Was it a war crime when US nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

Well, MA, i came back to this thread on the off chance that some of this might sink in. Perhaps not now, but someday . . .

Oh well, i gave it a good shot . . .

That you did, Set, that you did. You have more patience than I.

Me too, Set ... I think ya done good. 'Least, ya tried to. Not your fault the bilge got ahead of the pumps.

Yeah you might well ask Joe.

I think I was trying to make the point that the word "sneak" is a value judgement, and as such irrelevant to waging war.

If the Japanese had given numerous warnings about attacking Pearl Harbor should America not abandon oil sanctions and then went ahead and (by some miracle) managed a successful strike anyway, would it have been any less heinous a crime? I dunno, just asking.

Although perhaps not well expressed, i think i see your point, Steve. In the case of Pearl Harbor, the warning signs practically screamed. The Japanese naval code was partially broken--we were able to identify vessels, and therefore track them. The Japanese changed their code ahead of schedule. The six largest carriers--Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Sorye, Shokaku and Zuikaku--had not been identified and located for months. Submarine contacts were made near the entrance of Pearl Harbor, and the destroyer commanders asked for guidance--and despite the protocol being to attack any sub contact in the military reservation, they didn't get an answer right away. There was a mobile radar station which picked up contacts from Nagumo's approaching aircraft. When they stayed in place past the time when they were to have packed up and left, and sent a message to the duty officer, he replied that he didn't have a runner to send to headquarters, that they were expecting B-17's from Los Angeles (which is east of Oahu, not north) and that they were to have packed-up and come home anyway. When Admiral Halsey put to sea with a carrier task force, he sent everyone to battle stations, and instituted war-time procedures, because he knew of the war warning. Husband Kimmel, on the other hand, went to the club, and had a good night's sleep before the sounds of the atttack awoke him on Sunday morning . . .

It was at Kimmel's orders the aircraft at Hickam Field and at Kaneoe were not dispersed in revetments (which were there), but lined up in neat rows right out on the apron ... the better, Kimmel reasoned, to protect them from saboteurs. The Japanese pilots were astounded - and delighted - to see the too-perfect-to-hope-for target thus provided. In less than five minutes, the available land-based air defense was reduced by over 85%.

Oh, and Set ... that's "Soryu"

Yeah, Timber, that was a typo . . . thanks for the diagram . . . however, Hickam was an Army Air Force air field, and it was Lt. Gen. Short who had ordered the planes clustered in the centers of the fields--he was the one with the "fifth columnist" paranoia . . . as i recall, Kaneoe did launch some aircraft . . . i'll have to check my copy of Prange . . .

Yeah, it was Lt. Gen. W. C. Short's idea to line up the ducks. Kaneoe did get a couple planes off the ground, but also was devastated in the initial wave of the first attack ... naturally, the airfields were primary targets. Interestingly, the fuel storage facillities went largely unscathed ... something which well-served the carrier divisions.

A Naval Institute book you might find useful, BTW, is Edward' Beach's Scapegoats: A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor

I think the Navy made a big mistake in not keeping Kimmel in an active command--he was good, and it was scape-goating to let him go. I don't think the Loss of Short was any big deal, though. I do know that the survivors of the attack were amazed that the "tanker farms" were untouched--they were just past "battleship row," and it remains a mystery to me to know why they were not included in Genda's planning.

That is the point I've been trying to make all along. In my mind it doesn't make any difference, especially on a moral level. As for legal issues, somebody mentioned the Hague convention before - I'm sure that the attacks also breached other legal standards of that time.

atomic bomb
yes, dropping atomic bombs on Japan is a war crime. Japan had tried to surrender months earlier, and the US knew that, what we did was to get revenge for Pearl Harbor.

Pres. Truman should have been tried on charges of War crimes as humanity

Timber wrote



So why did they surrender?

Its on record that there were tentative gestures about surrender terms revolving around the status of the emperor post war. The Americans insisted on unconditional surrender and the war went on, until the atomic bomb was used, Japan surrendered, and the emperor was allowed to remain as a constitutional monarch.

There is no doubt in my mind that such terms could have been agreed before the use of the atom bomb. But of course there were many people keen to learn what nuclear warfare would look like.

The battle for Okinawa decided the issue. The fanatical response by the Japanese Army and Japanese civilians convinced the US that the invasion of Japan would be a repeat on a much broader scale.

The "bombs" became the new invasion plan after Okinawa.

Monday morning quarterbacking is all well and good. But I really wonder what any of us would have thought (or done) in that place and at that time, given the options. Here was a formidable enemy which had done us much harm. Here was a brand new and awesome weapon, ready to hand. We had a very good idea of what the casualties would be if we attempted an invasion. We had but a sketchy idea of the amount of damage that a couple of these bombs would so. Only a handful of men (and women) had seen the tests at White Sands and nobody really knew anything yet about radioactive fallout and how far it would disperse.

I think now, in retrospect, that we were probably wrong in dropping the bombs. I also think that, had I been in Truman's shoes, I would have made the exact same decision that he did.

Large scale violence against civilians usually works.

The Japanese leaders weren't idiots. If they had been offered a good deal they would have agreed to stop fighting. And given the military situation right before the bombings, such a deal probably wouldn't have required far-going concessions by the US.

So, as I see it, there were three options for the US: 1. End the war at the bargaining table and making the concessions necessary 2. Invade Japan, accepting more or less heavy american casulties 3. Drop the bombs.

If you're willing to accept large scale civilian casualties (and I don't think the leaders didn't know those were going to be huge), the choice you take is 3. What you get is an unconditional surrender at low costs. It's cheap, fast and efficient. And a crime against humanity.

President Truman and his closest advisors did not believe that the Japanese were willing to surrender, or negotiate an end to the war. The tenor of the times demanded unconditional surrender, and anything less would have been political sucide.

Even in hindsight, there is no persuasive evidence that the Japanese government would not have continued fighting almost indefinitely. They did make some efforts to enlist Stalin's intersession to negotiate a peace largely upon conditions they demanded. Their feeble attempts to negotiate an end to the war without compromising their conditions had no real chance of success. The military, which still held the final say on such matters was largely of the opinion that national death was preferable to losing the war. Stockpiles of munitions and other war supplies were available for use against the invasion that they were certain was coming. Given the stiffness of Japanese resistence at Okinawa, no one believed that invasion of the home islands would not be the bloodiest action since the First World War.

Truman really only had two choices: (1) invade the home islands with perhaps a million total casualties, and ongoing operations for perhaps years, or (2) try to induce surrender by dropping a super-bomb with somewhat more destructive power than the massed air raids that were already underway. He made a wise choice, and it certainly was not a crime against anyone. The decision saved countless lives, and brought the war to a swift conclusion.

I agree totally with Asherman.

I agree that within a framework of complete lunacy, Truman's decision was perfectly logical, and the only possible choice. Within that framework, the amount of blood poured in by those 100.000s was no match for the threat of "political suicide" and the inescapable "tenor of the times".

There can be no reasonable doubt that there was a way of finding some kind of compromise between US and Japanese imperial interests at any time. However, if you've got the means at hand to achieve immediate victory at zero costs, that's the way to go. Especially if it's likely you'll get away with it.

It's not easy to look back at the history of your country and accept that it has been carrying out major crimes. Germany had a hard time doing so, as did Austria. Luckily, they were forced to do it anyway.

As a thinking person, it takes a real effort to miss that the killing of those hundreds of thousands of civilians was immoral and criminal. And looking at the poll up there, that effort is taken by a majority. A pretty remarkable achievement of mainstream culture.

So in your view fighting WWII was "complete lunacy"? The whole thing could have been avoided .... how?

Continue to give in to Hitler's demands, and insist that Japan's neighbors should "voluntarily" give up their sovereignty to Japan? FDR should have taken the nation's objections about the attack on Pearl Harbor to the League of Nations? How unenlightened all those Americans, and Brits and Frenchmen were!

I really hate "What if" scenario speculations, but your idea that fighting the Axis Powers was "complete lunacy" tempts one to wonder.

In 2004 would:

* There would be no Israel/Palestinian problem, because there would be no Jews left in the world?

* Southwest Asia would be ruled by the Grand Mufti, who be paiding petroleum tribute to his Nazi allies as the price of "independence"?

* There would be no need for the EU, because all of Europe, and beyond, would be part of the Third Reich?

* No divisive politics in the U.S., because it would be ruled by a Quisling Gauleiter? One wonders if there would still be any Jews, or other "deviants" left in the Nazi America after fifty years of occupation.

* No DPRK or PRC, because the function of China and Korea would be to provide slave labor and captive markets for Japan?

* The Lingua Franca of the 21st century would be German, or Japanese?

* There would have been no Cold War, because without American logistical support and munitions, the USSR would have ceased to exist?

One wonders if in fifty years the Axis Powers would have turned on one another. Would the pseudo-science of Nazi Germany have developed television, satellite communications, the Internet, or the countless other products developed by the Free World since WWII? Would a Japan dominated by military junta have bothered to fill the world with Toyotas and Hondas?

Of course, we will never know because the mad leaders and blood-thirsty citizens of the Allied Powers did engage in the "complete lunacy" of fighting WWII. Pity that we couldn't have gotten all those looney's onto Lodp's couch back in the '30s and '40s.

Just re television, asherman:
- (the German) Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the world's first electromechanical television system in 1884,
- Braun, another German, invented the Braun tube in 1897,
- tv was introduced in Germany in 1932 with regular broadcasts from 1936 onwards.