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

America wanted revenge on the Japs AND to show off their new tech to scare the Russians.... My opinion anyway

**These were not vital tactical target
sites bombed by the US. The war
was over. There were no bases
here for munitions, no harbors full
of enemy ships and armed forces.[/b][/i][/color]

**There was no rationale as to
why these two cities must be
destroyed.[/b][/i][/color]

**Was that worth what was done
to those two Japanese cities?? Was
it worth the after effects, and the
after, after effects of the radiation,
the poisoning, the burning, the
deformities. Many people were
literally atomized, blessedly blown
into oblivion... these were the lucky
ones. Scores of others lived,
suffering, dying, burning, surviving
for hours,days,weeks,months.What a
ghastly sight that must have been.[/b][/i][/color]

I would say that, given what we knew about nuclear radiation and etc. in 1945, that Hiroshima may not have been a war crime.

But Nagasaki certainly was. One bomb was certainly enough. It is my belief that the main reason we dropped the second bomb was because we had two designs of bomb: fat man and little boy, and the military wanted to test both to see which was the 'better' bomb.

timber, good thing they didn't know we didn't have a third! Does anyone know the estimate for how long it would have taken to build a third bomb? In war, time spans tend to shorten.

a slightly different slant: while Japan was attempting to negoiate an end to the war via the USSR beginning in july '45 the condition asked for was the continuation of the Emperor along with formation of a new government, however the Pottsdam conference made no mention of allowing the emperor to reign following surrender,
Dean Achison did not acknowledge the importance of this issue regarding the emperor and after the war stated that it had been his mistake in doing so.

That the atomic bombing of the two cities, killing some 300.000 people, constitutes a war crime is so obvious it's hard even to discuss.

We know that the direct military effect was minor. The target wasn't military objects but civilians. The number of civilian casulties was responsible for the effect the action had.

Apologies if that was mentioned before - haven't had time to read posts from before this page... but has anyone seen The Fog of War - the documentary with Robert McNamara?

Bombing Nagasaki was a war crime. America's display of power to the Russians cost hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilian lives. Anyone who knows anything about the war undertstands that the Americans had already won the battle in the pacific and did not need to drop the atomic bomb. In this sense it is juistifiable to blame both Russia and America for the amount of nuclear arms in the present day

And they ensured Japan's quick surrender. But it is interesting that Japan was already putting out peace feelers through the Swiss Embassy, the sticking point being the status of the Emperor. The Americans insisted on unconditional surrender, but in practice allowed Hirohito to remain as a constitutional monarch (something the Japanese might have settled for).

There was also the question of targets. Its no use dropping the world's first nuclear weapon on a city already extensively damaged by conventional bombing. (By 1945 there was becoming a shortage of such cities in Japan).

I'm not saying the nuclear bombings were a war crime. But I do contend that they were an experiment to determine the nature of nuclear warfare, and that their importance as a factor in bringing the Pacific war to an end has been exaggerated to disguise that ugly fact.

428 out of 4,863 monitored cancer deaths are attributed to the radiation exposure. This is only from the high exposure level of the select group that this organization monitors and the deaths are expected to continue to come in because 25% of the radiation related cancer deaths occured within the latter 1986 and 1990.

I am never in favor of deliberately attacking civilians. I think it would have been better, if possible, to have used the bombs against military targets.

However, on a purely formal note, in order for something to be a war crime, it must violate a treaty to which the country in question is signatory at the time the act is committed. Otherwise it isn't a war crime, by definition. It would be helpful if someone could cite the specific treaty and quote the specific portion which this violated. I am not saying that there is no such thing, I simply don't know.

sure they deserved revenge for pearl harbour but the japanese didn't vaporize close to 200,000 civilians.

They did it to the germans to (eg Dresden)

they raped pillaged and killed innocent german people,