4 ms·

> is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan was a Great Power in WW2, very nearly a match for the US. It was also aggressively bu

by smegel 11y ago

> is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan was a Great Power in WW2, very nearly a match for the US. It was also aggressively building an expire of it's own - whose own actions, particularly against rebels in China, were far closer to the actions of the Galactic Empire than the US. There is an intrinsic difference between attacking a mortal enemy that is your near equal during a period of Total War than suppressing dissent and rebellion against ragtag rebels by killing millions of civilians, which Japan most certainly did. In WW2, America was the great friend the rebels in Star Wars never had.

darkerside 11y ago
By the time the bomb was actually used, Japan was in no way a "Great Power" or any kind of a match for the US. > In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html You're painting a very black and white portrait. The US military was killing millions of civilians even before the nuclear bombs, not the other way around. I'm not going to second guess the decision calculus at the time, but you are trumpeting caricature as fact.
mikeash 11y ago
By 1945, Japan's GDP was one tenth that of the US. Even at the start of the war, it was nowhere close. The US built more aircraft carriers in one year than Japan built not only during the war, but in all the years before. It was never anything close to a match for the US.
ebola1717 11y ago
But by that point in WW2, the US was pretty confident that it would defeat Japan. The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.
- Amezarak 11y ago
  > Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians. Right or wrong, the "indiscriminate slaughter" of civilians was the norm in WWII. In that sense, there was nothing unusual about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As many as 200,000 civilians died in the firebombing of Tokyo, which would be as much or more than both atomic bombings combined. [1] If firebombing civilians was considered acceptable at the time, it is hard to understand why the atomic bombings would have any kind of different moral quality. Indeed, from the accounts of both the atomic bombings and firebombings I have read, I would very much prefer to die in an atomic bombing, which in many respects seems almost merciful in comparison. As many as 900,000 Japanese civilians died in conventional bombings. [2] The emphasis on the atomic bombings has always seemed strange to me: what is the difference between killing 200,000 civilians in a horrific firebombing and killing 200,000 civilians with nuclear bombs? Why so much questioning of two bombings and not the countless others that killed many more? The horror of the atomic bomb was not that we killed 200,000 civilians, it was that it took only two bombs to do it rather than many. There was no new lack of moral concern for civilians. Civilians had no direct reason to fear atomic bombs more than conventional bombings: with the near-wholesale destruction of Japanese anti-bomber defenses, they were going to be just as dead. Atomic bombs were a strategic threat analogous to your enemy suddenly gaining huge reinforcements. And this strategic threat (though it hardly mattered to Japan) quickly escalated: go to the Nuclear Secrets nukemap [3] and compare the atomic bombs dropped on Japan with the megaton bombs developed by the US and USSR. (I don't mean to place undue emphasis on the US bombings of Japan, either: again, the killing of civilians was a norm in WWII.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan [3] http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. There is another viewpoint, which is that the bombs were dropped as a message to the Russians. The supporting evidence is that many of the top US military people at the time expected Japan to capitulate regardless of whether or not the bombs were dropped.
cmdkeen 11y ago
Here's the rub with that argument though, Japan was not a great power in 1945. Indeed there were few enough targets left to drop the bomb on which had not already been devastated by conventional bombing. What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end, as had been demonstrated on island after island. Even had Japan been persuaded to surrender without a total victory Germany post 1918 and the "stab in the back" theory that arose served as a reminder that militaristic cultures can rise again. The dropping of the bombs fundamentally challenged that mindset. It ushered in a weapon that no force of arms, no military culture, no level self-sacrifice or ultimate effort could stop. It enabled the occupation and subjugation of Japan without having to stage an invasion. Atomic weapons then and now are things which are essentially impossible to fit into a legal / moral framework - other than to view them as the ultimate insurance policy against humanity's darkest nature. They keep us as a species in check. Organised religion didn't stop war, so humanity created it's own biblical flood, and fortunately has never had to unleash it.
- darkerside 11y ago
  > What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end I really don't buy that. It smacks of dehumanization and propaganda. I can't answer whether waging conventional war on Japan to the end would have been too costly a decision, but let's not excuse ourselves and say it's because the extreme nature of their cultural values makes it necessary.
  - cmdkeen 11y ago
    It is absolutely about extreme cultural values. Some times extreme cultural values are good things, sometimes not. Some cultures fight to the death, others do not. The overwhelming evidence was that the body count, on both sides, of an invasion of Japan would have far surpassed that of the dropping of the bombs. To be fair to you I am not singling out Japanese culture in this scenario. The World Wars, and history in general, are replete with cultural significance, from cultures that abandon a sense of self in attack or defence, or both, to those which view themselves as culturally superior such that occupation is preferable to annihilation. None is better or worse than the other, but the idea that different cultures manifest different responses to the same stimuli cannot be controversial, and that therefore how different cultures are treated by others is necessary.

by smegel 11y ago

darkerside 11y ago

By the time the bomb was actually used, Japan was in no way a "Great Power" or any kind of a match for the US. > In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html You're painting a very black and white portrait. The US military was killing millions of civilians even before the nuclear bombs, not the other way around. I'm not going to second guess the decision calculus at the time, but you are trumpeting caricature as fact.

mikeash 11y ago

By 1945, Japan's GDP was one tenth that of the US. Even at the start of the war, it was nowhere close. The US built more aircraft carriers in one year than Japan built not only during the war, but in all the years before. It was never anything close to a match for the US.

ebola1717 11y ago

But by that point in WW2, the US was pretty confident that it would defeat Japan. The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.

Amezarak 11y ago
> Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians. Right or wrong, the "indiscriminate slaughter" of civilians was the norm in WWII. In that sense, there was nothing unusual about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As many as 200,000 civilians died in the firebombing of Tokyo, which would be as much or more than both atomic bombings combined. [1] If firebombing civilians was considered acceptable at the time, it is hard to understand why the atomic bombings would have any kind of different moral quality. Indeed, from the accounts of both the atomic bombings and firebombings I have read, I would very much prefer to die in an atomic bombing, which in many respects seems almost merciful in comparison. As many as 900,000 Japanese civilians died in conventional bombings. [2] The emphasis on the atomic bombings has always seemed strange to me: what is the difference between killing 200,000 civilians in a horrific firebombing and killing 200,000 civilians with nuclear bombs? Why so much questioning of two bombings and not the countless others that killed many more? The horror of the atomic bomb was not that we killed 200,000 civilians, it was that it took only two bombs to do it rather than many. There was no new lack of moral concern for civilians. Civilians had no direct reason to fear atomic bombs more than conventional bombings: with the near-wholesale destruction of Japanese anti-bomber defenses, they were going to be just as dead. Atomic bombs were a strategic threat analogous to your enemy suddenly gaining huge reinforcements. And this strategic threat (though it hardly mattered to Japan) quickly escalated: go to the Nuclear Secrets nukemap [3] and compare the atomic bombs dropped on Japan with the megaton bombs developed by the US and USSR. (I don't mean to place undue emphasis on the US bombings of Japan, either: again, the killing of civilians was a norm in WWII.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan [3] http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
jacquesm 11y ago
> The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. There is another viewpoint, which is that the bombs were dropped as a message to the Russians. The supporting evidence is that many of the top US military people at the time expected Japan to capitulate regardless of whether or not the bombs were dropped.

cmdkeen 11y ago

Here's the rub with that argument though, Japan was not a great power in 1945. Indeed there were few enough targets left to drop the bomb on which had not already been devastated by conventional bombing. What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end, as had been demonstrated on island after island. Even had Japan been persuaded to surrender without a total victory Germany post 1918 and the "stab in the back" theory that arose served as a reminder that militaristic cultures can rise again. The dropping of the bombs fundamentally challenged that mindset. It ushered in a weapon that no force of arms, no military culture, no level self-sacrifice or ultimate effort could stop. It enabled the occupation and subjugation of Japan without having to stage an invasion. Atomic weapons then and now are things which are essentially impossible to fit into a legal / moral framework - other than to view them as the ultimate insurance policy against humanity's darkest nature. They keep us as a species in check. Organised religion didn't stop war, so humanity created it's own biblical flood, and fortunately has never had to unleash it.

darkerside 11y ago
> What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end I really don't buy that. It smacks of dehumanization and propaganda. I can't answer whether waging conventional war on Japan to the end would have been too costly a decision, but let's not excuse ourselves and say it's because the extreme nature of their cultural values makes it necessary.
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  It is absolutely about extreme cultural values. Some times extreme cultural values are good things, sometimes not. Some cultures fight to the death, others do not. The overwhelming evidence was that the body count, on both sides, of an invasion of Japan would have far surpassed that of the dropping of the bombs. To be fair to you I am not singling out Japanese culture in this scenario. The World Wars, and history in general, are replete with cultural significance, from cultures that abandon a sense of self in attack or defence, or both, to those which view themselves as culturally superior such that occupation is preferable to annihilation. None is better or worse than the other, but the idea that different cultures manifest different responses to the same stimuli cannot be controversial, and that therefore how different cultures are treated by others is necessary.