The two nuclear attacks on Japan in WWII killed over 220,000 people (predominately civilians in urban areas).
Hiroshima had some military target associated with it but the major reason why it was targeted was that is was smack bang in the middle of an urban area and large in size with the nearby hills focusing the blast to maximize the kill factor. The main factor for its selection was for the psychological impact on the Japanese Government and to display the massive power of the nuclear weapon on an international scale. In essence it was a terror campaign on the Japanese (on a massive scale).
A 2009 poll in the US revealed that 61 percent of the population continue to think that the use of nuclear weapons was justified (based on the fact that it was deployed for maximum civilian kill and maximum psychological affect/effect).
Can psychological warfare be justified when the target is almost exclusively civilian?
It has to be done by each case. Was the attack on Japan justifiable? No and yes.
220,000 over a projected millions if conflict continued. Civilians targeted throughout that war in most countries involved. The only safest civilians were USA.
Civilians were targets all over. Death was a daily occurrence for civilians. Japan and Germany would not have quit with just a threat. It was not done for revenge, its motive was to stop.
Perhaps motive is the important question when trying to justify or not justify.
Humans have problems thinking in abstractions. Imagine if Americans didn’t nuke. The conflict would continue and a number of soldiers far exceeding the number of victims of the nuke would die, possibly more than a million. People are just generally more likely to morally condemn action rather than inaction.
Do I think it’s 100% justified? No. But I don’t think it’s to be condemned without trying to understand why it happened either.
I think that we crossed the line when we went into civilian territory, not caring about who was bombed. Innocent men, women, and CHILDREN died and suffered horribly because of that. So much intentional human collateral damage.
What is right and reasonable about destroying innocent human life? Seeing consequences is also an important question when it comes to justification.
More days which will live in infamy.
The Target Committee at Los Alamos on May 10–11, 1945, recommended Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and the arsenal at Kokura as possible targets. The committee rejected the use of the weapon against a strictly military objective because of the chance of missing a small target not surrounded by a larger urban area. The psychological effects on Japan were of great importance to the committee members. They also agreed that the initial use of the weapon should be sufficiently spectacular for its importance to be internationally recognized.
There’s your justification for so much human collateral damage. We are at times an insane species, aren’t we?
The committee felt Kyoto, as an intellectual center of Japan, had a population “better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon.” Hiroshima was described as “an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target.”[4]
[b]Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson struck Kyoto from the list because of its cultural significance, over the objections of General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. According to Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, Stimson “had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.”[5]
On July 25, Nagasaki was put on the target list in place of Kyoto.[/b]
Are the lives of soldiers who defend their country really of such a lesser worth than the lives of other people?
The estimated victims had the war continued were in MILLIONS, compared to the 220,000 thousand. I’m not saying morality is purely arithmetics, but I think we should take that into account.
Let’s say they didn’t nuke it and millions of soldiers died in the future battles. What is right and reasonable about that?
No, they aren’t and I wasn’t saying that. All I was saying and I’m thinking is that it was grossly unjustified and unethical and insane.
The lives of the soldiers and of the Japanese community, those who suffered and died, who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, are equally important. WE seem to have disregarded the importance of THEIR existence too. Much of it seems like it was based on “An Eye for an Eye” so to speak. And we needed to make such a strong statement - but at the expense of innocent human life…just like the terrorists did on 9/1l.
I don’t mean to sound callous here but I’m speaking of innocent victims. Yes soldiers who die are victims but at the same time what is the distinction between them and those who were bombed, suffered and were killed?
I think that some wars and “actions” of war are more justified and some are much less justified…and that’s an understatement The bombing of Iwo Jima and Nagasaki to me was much less justified, callous and inhumane.
I don’t really have an answer for that. But you would be willing to destroy innocent human lives NOW on the basis of future possibility?
We aren’t talking about destroying strategic places which might eventually win us the war - we deliberately with forethought realizing that thousands and thousands of human lives, including children, HERE IN THE NOW, would be destroyed - dropped those bombs - not caring.
The only reason to drop them was demonstration and lolz. The Japanese were already surrendering to the Soviets who were about to take Hokkaido. The story weve been told about ending the war with nukes is bullshit. It took Oliver Stones untold history series to clear that up for me, and upon doing some research I had it confirmed that these nukes were strategically not as useful as they were later framed to be. We probably need to count them as the first cold war massacre meant to challenge the Soviets.
(Hopefully known to most: Germany had already surrendered months before the bombs were dropped.)
One of the most heinous things than Man has always done is murder millions of people based upon speculations of what might happen if he doesn’t. Nothing has changed in that regard. Man has always been a very sick puppy.
I agree with lives of the Japanese being equally important (not less or more), that’s what I base my argument on. If you’re saying it was grossly unjustified, unethical and insane you must think that the life of Americans and Japanese combined are worth less than 1/4th of a life of a Japanese person, because estimated casualties of both sides if war was to continue were over a million and Hiroshima/Nagasaki had less than 250,000.
The distinction is that soldiers are drafted by the state, often against their will, while others aren’t. What, do you think soldiers are just innately evil or something? You’re forgetting that forces of Axis in WW2 were the aggressors, the allies were defending. Why should millions of defenders, innocent people drafted by the state die if less than a quarter of a million of aggressors can die?
You’re a woman, it’s easy for you to speak because you never had to give it much thought, did you? As a man, I would be drafted by the state if it came to war. Am I less deserving of life than others? Am I suddenly “guilty” of something and not innocent? Isn’t it incredible how one simple draft by the state turns a person from an “innocent victim” to an “evil monster not even worth a quarter of a life of a regular person” in eyes of some other people? Do you think that none of those million soldiers were fathers, who had families of their own, little boys and girls who would have to grow up without their father, and devastated mothers? Why are you only thinking of one side? Do you think that all of the 220,000 victims were little innocent children? Or were there also people who supported the corrupt regime and war?
In Africa little children are given guns and turned into the most coldblooded killers you can imagine. They are brainwashed because of poor education and generally low IQ, add to that the not fully developed emotions and you have yourself a child that would murder you without a second thought. Do you think they are evil monsters as well?
Not caring? Why do you think they didn’t care? Do you really think people who were making that decision just went “Meh, let’s nuke the Japs for the lulz and demonstration”? You didn’t think they thought it through and had some empathy for the innocent lives of the Japanese (although more empathy of course for the innocent lives of their own people)?
We humans aren’t completely stupid and utterly incapable of predicting the future. Don’t act like we are. We know very well what would happen if the war continued and we know approximately the number of victims would be much higher if nuking didn’t take place. To just cover your eyes and ears and shut off your brain, ignoring relevant information and statistics as more than a million of your soldiers will get slaughtered would be despicable. You’re also forgetting that many of the Japanese soldiers lives were saved as well, as they didn’t have to go to further battles.
I don’t completely agree with the nuking, but at least I, unlike some, can comprehend the reasons why it took place. It was thought to be one of those “lesser evil for the greater good” acts.
So what I am hearing is that some support psychological warfare and others do not: when civilian targets are used. Those who support it say it can be qualified on the grounds of a greater good (of the victor).
I find this fascinating given the history of WWII (it was already over) and the documentation released by the US military regarding the motivations behind target selection.
This is supposed to count as a response to my point?
If you prefer being ignorant of this, please feel free to disregard whatever facts you like. My post was meant for those who are investigating the issue.
I’d ask for the definition of justice in general first.
Can war ever be justified? Can life? Life is always consuming other life. War is humans seeking a meaning to their death. It’s also mans childish reflection on his mortality. “Shit, I have to die? Well not before this guy over here!” It’s man wanting to have some part in death. Being in on it, so that dying might not feel some completely arbitrary and humiliating.
So war is basically religion with actions instead of restrictions. That’s why they mix so well. Samurai are the most beautifully refined religious warriors. Here beauty is finally attained, as the tip of the mountain of horrendous idiocy that war in general represents.
What justified the nukes? Was it its result? The following phase of nuclear proliferation and its result, smaller scale ground-wars. Truman wanted to flex his muscles. He was already aggressively challenging Stalin, and he had compelling reasons. He was a fucking barbarian piece of shit if you ask me, but his opponents wasn’t admirable either. What followed was a relatively stable fifty years, during which immense achievements in science and other fields of human exploration were made. Maybe the statement was in order. It needs to be said the Japanese aren’t the most merciful of peoples.
Was it the cause? In order to be able to direct a conventional explosion into a nuclear load for it to melt down, man had to calculate the refraction and reflection patterns of that conventional load within the larger bomb, so as to hit the Uranium as for it to begin a nuclear reaction chain. The project of building the first computer was started up in order to make such calculations and the apparatus took real shape in the continued application to the H bomb which added a third layer and a second surface to refract and focus the blast, this time fission, to produce the fusion. The invention of the computer does not require, it seems, the specific targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it does require some demonstration. In this frame the material cause coldly justifies the human disaster. Humans made collateral as they so often are in history.
Of course such a deed can never be justified in human terms. It is a cold and abysmal act in a very cold and very ancient world.
It’s good and it’s strange. Because war is always aimed at vulnerabilities. A professional army of robots competing over human civilians could be the future.
Human Rights are clear: they are derived more or less from the Kantian imperative or golden rule.
It can only be rights in the legal sense if they are being enforced.
Or am I wrong here?
It is untrue that right = might. It is true that right includes might. It is also true that man includes might. Man can, if he is fully and truly man, enforce his own right. To be man means to be mind, and to be mind means to live between ideas. Ideas move, they are movers; the prime mover is an idea. An idea that moves man, as man sees it move the trees.
Human rights can be enforced only if the law is understood by all. Now we begin to appreciate that God is still dead; at one point he may come alive.
More and more singularity. One rule, one game, many pieces, many ways to mislead. Always look where nothing is said. What was said of the red army approaching the sacred gardens of empires myth on foot… imagine now, five million Egyptians walking into Israel. Why don’t they do it? Because they do not care enough. But after Hitler had been defeated, there was a void unlike none that has ever been. The nukes were a face-saving grace for the Japanese. A reason for the emperor to surrender before the unthinkable would occur. The bombs became a terrifying face of war and nature, but they did not destroy Japan or curbed her might - if anything Japans became more powerful than it ever had been. The same goes for Germany by the way - it is now the only European nation of which anyone speaks with respect. Except Russia, which is part of Europe, which we forget because of its massive Asiatic presence, and England which isn’t really as silly as to partake in any of all that, there is no one but ze Germans to dictate. Japan will continue to dictate paradigmatically. It only warred in the past to solve its bloodlust. Now it has cut into itself, the Japanese mind, the land of Akira and the fireball shooting plumber… why are we here? Where are we? Japan… our whole world is vengeance. Japanese and pervasive and with our own means - that calculator that was used to save their face.
Yes and no. I brought it up because its evidence that you got one thing horribly wrong in an instance when you put the blame on NATO where there is none. Now you’re doing a similar thing and trying to switch the blame on West, Americans specifically. To say that the primary reason, or to go even further and say that the “only reason” to drop them was “demonstration” and “lolz”(!?!?) is asinine considering the actual context. The fact that you got one thing horribly wrong before and are now making similar extreme claims doesn’t say nice things about the cogency of your argument.
The release of US military documentation illustrates that it was for the wow factor and for the specific purpose of massive civilian casualties.
It was a psychological act to demonstrate power. US military documentation reveals this. The war was already over by that stage. The second bomb was detonated 3 days after the first. One could possibly justify the first that killed masses of civilians… but the second bomb (3 days later) that killed another mass of civilians?
All warfare is psychological warfare in the sense that you’re using it. As far as civilians being the target, that was the norm from the invention of gunpowder until 1992 or so- and much of the time before gunpowder.
I know this doesn’t answer your question, but they are pretty important factors I thought I’d interject.
