Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hiroshima (1946)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 275 posts

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#231

Post by socalgal2 »

sidcool wrote: post #68
socalgal2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this special? The Japanese killed ~7 million Chinese, 0.5 to 1 million Filipinos, 500k in Korea, you can keep adding them up. Then Japan loses 0.2% of all their atrocities and it's the worst thing ever? No, it's not the worst thing ever, not even close. Sure, we'd all like it to never happen again. But if I had to pick one thing not happening again I'd pick saving all others that died in WW2 over this one inci…

Now do Iraq numbers and self reflect.

what does this have to do with anything? All such deaths are bad. My point is A-Bomb deaths are not worse than non A-Bomb deaths.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#232

Post by southernplaces7 »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #176
bigDinosaur wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the moral lesson: if we have a WW3, don't target civilians? What if our enemies are doing exactly that without compunction? What if civilians and military infrastructure are colocated? What if those civilians simply want us all to die and will work to any ends for that result (e.g. they may have been effectively brainwashed as the allies were indeed preparing for with Japan)? It's not that the answers are mora…

Targeting civilians is a war crime. No excuse for that. Targeting civilians in places like Tokyo or Dresden didn't even help the war cause much. The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis without mass bombings of German cities. Yes war is the supreme crime and what we should avoid in the first place. Still there are different ways you can conduct war. A nuclear exchange would necessarily target civilians and be unlike anyth…

>The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis without mass bombings of German cities.

You're reading from a curiously misinformed understanding of history. The USSR defeated the Nazis by killing millions of them while also burning, bombarding and destroying their cities and anything else in its way en masse during a ferociously bloody campaign of revenge mixed with genuine military imperatives. Soviet soldiers also committed what are probably some of the biggest mass rape epidemics in modern history against their German enemy's women once they entered their territory. This in particular was immaterial to Soviet victory and not an official Soviet policy, but I mention it to underscore that there was absolutely no shortage of war crime-worthy targeting of civilians in many ways, and on a colossal scale by the Soviets too.

Read about the invasion and ethnic cleansing of East Prussia if you like. At least couple hundred thousand German civilians died as a result of that alone. None of this at all compares to what the Nazis did during their eastern conquests of course, but while a war crime is a war crime, degrees exist. Thus, it's not surprising if allied moral and military conduct was on a very long leash given such extremely savage enemies as Germany and Imperial Japan.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#233

Post by cryptonector »

refurb wrote: post #105
cryptonector wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The war was practically over, and we could just have blockaded Japan until it surrendered without invading. And the Soviets' entrance in the war did as much, if not more to push the surrender as the atomic bombs.

You say “blockade” without thinking about the consequences. The US blockades Japan causing food shortages. The military prioritizes what little food is available for themselves. The know the population will starve, but it’s necessary to defend Japan against the foreign Invaders. As long as there is enough food for the military, the war can continue. Now you have a mass famine where millions of women and children slow…

I was responding to:

> It's worth remembering that if it weren't for them doing what they did, you might not have the life you do now.

My response was not wrong as to that. The Allies did care a great deal about the Japanese people, and you can see that in the Potsdam declaration, but they also cared about their own soldiers' lives. If we hadn't had, or did not want to use, the nukes, then maybe we might have tried blockading for a while, who knows -- it's what the then leadership surely would have considered, and you can't blame someone today for mentioning it.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#234

Post by throw0101d »

slg wrote: post #229
throw0101d wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result. There weren't many targets left. The US had been fire bombing Japan for months—which did nothing to lead the Japanese leadership to surrender. The leadership didn't seem to care about losses—or rather the honour of Japan as a country/collective was more important than the los…

This is the type of argument that immediately folds in on itself. If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender?

> If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender?

The number of people killed (civilian and military) was irrelevant. The fire bombings killed as much, if not more, people. The Japanese leadership didn't care about numbers: after the first bomb dropped the War Cabinet ignored it thinking it was a bluff on the US part, and they didn't have any more bombs.

It was only after the second bomb that they started re-considering. Even then, after two bombings, the War Cabinet was still deadlocked at 3-3. The Emperor had to be called in to break the stalemate.

The difference was in the psychological effect of a new type of weapon. From Hirohito's statement:

> Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast#C...

I would recommend reading the book, which goes over the Japanese government deliberations using internal Japanese minutes/documents and interviews of those involved:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51089656-140-days-to-hir...

* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/about-us/notes-museum/140-...

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#235

Post by throw0101d »

slg wrote: post #111
snickerbockers wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NTA but Tokyo is the worst place you could possibly drop an atom bomb if your goal is to minimize civilian casualties.

Yes, that was the point I was making. The bombs were not dropped on the largest cities which shows the argument that "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was not the only priority. There was some consideration for civilian casualties which opens up the discussion of whether the right balance was struck.

> The bombs were not dropped on the largest cities which shows the argument that "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was not the only priority.

The atomic bombs were not dropped on the largest cities because the largest cities were already levelled. Nothing would be demonstrable on an already-destroyed city.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#236

Post by throw0101d »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #124
nelox wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the firebombing of cities (e.g. Dresden, Tokyo) and the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not legally considered war crimes under international law as it stood, which is why they could not have been and were not prosecuted.

They are horrendous war crimes. The only reason they aren't called as such is we were the victors. The conduct of the allies in WW2 was atrocious.

> They are horrendous war crimes. The only reason they aren't called as such is we were the victors.

Who says they aren't called it? LeMay, for one, recognized it.

* https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/undergraduate/If-We-Ha...

There is a paradox called “logical insanity.” The novel Catch 22 deals with this irony: basically, the idea was that the war was killing thousands daily, so in order to end it as fast as possible, they planned to be as brutal as possible. But what were alternatives?

Drop the bomb somewhere 'harmless': how would that convince the War Cabinet of anything? The point of all weapons is to harm to convince the enemy to stop and re-evaluate their costs.

Blockade and starve the Japanese out? Possibly millions dead. Invasion? The Japanese leadership thought that up to 20M of their own people would perish trying to repel the US landings.

And that's just the Japanese numbers: what about all the peoples that were still living under Japanese rule in Manchuria, Korea, etc?

And what about the American lives, which were Truman et al's first responsibility?

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#237

Post by slg »

throw0101d wrote: post #234
slg wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the type of argument that immediately folds in on itself. If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender?

> If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender? The number of people killed (civilian and military) was irrelevant. The fire bombings killed as much, if not more, people. The Japanese leadership didn't care about num…

You are not engaging with the heart of the question. If "The number of people killed (civilian and military) was irrelevant", why do you think it was necessary that they were killed? If "The difference was in the psychological effect of a new type of weapon", why could the goal of forcing surrender not be accomplished by demonstrating that new weapon in a way that wouldn't kill hundreds of thousands? Why are options like dropping the bomb in Tokyo Bay, further off the coast, or in less populated areas not treated as serious alternatives? Why did the bombs have to be dropped on cities?

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#238

Post by immibis »

potato3732842 wrote: post #189
cmsefton wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of those that think that the dropping of the bombs was unnecessary. The decision is complicated and multifaceted. It's also difficult to know what could have happened if they hadn't done it. If my brother had been born a woman, he'd have been my sister. To your point of some people refusing to surrender on the Japanese side, on the US side Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Admiral Will…

>It's also difficult to know what could have happened if they hadn't done it This sort of emotional hand waving in the direction of uncertainty is always employed in these discussions. What is the path from the status quo of late summer 1945 to peace without atomic bombs and how much death and destruction are the high and low end estimates? The status quo is/was well documented at the time and has been scrutinized wi…

This sort of emotional hand waving in the direction of what actually happened is always employed in these discussions. "What is the path to the defeat of the Nazis, without the Holocaust? Therefore the Holocaust was necessary?" Please, no it wasn't.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#239

Post by marssaxman »

kketch wrote: post #88
nelox wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwing around these terms without understanding, how and why they apply is foolhardy. The use of nuclear weapons is not explicitly prohibited under current international law, and is not automatically classified as a war crime per se. Their use could constitute a war crime depending on the circumstances, especially if they violate core principles of international humanitarian law (IHL).

How could detonating a nuke over a city not violate humanitarian law … ?

Burning entire cities to the ground and immolating their inhabitants was common practice at the time. Doing that with a single bomb simply made the process more efficient. They had not yet had time to start thinking of atomic power as something fundamentally different from what had come before: there were only three weeks between the Trinity test and the bombing of Hiroshima.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#240

Post by msarrel »

I especially like the idea that the USA would never have dropped the bomb in Europe but couldn't wait to try it out on the "yellow devils". Fun stuff to read speeches given in Congress about the "war-like Japanese".

I'm in no way criticizing the use of the bomb, I'm just suggesting we understand some of the many reasons why it was used.

Post reply on HN