Atomic bomb vs. fire bombing?

Many people claim somehow that using the atomic bomb against Japan was 'immoral'. They claim the war could have been won using 'conventional' methods instead.

I'm curious as to what the reasoning would be

I have learned that you shouldn't expect logic from the anti-nuclear bomb crowd. I would bet that if Harry Truman had refrained from using the atomic bomb and a couple of hundred thousand American troops had ended up as casualties in the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, these same people would today be excoriating Truman for allowing all those poor boys to die when he had a weapon that could have ended the war and didn't use it! People who want to think of themselves as somehow superior to the rest of us will always find a position or manufacture one to support their vision of themselves. Personally, I had a father in a B-29 group waiting to go out to the Pacific and two Uncles, one Army and one Navy, all of whom were saved from having to participate in an invasion of Japan by the use of the bomb. I'm glad Harry Truman had the sand to use it!

Bill Shuey

Or the Russian army's attack and conquest of Berlin which also cost about 100,000 lives.

Personally, I had a father in a B-29 group waiting to go out to

I know what you mean Bill and I agree with you 100%. I served on Tinian and Iwo Jima in a Navy bomb sqdn. Returned to the states in June 1945 was sent to a refresher class in July and was destined to return to the Pacific and undoubtedly the invasion. I feel the 'bomb' saved my hide.

I think that immorality of A-bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes from long time post war effect on civil population. Japan surrendered and thousands of people from those two cities kept dying years from bombing. Some unborn children were sentenced to die because of radiation effects their mothers were exposed to.

We can agree about military necessity for use of A-bombs, but not about morality, but what's moral in war anyway?

<snippa> One of the interesting things about the 'we shudintadunit' crowd's arguments is this: The nuke'em was immoral crowd usually brush aside the death estimates for Olympic and Coronet as wildly pessimistic, usually offering counter-estimates in the 100,000 range and saying that the 500,000 to 1,000,000 estimates were bogus.

Now, the idea that 'only' 100,000 should be acceptable is itself an artifact of the nuclear age. In 1945, the idea of 100,000 additional men killed was horrifying. Those losses would have added 25% to the 405,000 US deaths from WW-II. It was only the post-Hiroshima, MAD generation that tosses around mega-death numbers and to whom 'only' 100,000 deaths could seem like peanuts.

In fact, the morbidity of the survivor population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been indistinguishable from that of the other members of that age cohort who were living in other Japanese cities. The Atomic Survivors experienced fewer and less lethal cancers than the general Japanese population.

War once embarked on had _better_ be moral or we will (and we have in the past) descend to the level of beasts. We have an obligation to exercise the utmost vigilance against beastly behavior during war because the temptation and opportunity for beastliness is strongest then.

War is necessary and may be just but it embodies huge moral risks to the people embarking in it.

100,000? Isn't that pretty low? Or are you just talking about Berlin

: to it, is a crock. War is about killing people and destruction to force : your will/desire over an opponent.

Although I agree that morality does get blurred in wartime, I really don't think it gets blurred. It is all that separates us (humans) from animals and barbarians.

: True, war does have moral 'relativities', ie, it's ok to shoot to kill an : enemy soldier but not a civilian. Of course, a few weeks ago that 'soldier' : was just another civilian who, probably against his will, was 'drafted' : into his country's armed services. When it gets down into, isn't : 'drafting' in reality slavery?

True about the blur between a civilian and a recently drafted soldier. However, drafting is hardly slavery. It is a symbol of the citizen's obligation to assist in defending and upholding the civilization/government that has provided so much for the citizen. This does get a bit blurry for dictatorial/crappy regimes, but oh well.

: I'm not sure if it's better or worse that we debate the morality of various : ways we kill people, and say some are ok (ie rifles, machine guns, : conventional bombs), but others are not (poison gas, atomic bombs.) I : don't know if running the enemy over with a Jeep is allowed or not. At : the end of the battle, you have dead bodies to bury on both sides.

I think the difference between the 'good' weapons and the 'bad' weapons is such - you can survive the good weapons, and any damage that it does generally doesn't make the land uninhabitable. Neither will it, by the very nature of its killing power, be likely to drift around and kill thousands of non-combatants.

Poison gas? It's likely to drift off the original point of delivery, and poison thousands of civilians. Maybe even millions if used near/at a major population center. Atomic bombs? Radiation, need I say more?

: Everyone agrees war is hell, that war is bad, that war should be avoided. : When we say 'war is bad', aren't we preaching to the choir? So why do we have : war?

<snip> I agree with everything else you say. However, I felt the need to state my belief that there really is a 'moral' way to wage war, as opposed to outright inflicting death and destruction wantonly.

I find it strange that no one has brought up the fact that out of nearly 1.2 million casualties in Japan that resulted from the two a-bombs and the firebombing and fragmentation bomb campaign that ran from March to August only 200,000 were from the a-bomb. The remainder or nearly 5 times as many people mostly women and children were burned to death by napalm. Which is more horrible atomic or conventional? I would have to say conventional is far more gruesome and tortuous than the mostly instant deaths the nuclear weapons.

Hi Buzzmaxwell Do you have a source for:

The remainder or nearly 5 times as many people mostly women and children were burned to death by napalm.

this?

here's what i think.

number 1. japan was ready to call it quits anyway. over 60 of their major cities had been destroyed by conventional bombing.

number 2. the soviet union was going to invade the pacific, which would have constituted Japanese surrender. but no, we had to be big-headed, egotistic jerks and attempt to display our "power".

number 3. we blocked them in with our water forces before we bombed them...why? why, why, why. we have no reason why. what were they going to do? run off the edge of their island and drown? either way the Japs would die, so what's the problem? wasn't that our main goal anyway?

number 4. 140,000 people died during the bombing. ONLY 20,000 of them were soldiers. so don't try using the excuse that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in order to kill Japanese soldiers.

number 5. America spent 2 BILLION dollars making the atomic bomb. so of course they had to use it to justify the unneccessary amount of money they spent!

number 6. Have a fabulous day Jesus loves you!!

It seemed like America didn't want to deal with any soldeirs dying,so they dropped the atomic bomb.

It is worth noting that while bombed cities have been rebuilt in Europe and Asia without especially ill effects, Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue (almost 64 years later) to suffer from the lingering radiation from the atomic bombs.

An example of those lingering effects has touched me personally. The father of one of my girlfriends in college worked for the American Bomb Casualty Commission after the war - spending a great deal of time over the years in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I do not know for a fact that he suffered genetic damage from the radiation, but my girlfriend had open-heart surgery three times before the age of six. Her parents had one other daughter and five miscarriages before giving birth to my girlfriend. She went on to have an incapacitating stroke in her 30s and died before she turned 50.

That is one American example - imagine how many thousands of Japanese suffer from similar effects.

However, President Truman had to make his decision based on what he knew at the time. He had four basic options for what to do about Japan:

1) Drop the atomic bomb (favored by most of the very few people who knew about the option);

2) Continue the blockade and bomb strategy currently underway (favored by the Navy and the Army Air Force);

3) Launch an invasion (favored by General Douglas MacArthur);

4) Negotiate a surrender with the Japanese (favored by some in the State Department).

Each of these options had problems:

Option 1) What if the Japanese don't surrender after the bombings?

Option 2) How long would/could the Japanese hold out before surrendering?

Option 3) The American casualties were expected to enormous (and the Japanese casualties would be even higher);

Option 4) President Roosevelt had committed us to a policy of Unconditional Surrender and therefore there was little to negotiate - and it was difficult to determine if the Japanese willing to negotiate had the influence/power to guarantee Japanese surrender.

On top of this was the growing realization that the Soviets would be post-war competitors - and would likely insist on sharing the occupation of Japan if the war continued long after they attacked the Japanese.

Thanks, DavisGL. Your reaction is very itemized, detailed and well thought over. It's true. There is no 'ideal' method in a way wanting to stop it. Especially not in that war in that area of the world.