crimes in film, I think we're all rather aware of who did what and when. No need to constantly bring it up if you're wanting to create a piece of media focused on one particular aspect of a greater event.

And if people aren't aware of it, then we need to take a closer look at schools' curriculum.

It wasn't so much a civilian target. Dresden was clearly being used for militaristic purposes as a major military supply and manufacturing point. It was the perfect target and was seen as a necessary step to prevent Germany from rallying which they may have been able to do had these railways remained active.

So let's boil this down to the lowest common denominator. Do you feel that bombing a civilian-owned tank factory would have been just? The thing about this stuff is that there isn't a right or wrong answer. It depends on where you stand on Just War theory and all its components as well as what constitutes a legitimate target. For example, I'm sure we'd all agree that attacking areas with no military ties at all would be unjust. But the moment you start adding more ties, the moment people who consider the target off limits starts to drop off our numbers. I think Dresden was important enough to the German Military to warrant its attack. I do not agree with the types of bombs they used but perhaps they felt like it would do the most damage to the area despite the cost of human lives.

 

[Tono Makt]

I raise this obviously over the issue of "The Wind Rises" which has been accused of being Japanese WW2 apologism because a film focused on a military plane designer does not make note of Japan's atrocities in WW2. I am not claiming Japan did not commit such atrocities, indeed there is little I have ever read as horrifying as accounts of the rape of Nanking BUT

Every major nation in WW2 has war crimes under it's belt, the US has not only the intentional targeting of civilians with nuclear weapons but also Operation teardrop, the Biscari massacre, The massacre of Audouville-la-Hubert etc. etc.

Britain (and the US) intentionally targeted civilians during the bombing of Dresden etc. etc.

The Soviets have the rape of Berlin etc. etc.

Yet "Saving Private Ryan" was not condemned for not skipping over to Italy or Hiroshima to show us these atrocities. They simply aren't relevant to the film and the fact that a Japanese film (by a pacifist no less) is being criticized for not doing so demonstrates rampant hypocrisy and a serious lack of self analysis.

There is a slight bit of false equivalency going on here - the crimes of the Allies in WWII pale in comparison to the crimes of the Axis - and that is including the Soviet Union in the Allies. But the point is still valid.

No nation will entirely fess up to the crimes of their past. Sometimes this is because they don't believe they were crimes, sometimes there is a dispute over whether the actions were crimes or just the way things were at the time and sometimes it's because there are still people alive today who were directly victimized by the crimes and admitting they were crimes puts the onus on the current government to prosecute the criminals and compensate the victims... which can get rather sticky.

In the realm of art it's an even murkier situation because art isn't required to be truthful. "Based on a true story." is what Saving Private Ryan is - it isn't the actual story of the saving of a Private Ryan. We don't have the exact actions that were taken by the people who went to save the soldier that the story is based on. It's a story that takes a great deal of artistic license to tell a good story and make a good movie. Should it have shown an American solider killing a German civilian in a rage or just because they could? Should it have shown a group of Russian soldiers raping a German girl? Why? It's art - it's not history. It's a story meant to entertain and it has no responsibility to the truth. The same with The Wind Rises; it's art, not history. It has no responsibility to depicting the truth, only to telling a good story and being an entertaining movie.

The real problem comes with the attempted whitewashing of history books and official documentation. There is a responsibility to tell history truthfully and an even greater responsibility to have the official documentation being truthful because both of those situations rely on the reader trusting the material. If you begin to doubt one section of a history book - say a history book of North America that never mentions that natives were regularly expelled from lands granted to them under various treaties and only says "Territory X became State/Province X in (YEAR), and the population grew to over a million people once immigrants from (Europe) arrived from (YEAR) to (YEAR).", making it sound like there was no one there before the Europeans came. Where the reality was that the nation (England or US mostly) sent in troops to push Natives out of the lands, breaking the treaties and forcing them into small reservations before it was considered safe for the Europeans to come over to these "empty" lands. If the history is leaving that out, what else are they leaving out? How accurate is the rest of the account, and how much can it be trusted?

Government documents are similar; if the documents don't show the army being sent in to push the Natives out, what else is the Government forgetting to include? Why did certain people get certain lands while other people got other lands? Why did (Nationality Y) get the prime grounds, the huge forests prime for logging and easy access to the major waterways, while (Nationality Z) get put in the mountainous region where the tree's were only good for firewood, where the soil was too rocky to grow a decent amount of crops and where the weather was terrible? Was it just coincidence... or did the government actually plan it that way?

So, tl;dr version:

Historical Accuracy does not apply to Artistic projects (though it would be nice and is normally preferable)
Historical Accuracy DOES apply to Educational and Legal/Government projects

 

[Petromir]

(As an aside, I don't know if bombing civilians for military purposes is a war crime as such)

It was until Sherman started burning cities during the American Civil War. Once he got away with it, attacking civilian targets kind of became SOP for most militaries.

So far as showing various country's war crimes in film, I think we're all rather aware of who did what and when. No need to constantly bring it up if you're wanting to create a piece of media focused on one particular aspect of a greater event.

And if people aren't aware of it, then we need to take a closer look at schools' curriculum.

What?

Sacking of Cities was pretty much the standard for most of history. That the opponents of Napoleon (so the Brits in Spain for example) tried to control their troops was unusual for the time. WW2 was mostly unusual for the distance from the front it was an issue (and even then WW1 had such raids on the UK).

While the concept of warcrimes wasn't new in about 1900, thats about when the first formalised international rules came about. Prior to that things were far less formal and even more skewed to the victor being right. Mostly trials for warcrimes were about revenge or on some rare occasions ways of currying favour with those affected by sacrificing a scapegoat.

More directly on topic if a film's narrative doesn't cross an area where there were warcrimes then it usually doesn't make sense to show them. A film of say Pegasus Bridge makes little sense if it includes much about Dresden for example.

 

[kurokotetsu]

I went to a half-British school. In no textbook about Fisrt and Second World Wars were British crimes adressed. The books didn't talk about the bombing of Dresden, nor how colonial troops composed the wide majority of front line infantry nor admitted the use of chemical warfare as weapon of the British (mostly talking about chenical weapons in a small asection, and with focus on German Mustard Gas). I was never thought about the Boer Wars nor their concnetration camps.

And all this can eb said it is glossed over in British media. Of the episodes I've seen of Doctor Who, the two that happened during the WWII were during the bombing of London and not a mantion of Dresden. The quite good Downton Abbey has two characters that fought the Boer Wars and not one mention to concentration camps. Nor are the atrocities of WWI talked about, even while half of the cast was occupied with it and it was a constant background for a whole Series.

The Japanese may be especially into more denialism than other countries, but their own crimes do seem glossed over for most countries (Germany is an exception). They might be shown a bit (US sldiers killing surrendering German troops in Saving Private Ryan) but completely forgeten thematically, "justified" (Peral Harbor and the bombing of civilians) ro in most cases just not talked about (Monument Men). They are not actively dening as a lot of Japanese offcials, but they are the kid that sayws "yeah sorry by the way look over there to that other thing", not owning up to their war crimes. And it seems a bit hypocrytical. After all, the only quick reference to American Caoncentration Camps that I can think of in the mainstream media is in The Karate Kid. nor are there many refrences to the Bombing of Hirsoshima and Nagasaki (I reacall Hiroshima Mon Amour a French film that went into it).

Also, quite a bit of th Unit 731 was pardoned by Allied forces, probably because they found the research useful. So the US can be said complicit fo the actions fo the Unit, which is normally not adressed by any of the participants.

Japan has done terrible things, and writing criminal anme sin a war memorial doesn't make it better. But everyone is trying to igore their own misdeeds in general, even while not being as overt as teh Japanese (again, exception noted with the Germans).

Exception to the examples I made can be found. They do not how ever disproof the wider trend of that it is present in Western media.

 

[Tono Makt]

(As an aside, I don't know if bombing civilians for military purposes is a war crime as such)

It was until Sherman started burning cities during the American Civil War. Once he got away with it, attacking civilian targets kind of became SOP for most militaries.

So far as showing various country's war crimes in film, I think we're all rather aware of who did what and when. No need to constantly bring it up if you're wanting to create a piece of media focused on one particular aspect of a greater event.

And if people aren't aware of it, then we need to take a closer look at schools' curriculum.

Therein lies much of the problem - people are NOT aware of who did what and when because of the whitewashing of history books used in schools. There are people to this day who think that Slavery was a good thing[\b] for the African Americans and who aren't foaming-at-the-mouth racists. They're just people who have been utterly insulated from the realities of slavery in America by having it reduced to things like "There were X Million slaves in America in (YEAR)." and "Many of the slaves were brought to America by the Portuguese from (YEAR) to (YEAR)." and the occasional anecdote like "Some slaves were married in the Christian tradition." or "(HISTORICAL FIGURE/FOUNDING FATHER) freed his slaves upon his death.", and there is very little in the way of "On the trip across the ocean African captives were often packed into the ships literally shoulder to shoulder. Rape was common, as was beating some slaves to death as an example to the rest - losing one potential slave was not a huge loss." and "Slave families were often broken up with no consideration to the family unit." and "90% of slaves on sugar plantations died within 10 years due to being worked up to 20 hours a day, being poorly fed and regularly whipped.".

It's hard to get really upset with those kinds of people - it's not entirely their fault that they're ignorant of history. The history they're being taught is ridiculously whitewashed.

 

[Lightknight]

So let's boil this down to the lowest common denominator. Do you feel that bombing a civilian-owned tank factory would have been just?

Doesn't really matter what I feel about it. Society determines what is just or not. Usually after the fact.

I don't find that I can easily discuss a subject with society as a whole. I can, however, discuss this with you.

 

[Gorrath]

I think the problem might be because Japan like denying its war crimes.

Germany, OTOH, makes a big fuss letting everyone know exactly what they did.

(As an aside, I don't know if bombing civilians for military purposes is a war crime as such)

Yup bombing civilians intentionally absolutely is a war crime "War crimes also included deliberate attacks on citizens".

It should be noted that the rules of war had not been updated to include that use of airpower and even in 1949 the US and GB resisted changes to the fourth Geneva Convention precisely because it would have made some of their raids war crimes in retrospect. While we can discuss the moral implications of certain actions taken during wartime, not all actions we would consider immoral are necessarily war crimes, which have specific legal arguments that need to be addressed.

It is not so simple that you can say "War crimes included deliberate attacks on citizens", because a deliberate attack that leads to loss of life by civilians may or may not be justified. As a former soldier who served in several wars, I can tell you the general rule of thumb we used to determine if our actions were okay or not was the following. Any offensive action we might take should be justifiable as a consequence of military necessity, or to put it another way, if there was no military advantage to be gained, you shouldn't be doing it.

The bombing of Dresden was without a doubt linked to what the allies considered a military necessity. The seeming indiscriminate nature of the bombing leads one to question the moral choices of those involved in the planning. But a breach of moral choices does not automatically equate to a war crime.

Blowing up a mosque which has a sniper team using the building for cover is justifiable military action. Blowing up the same mosque with the same snipers when you know that the mosque also contains a shelter for orphans, and you can neutralize the snipers without the wholesale destruction of the building is still justifiable military action, but the moral consequences involved may lead to the commander in charge facing charges, even if those charges are not for war crimes.

I hope that clears things up a bit for people who may not know much about these things.

 

[Lightknight]

Sacking of Cities was pretty much the standard for most of history. That the opponents of Napoleon (so the Brits in Spain for example) tried to control their troops was unusual for the time. WW2 was mostly unusual for the distance from the front it was an issue (and even then WW1 had such raids on the UK).

Most of the pre-industrial sacking of cities during wartime was a means for armies to keep themselves supplied and wasn't specifically a tactic enacted as to demoralize the enemy.

As you said, Napoleon worked to stop the sacking of cities and devised a system of logistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_logistics#Napoleon

But the attack of civilian targets with the purpose of demoralizing an enemy was first enacted during the American Civil War by Union armies. And today, that's acceptable because the Union won that war and society decided that it was OK.

The Bombing of Dresden wasn't to demoralize the enemy. It was to attack military supply lines and factories. The only complaint people have about the bombing of Dresden is the kind of Bombs used, not the bombing itself. Not using firebombs could have saved a significant number of lives. But, the fire was also extremely effective at spreading destruction to catch building they didn't hit directly. So it wasn't a random choice either.

Now the bombings in Japan? Those were for demoralization and to end a war. But people are greatly divided on that as well. However, that kind of display of military potency/technology has greatly aided the world in a general ceasefire amongst major powers.

 

[Albino Boo]

The official history textbooks of the Japanese school system makes no mentions of Japanese war crimes further more it tell downright lies that the 10000s of women forced in Japanese army Brothels were volunteers. It make no mention of the Burma railroad. The text also fails to mention the use of chemical weapons in China or the use of Chinese as live subjects for biological warfare. A pro forma apology makes no difference when you refuse to teach in schools the truth of Japan's behaviour.

That's not how Japan's school system works. I'm a teacher here, so I know that the way you're describing the textbooks is inaccurate.

Japan doesn't have "official" history textbooks. What they have is a procedure by which textbooks have to be approved by the Ministry of Education in order to be used in public schools. Private companies write the textbooks using MEXT guidelines, and then as I understand it the textbooks have to be submitted for "accuracy" review. I put accuracy in quotes because from what I've seen of English texts, this is not always a thorough review.

Now since I'm not literate in Japanese and when I'm at work I have too much to do to go bothering the teachers of other subjects just for the sake of an Internet discussion, but I've never heard of a MEXT initiative to ban discussion of Japanese Imperial crimes against humanity. I heard a few years back that there was a scandal with one textbook. I can't remember which aspect of Japan's WWII past people were outraged about it glossing over (it may have been Japanese brutality to Okinawans) but last I heard that textbook was mainly being used by rural special needs classes. Presumably, if the outrage was directed at a specific textbook rather than the Ministry of Education in general, that would suggest that other textbooks don't have this problem.

Now, it is true that there are ultra-conservatives and nationalists who do want to gloss over Japan's wartime past. The Abe administration has been particularly ruthless about this recently, placing people in charge of the state-run NHK broadcasting agency who openly deny these atrocities, and there has been a recent move among members of the conservative government to call for a "less masochistic" portrayal of Japan's wartime past. There are even moves to "review" Japan's apology to Korean comfort women, an absurd move if ever there was one.

But it's important to keep the facts straight here, so that what should be a shaming of an ultra-conservative side of the government doesn't become an attack on Japanese people in general. When I first started teaching here, every year there would be a story about school principals committing suicide over their school being required by the state to play the national anthem and fly the national flag, because these principals believed merely utilizing symbols of the nation was a gateway to imperialism and warmongering. Japanese knowledge of and attitudes toward their wartime past is not at all uniform, however frustrating their tendency to not discuss it may be. But one thing I know for a fact is that whatever Japanese people's opinions of their past history may be, the surest way to get people of every political stripe against you is to attack the nation as a whole.

The very fact that you that America behaviour wasn't always the greatest is far more than the total level ignorance and silence on the subject of Japanese war crimes that exits.

I'm not so sure. I'm one American, frequently shouted down by many other Americans. Japan currently has a pacifist constitution that still has wide support among the public as a response to its past warmongering.

Look, I'm not saying Japan as a country has the right attitude towards its wartime past. It drives me up the wall the way people here deal with it. But you can't paint the whole country with the broad strokes you're trying to use. People don't think the same way, but because of how important in-group/out-group dynamics are to the society here, as an outsider you should expect to never get access to the internal debate about Japan's wartime past. Hell, I live here and it can be hard to get people to express an opinion beyond "War is bad because you might lose and get hurt."

Dont you think that the Japanese State might have something to down the the clearing of those text books. SO why did the Japanese state AGREE to the names of 1618 convicted war criminals, including those that had been executed, being added to the Yasukuni shrine. Why have Japanese Prime ministers repeatedly visited the shrine, despite each and every time there being a backlash from its near neighbours. The German government does not allow text books written by Neo nazis into its schools and yet the Japanese government allows the use ultra nationalist ones. The Japanese government has not made a stand to force the truth of Japan's wartime crimes into the open and allows ultra nationalists into the academic mainstream.

I also refer to this statement from the current Japanese Prime minister "we are reaching the limit in narrowing down differences between Japan's security and the interpretation of our constitution". During his first period as prime minister he upgraded the Japan Defense Agency to full ministry status. Further more he led the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform which are the textbooks that say that women volunteered for Japanese army brothels. This is the man that won a landslide victory in 2012.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

As far as films go? no, not all films do. Bridge on the River Kwai is probably the most famous example, while for most of the film the story pretends to simply condemn Japanese atrocity in the Sino-Japanese side of the conflict, by the end of the film. . . well, lets just say it has one of the best -and most famous- closing lines of dialogue in film history.

The political situation in Asia is complex to say the least, and you need to remember that their politicians are really just like ours. A good example: The current controversy over the Senkaku islands, where many Chinese people felt that Japan had taken them away from China during WWII. Listening to the Chinese and Korean press, these islands are important and rich in natural resources. In Shanghai, protests of about 500 people demonstrated against Japan and boycotted Japanese goods.

In reality, the islands are nothing but some uninhabitable rocks in the middle of the pacific, and there are no natural resources there at all. In Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world, you can put a "free lunch" sign outside of your restaurant and be swarmed by over 300,000 people. Believe me, I have been to Shanghai; it is amazing that only 500 people showed up to protest, that is usually less than the line at McDonalds. The "protests" were largely staged in order to draw attention away from the corruption and a rather messy transition of power going on in the Beijing government at the time. In a sense, it is largely the same with "The Wind Rises," politicians use the film as a means to stoke tensions in order to benefit their own political position, while the ultra-conservative groups use the films content -or lack their of- to garner attention which they desperately crave.

 

[teebeeohh]

The fault of the Dresden bombings was that we used fire bombs which maximizes the loss of human loss. The problem was not that it was targeting civilians since the actual target was the train and factory depos. Perhaps they felt that a fire would be more destructive to those things and went ahead with them despite the human element. I would call the cities bombed valid targets because of their strategic positioning for supplying German troops and manufacturing military goods.

while cities are valid targets i never get why the allies are rarely called out for using time-delayed bombs that were not designed to detonate on impact but hours later so they detonate in the middle of rescue operations. i wasn't even aware those thing were used until a friend of mine who works in bomb disposal told me that like 90% of all the explosives they have to deal with are those kinda bombs from WW2 that failed to detonate.
and the issue with Dresden was never if it was a justified target, it was more about the city center being bombed as opposed to the industrial areas further out.


interestingly, the Chinese prime minister is visiting Germany at the end of the month and originally was supposed to visit the Holocaust memorial in Berlin with Merkel but they scrapped that because it would upset the Japanese.

 

[Gorrath]

I don't find that I can easily discuss a subject with society as a whole. I can, however, discuss this with you.

Fair enough. I've found I really don't share the same values as most of society, but I'll give it a go.

If two sovereign states are at war, stopping the other's ability to make war (ie production) is a way to end the war quicker. There's no need to wait until those tanks are on the front line (where they can kill your troops) when you can destroy the enemy's ability to make them in the first place. So you send some bombers over and level the factory. Sure, the factory was staffed with civilians, but they were technically aiding and abetting the enemy. So those losses are satisfactory, as it helps ends the war quicker and reduces your casualties.

But sometimes reducing an enemy's capability to make war isn't enough. When you get right down to it, wars are started and stopped by politicians. So if one could reduce the support those politicians have in their society, they will be pressured to end the war. One way to reduce their political support is to attack their constituency. If a civilian population supports a politician that creates war, then reducing or eliminating that population will correspondingly reduce the support that politician has to make war.

In modern military strategy, the ends almost always justify the means.

I agree with the first part of what you say but the second part is not justifiable. Simply attacking civilian populations to demoralize them is not only immoral, but it often does not lead to achieving the objectives you might think. If you go on a campaign of killing civilians for no other reason than to cause wholesale slaughter, you are more likely to gird your opposition, turning moderates into war-supporters. Precise targeting of military objectives is considered best practice in modern war fighting. That factory you mention is a perfectly acceptable target, even if all it's producing is food for the troops. Blowing up a suburb with no military or industrial targets is counter productive and a war crime.

 

[Lightknight]

I don't find that I can easily discuss a subject with society as a whole. I can, however, discuss this with you.

Fair enough. I've found I really don't share the same values as most of society, but I'll give it a go.

If two sovereign states are at war, stopping the other's ability to make war (ie production) is a way to end the war quicker. There's no need to wait until those tanks are on the front line (where they can kill your troops) when you can destroy the enemy's ability to make them in the first place. So you send some bombers over and level the factory. Sure, the factory was staffed with civilians, but they were technically aiding and abetting the enemy. So those losses are satisfactory, as it helps ends the war quicker and reduces your casualties.

But sometimes reducing an enemy's capability to make war isn't enough. When you get right down to it, wars are started and stopped by politicians. So if one could reduce the support those politicians have in their society, they will be pressured to end the war. One way to reduce their political support is to attack their constituency. If a civilian population supports a politician that creates war, then reducing or eliminating that population will correspondingly reduce the support that politician has to make war.

Yeah, it was really difficult when Hitler had the kind of support he did in Germany. He had an ironclad vision and the military's full support. The Japan was also a difficult nut to crack with the supreme leader (figurehead King) wasn't a public-facing entity so the political structure was drastically different from our own and something we had no power to work with.

The only people who were capable of persuading the politicians were the Allies. Things would be different now.

I agree with both of these statements, actually. Both were probably a bit overkill, but hindsight often gives one the capability of softer morality.

Right, to this day I can't decide whether or not I'm ok with the bombings in Japan. All I know is that my grandfather was in a boat offshore, ready to invade forcefully if those bombs weren't dropped. I can't imagine that would have been a bloodless victory on our side. So on some level I have to be grateful for it even if I find it deeply in murky moral territory. It's an unusual luxury to be able to moralize these situations.

 

[Lightknight]

I agree with the first part of what you say but the second part is not justifiable. Simply attacking civilian populations to demoralize them is not only immoral, but it often does not lead to achieving the objectives you might think. If you go on a campaign of killing civilians for no other reason than to cause wholesale slaughter, you are more likely to gird your opposition, turning moderates into war-supporters. Precise targeting of military objectives is considered best practice in modern war fighting. That factory you mention is a perfectly acceptable target, even if all it's producing is food for the troops. Blowing up a suburb with no military or industrial targets is counter productive and a war crime.

What do you consider the two bombs the US dropped in Japan? Morally justified or not, they sure as Hell accomplished the desired goals.

I guess the goal was to explain that if they wanted war, we had the power to level them. It wasn't to slaughter, it was to flex and it worked. But the result was terrible.

I should add though, that both Nagasaki (port city with huge industrial contributions to Japan's war effort) and Hiroshima (port city, lots of military industry with huge military stockpiles and some significant military headquarters/personnel) were of significant value to the Japanese Military. So it also blurred the line morally.

Had they wanted to make a purely demoralizing effort, it would have been in a capital or something along those lines. Also, for several months leading up to the big attacks, the US had been dropping leaflets warning civilians of impending attacks. 63 million leaflets. They just didn't drop "special" leaflets warning people that a new kind of bomb was going to be dropped because that would have significantly harmed the effectiveness of it. The did two leaflet dropping sorties in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped and sent Japan an ultimatum warning of a major attack on their soil if they did not comply.