I found myself engaged in thoughtful conversation with a political fellow traveler the other day on topic fraught with moral and intellectual landmines. The fellow and I have had a running conversation on various different topics. As we agree on many things, and agreement signals the end of conversation, we prefer to engage upon the topics in which we diverge.
One particular topic seems to bring him back has the lure of a good whiskey on a November evening. The bomb. The Hiroshima bomb.
We have been over this topic many times and we still disagree, but he continues to push me to heat the metal of logic to see if we can bend it to our wills. But every time we do, it breaks.
I want to agree that dropping the bomb was the right thing to do, I just cannot.
July 25, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Pat, my grandfather had been a POW in Japan for almost 3 years when the bomb was dropped. Ever hear of the Bataan Death March? Well, he didn't die like he was supposed to…. nor did thousands of other POWs who were treated BRUTALLY by the Japanese, who didn't consider "surrender" by these men an honorable choice and so considered all our soldiers sub-human.
Dropping the bomb, forcing Japan after the SECOND bomb to finally give up, saved these men's lives. My grandfather (devout Catholic, Knights of Columbus, lector for 40 years) is grateful his life was saved. I am, too.
July 25, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Doing evil so that good can result = evil.
Dropping weapons of mass destruction on a civilian population = evil.
July 25, 2012 at 6:57 pm
I believe the bomb saved many, many, many American soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers and civilians who would have perished had the war continued. This was a WAR, for Pete's sake, and people have to fight for the just cause. America had the just cause, here.
July 25, 2012 at 8:09 pm
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July 25, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Vaporizing women and children to save lives is still evil. A just cause does not give one license to commit grave evil.
July 25, 2012 at 9:52 pm
So, the annual bawl for the twin cities is beginning again. Okay, boo-hoo-hoo. There, I feel so much better now. Black humor aside, I'm not going to feel one iota of neurotic guilt over what happened 67 years ago. The Jap's were deliberately terrorizing the East and killing people who have done them no harm to gain an empire. They never even made a sincere apology for the horrid war crimes they committed against civlians and military personal. Yet, we're supposed to feel remorse for two bombings that were done to shorten the Jap's mad bloodthirsty campaign to take over the East and to avenge Pearl Harbour. Hey Matt, we warned the civilians of those cities, days in advance, that a new kind of weapon was to be dropped on them. I don't recalled a warning being given for Pearl Harbour.
July 26, 2012 at 1:46 am
Because the Japanese probably weren't serious about the Ketsu-Go Plan…
Roosevelt and Churchill had a preexisting agreement to use the new weapon if and when it was successfully developed. This was an answer to the huge costs associated with the project. It was also a natural evolution of military thinking pertaining to the bombing of civilian populations (though this hypothesis would later be proven incorrect it strongly effected military planners during WWII).
The Japanese military hierarchy had all but completely subsumed Japanese government and culture since the takeover of the 30's and the invasion of China. Nomonhan Incident aside, the Japanese military had proven itself over the years as being ruthless in its treatment of both civilians and POWs. Part of the reason the USA was treating so harshly in its negotiations with Japan pre-Pearl Harbor was due to the public outcry incited over reports coming out of places like Nanking
While it is true that some members of the Japanese government might have been looking tentatively at some sort of peace settlement prior to the end of the war, it was nothing the Americans could accept. A negotiated settlement would have depended on the safety and preservation of the imperial system and military hierarchy which had thrown Japan into the war in the first place. A negotiated settlement would have also been unacceptable to an American military and public which overwhelmingly supported unconditional surrender
July 26, 2012 at 1:46 am
American wartime experience fighting the Japanese was intensely bloody and brutal, fueled by racial hatreds, ideology, and fanaticism. While there were obviously significant racial attitudes on the American side shaping individual opinions as well as command level decisions it was the Japanese who launched banzai charges, slaughtered countless civilians and helpless POWs, ordered the mass suicides of its own civilians, utilized kamikaze and other suicide tactics, and generally used human life as a tool with which to slow the engines of the American war-machine in the hopes of breaking popular support for the campaign amongst the US population. US military commanders had access to Japanese communications since we'd broken the Japanese codes, and while they might have been unaware of the scope of Japan's Operation Ketsu-Go they were certainly aware that Japan planned to use any and all means to stop the Americans on the beaches
Okinawa was the primary encounter used to estimate casualties suffered during an invasion of mainland Japan, and conservative estimates put that number at upwards of 500,000. Other estimates put the number at over a million.
It is true that the Soviets had just gotten involved in the war in the east and were making significant strides. It's completely possible that their advances and certain fears about the spread of communism influenced Truman's decision. Consider that Truman was the president who really set up the US against the USSR (not suggesting that this was good or bad—only pointing out that it was his administration which got involved in Greece and Turkey). It's very likely that the Japanese emperor was allowed to keep his position precisely because the United States wanted a relatively strong Japan to act as a barrier to the spread of communism in East Asia. At least, that seems to have been more-or-less MacArthur's plan.
July 26, 2012 at 1:47 am
Still, the simple fact remains that the bombs were built with the specific intent being their immediate deployment. If the war in Europe had lasted any longer than it did we would probably be having this discussion about Berlin instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Insofar as they were used against the Japanese they both ended the despotic, tyrannical, and even genocidal regime which had dominated the East-Asian Sphere for years and saved the lives of countless Americans and Japanese.
For those who suggest that evil cannot be excused regardless of the results I would ask two questions:
-What aspect of war is good or moral?
-What reasonable alternatives were there?
St. Augustine writes about a "just war," and if ever there was a just war it was the Allied position in WWII. However, that does not make the thing itself any more palatable. We were fighting to end Nazism and the Japanese Empire's death-grip on Asia (two of the more horrible regimes in human history), and we killed and destroyed to do it. Getting upset about the atomic bombs is getting upset about one small piece of a much larger and much more grotesque image.
Without the bombs we would have invaded. We had a plan to do so. Heck, the Soviets had already started their invasion of the outlying northern islands. Maybe everything would have "worked out" in the end and the Japanese would have finally just given up? Or maybe they would have enacted the full terror of the Ketsu-Go Plan? Who knows? Almost all the data US military planners had to go on strongly suggested that the Japanese would continue fighting, and anything less than unconditional surrender was seen as totally unacceptable for US policymakers and the general populace. In an invasion the Japanese authorities would have sent any number of its own civilians out to die, and it would have still been Americans killing them. Only, in that situation Americans would have been dying too, and the entire country of Japan would have been turned into a burning slag heap. It was a terrible situation, and the atomic bombs were a solution.
July 26, 2012 at 6:09 am
Without the bombs we would have invaded. We had a plan to do so.
Which is why the morality of dropping the bomb(s) is a false dilemma.
Would it have been more moral to kill 200,000 Japanese in Hiroshima by 200,000 bullets rather than by a single military device?
Dead is dead. The issue is not whether death by this method is moral and death by that method is immoral, but whether killing in the first place, however it is done, is morally permissible.
The problem is that the Japanese concept of honor would not have allowed them to surrender in the face of 200,000 killed by 200,000 bullets. Indeed, in the invasions of the various Pacific islands, the Japanese soldiers preferred death as being more honorable than surrender.
Only by making death so overwhelming, and the prospect of resistance impossible, was it possible to surrender with honor.
But it wasn't my call. And it wasn't the call of anyone alive today.
Was killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese by two devices instead of killing them by hundreds of thousands of bullets morally wrong considering the Japanese honor code? It certainly was not wrong by Japanese standards of morality at the time (which is perhaps why they did not have much resentment for it happening).
Was it wrong? It is not my place to say. But I'm not going to condemn President Truman for making the decision.
July 26, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Well now that you have revealed to me that the Japanese were super evil, I have no choice but to agree that murdering children and women was the best course of action!
I'm not condemning anyone. I'm just saying Truman made the wrong decision. If promoting the instantaneous death of 200,000 people makes you feel brave and full of machismo go right ahead.
Saying that 200,000 people would have died either way is not an argument. Have no way of proving one way or another if it would have been better or worse. All we have is what happened and we need to judge it based on that.
There is nothing in war that is good or moral. Necessity of certain action might be argued from a secular standpoint, but I do not believe the killing and poisoning of a a civilian population can be argued from a Catholic Moral one.
July 26, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Gobbler you should have been on Iwo Jima.
July 26, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Not sure how Iwo Jima would make any difference in my argument. Is it to show that the Japanese soldiers fight to the last? Don't remember there being many woman and children there. I'll check again.
July 26, 2012 at 8:09 pm
It's not murdering women and children, pretty much all major Japanese urban areas were part of their wartime manufacturing. They had people assembling parts in their homes; it was just how they did things (still do, in many industries).
So, strictly speaking, it's actually a strike against a legitimate military target that has a civilian death toll that's probably too high to be ethical. Just to muddy the waters for y'all.
But RE: that whole "it saved lots of lives on both sides" argument, you do know that was why the Japanese committed most of their atrocities, right? It was a philosophy they'd borrowed from the 19th century Prussians; Kaiser Wilhelm called it Schrecklichkeit, "horrificness". The idea was to terrorize the enemy's populace to dampen his resistance and ultimately shorten the war, saving lives in the long run.
July 26, 2012 at 10:24 pm
@Gobbler: "I'm not condemning anyone. I'm just saying Truman made the wrong decision." But Gobbler, you weren't elected president.
"Saying that 200,000 people would have died either way is not an argument. Neither is "Truman made the wrong decision." I am sure a few days and nights on Tarawa, Okinawa and Iwo Jima will cure what ails you, ingratitude and taking your freedom for granted.
July 27, 2012 at 12:52 pm
So a Tu quoque aimed at the Japanese and accusations of ingratitude. Guess this conversation is over if that's the best you got.
July 28, 2012 at 12:32 am
Interesting that now it comes out that the US did have prior knowledge that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, yet did nothing to warn either the base or civilians in Hawaii. Don't blame them, though, policies such as these were followed with Operation Northwoods during the Kennedy administration and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Knowing these facts, was it moral for the US to drop two atomic bombs on a civilian population?
July 29, 2012 at 3:30 pm
"But it wasn't my call. And it wasn't the call of anyone alive today."
Exactly. The Church has a hard time today being decisive on much of anything, and someone wants to argue this zinger. Please.