Just wanted to introduce two great articles on this topic for those of you interested. http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/Rizer.html Bombing Dual-Use Targets: Legal, Ethical, and Doctrinal Perspectives - Kenneth R. Rizer http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 14-15 FEBRUARY 1945 BOMBINGS OF DRESDEN - USAF Historical Division ---------------------------- As for the rape of Nanking, in my opinion, incinerating 100,000 people with napalm (or whatever they used as the time) or nukes is no more and no less immoral than systematically butchering a whole city at the edge of a sword. A life is a life. The only difference is that one is done with the hand, the other is done with a bomb. The justification remains the same: psychology and ultimate victory. Other examples abound. Unrestricted submarine warfare was practiced by all sides in WW2. Slave labor and concentration camps killed plenty as well. Pillaging and murder was conducted by all but the most disciplined, elite armies. Thankfully, since 1949, we've had the Geneva Conventions. But then again, it still didn't prevent us from napalming villages in Vietnam.
It appears to me that Nanking was already taken with the Chinese military, the military was occupying that area, so you could call that a victory already. The people were essentially prisoners already, and posed no threat. Going in there, raping, murdering, torturing, is simply cruel. It had psychological significance, to both sides. Not simply dead is dead. Instant incineration is more humane than disembowling people, raping, torture... Have you seen the pictures? Aweful.
you're twisting the facts Japan and US were involved in a state of warfare; as alluded by someone, the Atomic bombing was the least costly, in human lives, alternatives. the 911 terroist act was executed at peacetime; it was intended to kill as many civilian lives as possible Edward Teller, the father of the H-Bomb, wanted to bomb Kyoto, the historical capital of Japan, and Tokyo, and if FDR lived through his 4th term, it would have happened. it would have been far worse. 200K of Japanese is a far less than the potential 20 million if Kyoto and Tokyo were hit. And if Hirohito died in Tokyo, Japan's war generals would have not backed down, and more bombs would have been dropped.
I made arguments against this earlier, I won't repeat myself. You need to put yourself in their shoes. To them, they are/ have been at war for 20, 30 yrs. I am not saying they are right, but they think they are. They have families, friends, neighbors, civilians who got killed daily by the Israelis, and they think we are squarely behind it. Without the US, there would not be an Israel !
I'm with Nomar on this one. Howard Zinn and other historians have completely debunked the idea that the emporer was ready to keep fighting. The two bombs served two purposes overall. (1) to show the rest of the world who would emerge from WWII as top dog. (I'm not saying that's a bad goal, by the way, but the ends do NOT justify these means, in my mind). (2) to exploit perhaps our only chance to scientifically test the effects of a bomb on a large city of human beings. Note that for the 2nd bomb, two additional planes with the military's most advanced cameras flew with the bomber to record as much detail of the devastation as possible. I really recommend the book "Bells of Nagasaki," to anyone interested in the effects. This book is written by a doctor who survived the blast initially, and wrote his notes as he was expiring from leukemia in a hospital.
So what is the point? Is it because native Americans had it worse, noone else can complain? Along the line of your argument: 200 yrs ago, 1) Women were subservent to men ... women these days ought to do the same. 2) Black did not get to vote, why do they have to vote now? ...
If that were the case, it'd make more sense to bomb cities with large population (Tokyo and Kyoto) rather than much smaller one like Hiroshima and Nagasaki ! 200 K vs. 20 million If it entirely possible that the smaller cities were selected so that less Japanese civilians would be killed. btw: some of the War Generals would fight to the bitter end; not Hiroito.
Yes, even likely. We've never been oblivious to international PR (well, until recently I suppose). But why not a 20k person city? Because we wanted more data; we wanted good statistics on what an atom bomb would do to human beings. It was a measurement, and it was a statement. A smaller city would not have accomplished either as effectively.
HHMMM....interesting. I did a quick search and found that the 2 bombs that were dropped were 2 different types. Perhaps the theory stated earlier about testing purposes was correct? This is a part of a FOX article: *********************************************** The atom bomb originated in 1939. Dr. Albert Einstein convinced then-President Franklin Roosevelt to fund development of the bomb. U.S. scientists worked in extreme secrecy to finish the bomb, which they told the Army was ready for use by 1943. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 "Enola Gay" flew from Tinian to strike Hiroshima, Japan, on the world's first atomic bombing mission. Three days later "Bockscar" dropped the plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered in the following days thereby ending World War II. These are bombs whose huge explosive power is caused by a sudden release of energy resulting from the splitting of nuclei of a heavy chemical element such as plutonium or uranium by neutrons in a very rapid chain reaction. Uranium Bomb - the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was a gun-type uranium bomb. Uranium is supposedly the material of choice for terrorists since the design is simple, although highly enriched U-235 - the main element - is not easy to make. Plutonium Bomb - the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb, using the element Pu-239. Plutonium is not hard to obtain and is produced in most nuclear reactors. It can then be separated using chemistry. A higher component of the element, Pu-240, is highly radioactive and often tends to pre-detonate bombs before the chain reaction is complete. An implosion design is used to prevent this, but because the process is difficult, it isn't very likely a small terrorist group could do it without some sort of state help. In this type of bomb, the plutonium is often arranged as a hollow shell, with explosives on the outside. The explosives drive the shell into a blob and compress it enough to set it off. ************************************************* The whole page is here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76879,00.html
Here's a site with some video testing of nuclear power. Awesome.. http://www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=3532
My position on this has been voiced previously, but I will repeat it in abridged version; If you do any extensive reading into the journals of those involved, it becomes evident that although there were those who said that it would save American lives ( important distinction; there is and was no credible theory which supposed that exterminating hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians was done to save Japanese lives), there were far greater motivations for using the bomb which had nothing to do with humanitarianism, and everything to do with power play. The use of the second bomb is completely without defense, and the more you know about it, the less you can defend it. 1) Time: The U.S. was extremely jealous of it's ability to control post-war Asia, and the greatest threat to this was the very near likelyhood that the U.S.S.R. would become involved in the war with Japan if it went on much longer. As nominal allies, it would have been virtually impossible for the U.S. to refuse to allow that, not to mention potentially inflamatory. As such there was a great push to resolve the issue with as much expedition as possible. 2) Message: There was also a very significant push to show the world in general and the USSR in particular that we had the Bomb. In Europe the USSR was far and away the most powerful conventional military power, and was growing more so every day. In concert with this was the fact that their military forces had moved much faster than the Western Allies had expected, and had gobbled up much of the lands of Europe which the Western Allies had already partitioned among themselves ( zones of influence, if you will) and at Yalta in particular the Western Allies had been in a position of having little to say which could effectively counter Stalin's position of power. There were those who feared that Stalin sought dominion over all of Europe, and most experts feel that, short of the Bomb, he could have achieved it had he so chosen. Whether or not this was his plan, the fact that he might be able to do so stimulated the need to provide a foil for his ambitions, a check to his power, and the Bomb was just the ticket. 3) Science: This is possibly the most disgusting aspect you get to know about when you look extensively into the use of the nuclear bombs, especially the second. Fat Boy and Little Man were different types of bombs, (fission and fusion based part. accel.s) and there was an extreme and effective push to use both bombs simply so the scientific results of each could be evaluated, and the scientists involved in each could see their efforts realized. Before you dismiss this as too inhuman to believe, look into it. Before reading the personal notes of many involved, I too would have thought it impossible that this thinking, even if real, had any effect on the deicison, but I would have been wrong. It is important to note that this was done in the context of the next factor; 4) Vengeance. The most shocking aspect to the revalations of the personal notes of the powers that be in the War Council of the time is how laced they are with invective, racial slurs, and repeated calls for extreme vengeance for Pearl Harbor. Any humanitarian concerns which some voices raised ( Eisenhower, for one) about the injustice of inentionally hitting soft targets ( civilian targets incapable of defending themselves) was drowned out with these kinds of angry calls for retaliation. For those who argue that the bombs were the best option merely from the point of view of saving lives, do your homework. There were several less costly options, not the least of which was essentially besieging the islands. Also the need to maintain " Unconditional Surrender" was also stimulated by number 4 on my list; Eisenhower himself noted that it 'boxed us in'. It is completely arguable that dropping the bomb meant fewer US soldiers dying. Absolutely. But that is the case any time someone uses WMDs. Saddam saved many of his soldiers by using gas against the Kurds rather than relying on conventional means. The USSR could have saved countless Soviet lives had it used WMDs in Afghanistan. We always distinguish between the practical and the moral course of actions for others, why do we give ourselves that 'out'?
