Guilt and the Murder of Innocents.

[Anomynous 167]

Technically the Americans started the war between America and Japan, when they launched an oil embargo on the Japs. They tried to surrender for better terms.

And we did that because why? For shits and giggles? Or could it have anything to do with Japan's aggressive Imperial expansion into China/French Indochina? We did not have a duty to supply their campaign.

So no, we didn't start shit. The Japanese were pillaging their way across the Pacific, then attacked us when we wouldn't play ball.

We were not interested in 'terms' after that point. They had lost their right to 'terms'. The only thing we were interested in was a full and unconditional surrender. Anything apart from that would have been a tacit endorsement of their campaigns.

And the Brits and the Russians were pillaging there way through France, Eastern Europe, Iran and North Africa; yet you still sold oil to them before taking sides.
And face it. No one wants to surrender to someone unconditionally, especially if that someone is a bloodthirsty prick who won't accept anything less than an unconditional surrender.

To claim the issue is black and white, that the dropping of the bombs was unquestionably immoral, significantly devalues the life of a soldier down to around one tenth the value of a civilian life and, in my opinion, ignores the moral justification of the rules of war. I simply cannot agree with this, especially in a conscript army situation. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on my reasoning.

As open minded as you claim your opponent to be, stating yourself that ye "simply cannot agree with [blank]..." makes you sound rather closed minded. The vibe from the rest of your post is that "Although I disagree with you on [blank], I am really interested in your thoughts on [blank]".

But I guess this isn't a debate, this is a discussion. So persuasion isn't a necessary move. DrOswald, I admire your civility, and formality.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

snip

I'm not the guy you are quoting, but I would just like to discuss with you my problem with the bombings. I understand that they may have been necessary. I understand that it was preferable to an invasion. But I do not understand why other options were not explored. It was not immoral to drop the bomb to prevent a full scale invasion, but it was immoral to drop the second bomb before a response could be formulated, and it was immoral to drop the first bomb before first demonstrating the power the bomb held in a less civilian populated area.

Fair enough if you disagree, and I understand that this was the first really hard-fought war the US had ever really dealt with as a nation, and that they were desperate for an end, so I can understand the motivation, and know that I'm really in no place to judge, but that's just how I feel.

 

[DrOswald]

To claim the issue is black and white, that the dropping of the bombs was unquestionably immoral, significantly devalues the life of a soldier down to around one tenth the value of a civilian life and, in my opinion, ignores the moral justification of the rules of war. I simply cannot agree with this, especially in a conscript army situation. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on my reasoning.

As open minded as you claim your opponent to be, stating yourself that you "simply cannot agree with [blank]..." makes you sound rather closed minded. The vibe from the rest of your post is that "Although I disagree with you on [blank], I am really interested in your thoughts on [blank]".

But I guess this isn't a debate, this is a discussion. So persuasion isn't a necessary move. DrOswald, I admire your civility, and formality.

I also thank you for your civility, I really like this sort of discussion when people are being level headed. It is only through reasoned discussion that we can objectively see a new point of view, and that is what these discussions are all about in the end.

I do not believe that my statements indicated a closed mind, but I certainly could have been clearer. I believe that a person with an open mind can and should form strong opinions, but that they should be ready to reevaluate and change those opinions in the light of new information or more persuasive reasoning.

You will note that I said that I "simply cannot agree" applies two 2 statements:

1. That the life of a soldier can be devalued to 1/10th that of a civilian.

This is based on assumption 3 and 4 that I listed.

2. That we can ignore the reasons and moral justifications of the rules of war.

This is based on an idea that I didn't get into for the sake of staying on topic. The basic idea is that no belief, rule or principle is so important that it is beyond reexamination. In fact, the more important the belief, rule, or principle the more vital it is to understand and reexamine on a regular basis and under special circumstances. We must understand why it was put in place, what it offers, what problems it causes, and ultimately if it is causing more harm than good. I could be far more specific about this, but I don't think anyone wants to read an even bigger wall of text.

In any case, I hold these positions so strongly because I have never heard a persuasive argument against them, nor can I imagine one. That is not to say that one cannot exist, but I have never heard it.

If anyone wants to challenge my 4 assumptions or the ideas I present in this post, I would be more than happy to hear the argument and discuss it with you.

 

[Therumancer]

I was recently doing a bit of research into the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, simply for curiosity's sake. While doing this research, I discovered that out of the 12 members of the crew flying the bomber responsible for bombing Hiroshima, none of them seemed to show any kind of remorse. I can understand saying it was needed or maybe even justified, but I cannot understand how you could live with yourself after being directly responsible for the deaths of 90,000?166,000 innocent civilians, let alone not feel guilt.

Basically the point of this thread is to ask, what about you?

If given the order, and the circumstances were exactly the same, could you have done it?
Would you have felt it was needed? Justified?
Would you feel guilty? Could you live with it?

I personally do think that it was better than letting the war drag on and needing a mainland invasion, but I just don't think I could do it, or if I did do it, I couldn't live with myself afterwards.

EDIT: Part of the criteria for target selection was "The target was larger than 3 miles (4.8 km) in diameter and was an important target in a large urban area." so they intentionally chose a target which would cause a great number of civilian casualties. I cannot understand why they didn't target exclusively military bases, the message of power would have been understood regardless.

It's because during World War II they actually knew how to fight wars. You can't defeat an enemy in a real war without effectively breaking the culture and the people involved. Especially when your dealing with a fanatical population.

Simply targeting military bases without wiping out the civilians just means that the civilians are going to seeth with more hatred and will produce another military. What's more if they have no fear they aren't going to change the way they live/think/act, and the conflict is going to continue indefinatly. Even if you stop a war temporarily it will resume when they rebuild.

With Japan, you also have to understand that their culture of that time created a definate question as to the lines between military and civilian targets, given that they were literally putting kids into flying bombs and sending them out after ships, and you had every man, woman, and child ready to defend and die, which is why a ground invasion would have amounted to genocide.

In the US and other enlightened nations there is a distinct line drawn between the military and civilians, and there really isn't a whole heck of a lot of fanaticism driving the society in one direction for either nationalistic or religious reasons. The Western World, largely being characterized by internal divides and strife on a level that other cultures do not possess, which today blinds us to a lot of realities.

Japan as it existed then was far differant from what it is now, and extremely differant from the US at either time. The people flying those planes knew this, and acted accordingly. Likewise the left wing was nothing like it is today and it hadn't crippled the nation with moral indesician when it comes to any major act that affects people.

Interestingly, a lot of people today draw parallels between what happened with Japan and the current situation with The Middle East. Both cultures being unreasoning fanatics, with civilian populations who either fight or rapidly produce more troops and fighters, etc... The differance of course being that the US has changed to the point where it is currently unable to deal with that kind of situation again.

See, when the A-bombs hit Japan it not only showed that there would be no fighting us off defensively or "great last stand" but also that their "god emperor" was not in possession of any kind of divine powers that could stop us, and if the pantheon behind him existed, it certainly wasn't going to step in. Their racial superiority and "destiny" was proven to be a lie by the obvious superiority of the enemy that could wipe they out instantly without anything they could do in return. The A-Bombs didn't just kill a lot of people in two cities, they literally decimated the entire culture and how it viewed itself, shattering almost everything Japan was at that time, and ending the war.

A lot of people believe that if we say did the same thing to say Baghdad, Tehran, etc... it would have a similar effect throughout the entire Middle East. Showing that Allah wasn't going to save them, and the only reason they had a chance was because of us holding back for moral reasons. I personally think (as I've said in other posts) that it would require more than a show of force of this kind (even if it killed millions) but I've already written a lot of posts on the subject, and I have no desire to derail the thread since my thoughts are going to irritate a lot of people because I disagree with the flavor of morality a lot of people on these forums define themselves by.

At any rate, I'll also leave this at one final note. The purpose of war is to kill civilians, and wipe out people while breaking their stuff. Militaries are the sword to do this to others, and the shield to prevent it from being done to you. A military is a tool of war, not the point of a war. If you simply defeat a military and don't decimate what it was defending, you defeat the entire purpose.

The Western World has kind of become confused on the subject because we've largely spent a lot of time fighting other divided powers. We're used to the idea of the typical citizen not really caring who is in charge, since they just pay taxes to whomever is flying to flag (so to speak) and do the same basic things. The divided, un-nationalistic, nation with a seperation of church and state has made the idea of attacking a goverment and military and then seizing control of an infrastructure a fairly valid tactic in such cases. Our current morality has been based around cases where this kind of approach has been viable.

The Western World however has however forgotten how to do things "old school" in cases where it is dealing with less evolved cultures, that aren't internally divided by freedom. Extremely nationalistic or theocratic nations, and those where the people are largely dominated by one ethnicity without any real power by minority groups. In most western countries if you look around on your average street you'll see people of tons of differant ethnicities everywhere. In many other nations you look around and almost everyone you see will be Japanese, or Arabic, or whatever else, with outsiders sticking out, and the goverments making no pretensions of equal representation. Exceptions to this of course exist in cosmopolitan, tourist-type areas. In the Western World people tend to overlook how all of this influances the dynamics of warfare and what it is going to take to get a nation or people to concede defeat, or be rendered incapable of continueing a war.

If the US invaded say Canada (not that we ever would) we could probably win under our current engagement doctrine as Canada has a very similar outlook to our own, the same could be said of most western nations and "Children of Britan" or other european powers. As you can see our post-WW II engagement doctrine has gone smashingly in every engagement from "Veitnam" to "The War On Terror" where we've tried to employ it out of context to the enemy being faced.

On some levels it could be argued guilt over Japan has actually crippled us, and is having a definate effect.


Such are my thoughts.

 

[senordesol]

And the Brits and the Russians were pillaging there way through France, Eastern Europe, Iran and North Africa; yet you still sold oil to them before taking sides.
And face it. No one wants to surrender to someone unconditionally, especially if that someone is a bloodthirsty prick who won't accept anything less than an unconditional surrender.

We certainly did exchange commerce with those factions, but it was not our obligation to supply any of them. If we had decided that their actions offended us, and shut down our supply, that is hardly akin to war.

And if they didn't want to surrender, well that's too bad for them isn't it? We were at war and that was no damn secret. Refusing to surrender belied a willingness to continue the fighting, so continue the fighting we did. We had no obligation to make the fight fair or pleasant for them.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Hardly surprising. I wouldn't expect the U.S. military to feel emotion, after all, it's one giant murder machine, taking in blood and spitting out money. They like to tell us all how justified it is and play the "we are the good guys fighting for freedom" crap, but they just enjoy invading poorly armed countries and fucking shit up. Hell, they sold weapons to some of the countries they later went to and bombed the crap out of.

The U.S. is a greedy monster and nothing gets the economy going like a war.

 

[Xangba]

snip

Japan wasn't quite in the negotiating mood. I'm not going to debate acts committed by soldiers or any of that, but as a nation Japan was basically unyielding. Japan was warned they would suffer "complete and utter destruction." There was no response back. There was also the debate about simply demonstrating one of the two bombs to the Japanese leaders, but no one knew if that alone would cause surrender or if it would just waste a bomb. I am offering no opinion on the decision, but obviously they decided to skip the demonstration and risk wasting a bomb.

OT: There are always some people that show no remorse or regret, but don't even dare to assume you know what's in the mind of people that have to do things like that. Many people lock it away in their head because they don't want to have to face what they've done.

 

[DrOswald]

snip

I'm not the guy you are quoting, but I would just like to discuss with you my problem with the bombings. I understand that they may have been necessary. I understand that it was preferable to an invasion. But I do not understand why other options were not explored. It was not immoral to drop the bomb to prevent a full scale invasion, but it was immoral to drop the second bomb before a response could be formulated, and it was immoral to drop the first bomb before first demonstrating the power the bomb held in a less civilian populated area.

Fair enough if you disagree, and I understand that this was the first really hard-fought war the US had ever really dealt with as a nation, and that they were desperate for an end, so I can understand the motivation, and know that I'm really in no place to judge, but that's just how I feel.

In fact, there were many options available to the Allies and many of them were considered at the time. This line of reasoning is in my opinion the strongest argument against the dropping of the bombs. So you know, I have not yet decided on my position on these particular points. I feel I have not yet thoroughly research and considered the available evidence. I can give you a rundown of what I have found so far.

Here is a link that you may find useful: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm It is a compilation of many documents that discussed the possibility of the bombing and other options (these documents were written before the bombing.)

Lets start this discussion with the pertinent questions so we can more easily focus our efforts:

Why was the use of nuclear bombs chosen?

What were the other options available and how viable were they?

Why were these options not ultimately decided upon?

The final question, point of all this discussion, is if the actions taken were the best option available. I will not be making that call for the reasons I stated above.

So, lets get started:

The bombs were dropped as a blatant show of force. This is important to remember, because it explains the reasoning behind the specific method of using the bomb.

The decision to specifically target cities was to prove the destructive power of the bomb, prove that the Americans were willing to wipe out the Japanese completely if it came to that, and prove that they had no chance of stopping or even resisting the Americans. The goal was to get these points across to the people as much as it was to the leaders, the line of thinking being that even if the leadership failed to surrender the Japanese people would refuse to continue fighting and force the surrender.

The decision to use two bombs was made because it was at least suspected (It may have been know, this is one area I need to do more research) that the Japanese had their own nuclear program and would therefore know the extreme difficulty of constructing an atomic weapon. It was believed that if only one target was hit the Japanese would doubt the USA had more than the one bomb and would also doubt that the Americans could rapidly construct more bombs. The second target sent the statement that we had a stockpile and could continue the bombings until they surrendered. This was a bit of a bluff, as we only had the two bombs ready at the time. The third bomb would have been ready in time for an August 16th mission and the fourth not until September. (I still need to confirm those figures, so don't hold me to those dates.)

Those are the reasons for a city target and the use of two bombs. I have not yet made a call on if these decisions were justified.

This post is turning out to be a lot longer than I thought it was going to be, so I will just list a couple of the other options explored and why they were not taken in short form.

1. A practical demonstration of the capability to use and the power of the bomb.
- Fear that the Japanese would not take the threat seriously for 2 reasons: that they would doubt the Americans had more weapons, and doubt that the Americans were willing to use the weapons on a meaningful target.
- News of such a demonstration would not have reached the Japanese people in any meaningful way.

2. Change the conditions of Japanese surrender.
- Fear that if the conditions were changed, Japan would see it as a weakness and a sign that they could hold out for even more.
- The possibly justified belief that the only terms that would be accepted would not include total disarmament.

I could write pages about each individual bullet point, but this isn't the place for that. There were other options, but they are more nuanced. It would take pages of text to explain what they were and why they were not taken.

 

[Xangba]

snip

Hey that's like a much longer version of what I said, and much better written! Nice research. When it comes down to it though, basically the only way to win against an unyielding opponent is to do what many consider unthinkable. Hard truth, and most people should be happy they aren't the ones in that situation.

 

[Anomynous 167]

And the Brits and the Russians were pillaging there way through France, Eastern Europe, Iran and North Africa; yet you still sold oil to them before taking sides.
And face it. No one wants to surrender to someone unconditionally, especially if that someone is a bloodthirsty prick who won't accept anything less than an unconditional surrender.

We certainly did exchange commerce with those factions, but it was not our obligation to supply any of them. If we had decided that their actions offended us, and shut down our supply, that is hardly akin to war.

And if they didn't want to surrender, well that's too bad for them isn't it? We were at war and that was no damn secret. Refusing to surrender belied a willingness to continue the fighting, so continue the fighting we did. We had no obligation to make the fight fair or pleasant for them.

Senordesol, do you even know what "unconditional surrender" is? If not, then basically it means that you do not make any guarantees of safety to the surrendering party; i.e: You can do what ever you want to the guy who surrendered, and there is nothing they can do about it. Loot all their houses, dismantle their entire military, force them into slavery so that they are doomed to cook you absolutely scrumdidiliumptious Lebanese food for the rest of their lives.
You don't just surrender to people "unconditionally" if you want to live the rest of your life dignifully.

snip

Hey that's like a much longer version of what I said, and much better written! Nice research. When it comes down to it though, basically the only way to win against an unyielding opponent is to do what many consider unthinkable. Hard truth, and most people should be happy they aren't the ones in that situation.

/snip

What Xangba said, also, Mr Dr Oswald, your Washington link is broken.

 

[paislyabmj]

im guessing that they chose people who wouldn't balk at what they had to do since it was such a crucial mission.
personally I wouldn't have done it but that's mainly because I don't really give a fuck about my country and I am certainly not going to risk my life for it.

 

[Zeckt]

I would not of been able to live with myself for targeting specific civilian area's, and would probably end up committing suicide in all honesty.

 

[DirtyJunkieScum]

Those are the reasons for a city target

You missed out the fact that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were major industrial centres and Hiroshima was a major staging post for the military, critical for the defence of Southern Japan. At a strategic level they made sense as targets, if the Japanese didn't surrender then they would at least damage the enemy war machine and hamper Japanese defences against any land invasion. Other major cities had been firebombed with just as much destruction in terms of area, and a lot of smaller cities too. While both targets were partly chosen for a display of force they would have been on the target list for destruction with incendiaries had the war carried on.

 

[exessmirror]

if they did not drop that bomb they would have been responsible for the death of millions. and not just thousands. with that i can say i could sleep like a rock

 

[DrOswald]

What Xangba said, also, Mr Dr Oswald, your Washington link is broken.

Should work now. Here it is again for convenience:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm

Also, it should be noted that the terms offered to the Japanese in the Potsdam declaration did not call for an unconditional surrender, only the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces. There were 6 main terms of surrender outlined in the declaration:

- Details on what land the Japanese would keep. (I believe it is pretty much modern Japan, though I have not checked that yet.)
- Complete military disarmament.
- A declaration that "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals."

- "We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation."
- Japan would be permitted to keep non military industry, access to raw materials, and a guarantee that they would be allowed to participate in trade eventually, though no more specific time table was given.
- That the occupying force would leave as soon as disarmament was completed and a stable government was in place (put in place according to the will of the Japanese people.)

The most important point of uncertainty in the declaration was what would happen to the Emperor, and if he would be considered a war criminal.

 

[senordesol]

And the Brits and the Russians were pillaging there way through France, Eastern Europe, Iran and North Africa; yet you still sold oil to them before taking sides.
And face it. No one wants to surrender to someone unconditionally, especially if that someone is a bloodthirsty prick who won't accept anything less than an unconditional surrender.

We certainly did exchange commerce with those factions, but it was not our obligation to supply any of them. If we had decided that their actions offended us, and shut down our supply, that is hardly akin to war.

And if they didn't want to surrender, well that's too bad for them isn't it? We were at war and that was no damn secret. Refusing to surrender belied a willingness to continue the fighting, so continue the fighting we did. We had no obligation to make the fight fair or pleasant for them.

Senordesol, do you even know what "unconditional surrender" is? If not, then basically it means that you do not make any guarantees of safety to the surrendering party; i.e: You can do what ever you want to the guy who surrendered, and there is nothing they can do about it. Loot all their houses, dismantle their entire military, force them into slavery so that they are doomed to cook you absolutely scrumdidiliumptious Lebanese food for the rest of their lives.
You don't just surrender to people "unconditionally" if you want to live the rest of your life dignifully.

Yes, I know what it means. And that is of no concern. We do not owe our enemies a 'life of dignity'.

 

[Anomynous 167]

And the Brits and the Russians were pillaging there way through France, Eastern Europe, Iran and North Africa; yet you still sold oil to them before taking sides.
And face it. No one wants to surrender to someone unconditionally, especially if that someone is a bloodthirsty prick who won't accept anything less than an unconditional surrender.

We certainly did exchange commerce with those factions, but it was not our obligation to supply any of them. If we had decided that their actions offended us, and shut down our supply, that is hardly akin to war.

And if they didn't want to surrender, well that's too bad for them isn't it? We were at war and that was no damn secret. Refusing to surrender belied a willingness to continue the fighting, so continue the fighting we did. We had no obligation to make the fight fair or pleasant for them.

Senordesol, do you even know what "unconditional surrender" is? If not, then basically it means that you do not make any guarantees of safety to the surrendering party; i.e: You can do what ever you want to the guy who surrendered, and there is nothing they can do about it. Loot all their houses, dismantle their entire military, force them into slavery so that they are doomed to cook you absolutely scrumdidiliumptious Lebanese food for the rest of their lives.
You don't just surrender to people "unconditionally" if you want to live the rest of your life dignifully.

Yes, I know what it means. And that is of no concern. We do not owe our enemies a 'life of dignity'.

First of all, an embargo is technically a declaration of war (something that I didn't point out earlier)
Secondly, do you realise how insane that sounds, starting a fight with someone, force them into submission, and then you say that the person you started a fight with doesn't deserve "A life of dignity" for the sole fact that he was your enemy?