Was the use of the atomic bomb on Japan in WW2 a crime agaist humanity?

I am aware that there has already been a thread around this topic, but I would like to approach the topic from a different angle

Many politicians state that the use of the atomic bomb on Japan at the very end of WW2 was both a war crime and a crime against humanity,

I remember Oppenheimer s famous word "I am death the destroyer of world, we have known sin" like most of his peers he was appalled at the destructive power of the bomb.

What do the members of the forum have to say on the topic??

Some points to consider:

1) The firebombing of Tokyo, Osaka, and numerous other Japanese (not to mention German) cities was far larger a human catastrophe than the two atomic bombs.

2) WW2 was an enormous, complex event that in itself can be seen as multiple unprecedented crimes against humanity. Some of them were utterly beyond a historical or moral justification -- the military aggressiveness, the genocides, the mass starvation of populations, the disruption of treaties. Others were performed for the primary purpose of ending the conflict. The mere fact that this question keeps getting asked should clue us in that whether or not we judge it as a crime, it was unquestionably a military tactic and strategic maneuver that had the undeniable purpose of ending hostilities with Japan.

You cannot make the same statement about the Rape of Nanking.

So I can't call it a crime against humanity in that same sense. It was less a crime against humanity than the Soviet-German land war, which consumed tens of millions of civilians from starvation, cold, and paramilitary violence. It was less a crime against humanity than the Siege of Leningrad, which killed 5-10 times the number who died in the atomic bombings combined. It was less a crime against humanity than the Japanese atrocities against Korea and Manchuria.

If it is war, then it is horrible and criminal. Let's get that together first. There is no such thing as a just war, only some wars that become so terrible that they must be expanded so that they may be ended (the two world wars are fine examples).

Of course, that X is worse than Y doesn't make Y not horrible too. Just not as horrible.

Missing the point.

The whole concept of Crimes against Humanity was conceived (along with War Crimes and Crimes against Peace) because of a certain basic level of protection for human life and well-being. No tactical act of war has ever been legally judged as a crime against humanity, to my knowledge. This is generally reserved for paramilitary or nonmilitary operations that occur outside the scope of the military engagement.

So the question is really whether it's a war crime, not a crime against humanity.

As an act of war the atomic bombs were unremarkable in scale -- they were remarkable only in efficiency and technology. I believe that indiscriminate bombing in general is a war crime, and the a-bombs were but two of countless such acts in WWII, a war that lacked precision bombing. Knowing what we do now about the effects of radiation, any subsequent use of them would be appropriately considered a war crime. But I'm not sure I can come to that judgment based on what was understood at the time.

Again, both misreading and missing the point.

If our discussion is about whether X should fit a moral or legal principle, then you are guilty of arbitrariness when you exclude simultaneous events that were clearer examples of this principle.

If you want to argue that the bomb was a crime against humanity, then you are forced to justify why you haven't included a million other examples from WWII that people rarely contend to be such a crime.

You mean that suppose I think that murder deserves the death penalty, and if someone thinks that robbery deserves the death penalty, I need to show why robbery does not deserve the death penalty in order to show that murder does?

War is a "crime against humanity"
Would you not have used "the bomb"?
Would you have launched a land invasion of Japan instead?
Would that have been less a crime against humanity?
The death of one innocent child or noncombatant is a "crime against humanity" but?

Used without any analysis of its meaning, the term, "crime against humanity" has emotional and very little if any, descriptive content, which is why it is being used on the thread to mean just any event that happens to horrify the poster. For example, someone called making biofuels a "crime against humanity" recently. The notion is discussed on the internet. It needs only to be looked up. Otherwise, the term will be spread around like peanut butter, and mean something like, "I don't like it" (whatever it is). The intentionally caused death of a child may be very evil, but it is not a crime against humanity.

Well if it is legal analysis we are after: Someone will have to provide a definition of "crimes against humanity" which was in effect and agreed to at the time of WWII. In general the victors in the war got to define "crimes against humanity and prosecute the losers for violating them.
The winners not only get to write history they get to define "war crimes" as well.

How many innocent lifes must be lost to constitute a "crime against humanity"? and in what manner, by what method?

The question is whether there is an objective analysis of the term.Then, we can see what (if anything) the term applies to. One thing is clear, though, the killing of one child, however evil and bad it might be, would not be a "crime against humanity". The word is not that vague. After all, the term is a technical term, and was not in general use before it was invented in a particular context. So, I suppose that the legal meaning would be central. Otherwise, people will call anything they please, a "crime against humanity", and it will begin to lose its meaning, like "The Holocaust". A term that can mean anything quickly begins to mean nothing much. It is to prevent people from using the term just for their own purposes, that we have to pay attention to an objective analysis of the term.

Of course there is such a thing as a just war. The Second World war against Hitler was a just war.

But the issue here is not whether the war itself was just. The issue here is whether the war was justly conducted, and, specifically, whether the dropping of the bomb was just.

It is wrong to lump all wars together and just condemn them all. There are important differences, even if all wars are bad.

The American Civil War, fought partly to end slavery is another case in point of a just war.