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

Morphling

The Hague convention didn't come into effect until 1956 so you can't use it to prosecute an event that took place more than a decade before. It just doesn't work that way.

Quote, "We're lawyers after all." As lawyers, you must follow what is termed "stare decisis."


STARE DECISIS - Lat. "to stand by that which is decided." The principal that the precedent decisions are to be followed by the courts.

To abide or adhere to decided cases. It is a general maxim that when a point has been settled by decision, it forms a precedent which is not afterwards to be departed from. The doctrine of stare decisis is not always to be relied upon, for the courts find it necessary to overrule cases which have been hastily decided, or contrary to principle. Many hundreds of such overruled cases may be found in the American and English books of reports.

An appeal court's panel is "bound by decisions of prior panels unless an en banc decision, Supreme Court decision, or subsequent legislation undermines those decisions." United States v. Washington, 872 F.2d 874, 880 (9th Cir. 1989).

Although the doctrine of stare decisis does not prevent reexamining and, if need be, overruling prior decisions, "It is . . . a fundamental jurisprudential policy that prior applicable precedent usually must be followed even though the case, if considered anew, might be decided differently by the current justices. This policy . . . 'is based on the assumption that certainty, predictability and stability in the law are the major objectives of the legal system; i.e., that parties should be able to regulate their conduct and enter into relationships with reasonable assurance of the governing rules of law.'" (Moradi-Shalal v. Fireman's Fund Ins. Companies (1988) 46 Cal.3d 287, 296.) Accordingly, a party urging overruling a precedent faces a rightly onerous task, the difficulty of which is roughly proportional to a number of factors, including the age of the precedent, the nature and extent of public and private reliance on it, and its consistency or inconsistency with other related rules of law.

There were many different Hauge convensions. One in 1907. One in 1899. One in 1929. The particular one I am refering to is the 1907 one.

Also, the US had cracked Japan's code, and were able to decode their messages.

Truman intercepted 5 messages that Japan sent to the Soviet Union, asking for an organized peace, with the condition that the emperor not be killed or tried as a criminal. Thry also had a naval blockade up which consisted of US, British, and Soviet ships and subs which prevent the transport of coal, oil, food, or iron. We also intercepted a Japanese coded message relaying that Japan only had three months before they ran out of food and oil. Furthermore, in the Potsdam Proclimation we stated that we were ready to meet Japan's condition for peace by allowing Japan to establish their own government. However, publically, we continued to stress that we would not gaureentee Japan anything, that unconditional surrender was mandatory. We knew Japan would never accept unconditional surrender. However, we had intercepted info saying they would accept surrender as long as the Emperor was untouched (he ended up being untouched anyway).

Let me qoute the diary of Henry Stimpson, the Secretary of War, and the man who was to oversee the constuction and use of the bomb:

5/10/45 Diary Entry: [The Atomic Bomb and Russia] (June 10, 1945)
"...I invited [U.S. Ambassador to Moscow W. Averell] Harriman to stay and lunch with McCloy, Bundy, and myself in my room. I wanted to get his views on the situation in Russia and the chances of getting a Russia that we could work with. It was rather a gloomy report that he gave us. He didn't think that there was any chance of getting the seeds of liberalism into Russia in the shape of liberalizing and implementing the new constitutions for the sixteen Soviet provinces or zones which Stalin has put forth but never implemented. Yet he thought that Russia would be afraid to throw down the participation in the United Nations or the associations with us altogether. He thinks that Russia is really afraid of our power or at least respects it and, although she is going to try to ride roughshod over her neighbors in Europe, he thought that she really was afraid of us.
5/14/45 Diary Entry (June 15, 1945)
"I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words. The Russians will understand them better than anything else. It is a case where we have got to regain the lead and perhaps do it in a pretty rough and realistic way. They have rather taken it away from us because we have talked too much and have been too lavish with our beneficences to them. I told him this was a place where we really held all the cards. I called it a royal straight flush and we mustn't be a fool about the way we play it. They can't get along without our help and industries and we have coming into action a weapon which will be unique [the atomic bomb]. Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much and not to indicate any weakness by talking too much; let our actions speak for themselves."

Anyway, it's time for me to do more work on the project.

I'm not the actual Lawyer who does the closing statements (i'm doing cross of Truman and Rebuttle) but I thought I'd write up a general summary of the points I'd like to be emphasized in claosing statements of count one (arguing that Truman made the wrong decision or something like that). I am 60% sure we can convict him on that, but only 30-40% sure we can get him on charges on war crimes. The jury is very biased against us, and one of them is the friend of President Truman. He kept on talking with Truman after school about how he "had his back" and "how he had the most biased Jury ever" because "none of the Jury were hippies", and that we were just going to try to say that there is always a peaceful solution to things. I work well when I'm angry.


It was 1945. Hitler had committed suicide. The axis was gone. Japan stood alone against the might of the world. We had destroyed 600 major factories. Oil refining capacity was down by 83 percent, and 8.5 million people had been driven from Japan's cities. Japan's very means of transportation, it's railway system, was being destroyed by bombers bit by bit. Japan's leaders feared that soon railway systems would only work locally, and that cross-country transportation would be impossible. Because of a successful naval blockade Japan could not import oil or food, and we were able to prevent 90% of the world's resources of coal and iron from entering Japan. In fact, Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's chief of staff, told Mr. Truman that neither a costly invasion of Japan, or the use of the atomic bomb, was necessary.
Furthermore, we had been able to crack the code by which Japan communicated, and we used it to read messages from Japan. One message that we intercepted and decoded stated point blankly that Japan could only last 3 months before they ran out of food and oil. Japan knew they could no longer hold out, despite the rantings of their military leaders, and they were ready to surrender on the condition that Hiroheto not be killed or tried as a war criminal. Truman knew this. He intercepted and decoded five messages from Japan to the Soviet Union all seeking surrender. Their only condition was the safety of their emperor. What makes this fact even more shocking is that in the Potsdam Proclamation of 1945 the United States admitted that they were willing to accept Japan's conditions of surrender. They stated, unequivocally, that they were willing to allow Japan to establish it's own government. In fact, when America did enter Japan they did allow Hiroheto to remain in power. However, in public Truman continued to demand unconditional surrender and refused to grant safety to Hiroheto. This raises the question: why would America grant the request of Hiroheto's safety, but refuse the offer of surrender that accompanied it?
There can be only one explanation: that the United States did not want Japan to surrender. Truman was uneasy about Stalin turning the eastern European nations into communist states, and at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union had told the United States they would invade Japan by August 8th. Originally, the United States had sought the intervention by the Soviet Union, and even promised Stalin territory in Manchuria and Japan if they invaded Japan successfully. However, political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union had increased considerably since the Soviet Union had first agreed to the invasion after the downfall of Germany, and America now thought they could win the war alone. But they had to do it fast, or else Stalin would invade Japan and seize land for his growing empire. Truman didn't want to sit on a $2 billion dollar project, especially if it had the ability to intimidate the growing power of the Soviet Union, and apparently his generals didn't want to either.
Leo Szilard has provided sworn testimony that in early July 1945, he had a conversation with Secretary of State Byrnes in which Byrnes specifically told him that we didn't need to drop the bomb in order to win the war but needed to, quote, "make the Russians more manageable in Europe." In fact, President Truman himself, said as much, if not more. He stated on several occasions that you hoped our exclusive possession of the bomb would make the Russians be more reasonable. On April 23rd you also told a US diplomat that you had no intention of allowing our agreements with the Russians to become a "one-way street", and that if they didn't stop being so aggressive they could, quote "go to hell." Furthermore the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimpson, who planned and supervised the top-secret construction of the atomic bomb, wrote of the Soviets on May 14, 1945: "They can't get along without our help and industries and we have coming into action a weapon which will be unique [the atomic bomb]. Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much and not to indicate any weakness by talking too much; let our actions speak for themselves."
Who is the person that made accepting surrender weakness? Who is the person who made mass murder a political pawn in a chess match between superpowers? Who is the person responsible? Ladies and Gentlemen, he is sitting right before your eyes. He ignored the plea of a nation for surrender. He ignored the fact that his naval blockade was preventing Japan from importing the necessary raw materials of war. He ignored the fact Japan had only three months of oil and food left. It is the defendant, President Harry S. Truman who, in his own words, made "the final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb". I ask you, the jury, to follow the evidence and be the voice of justice. Find President Truman guilty of…


Thank you.

We are not actual lawyers. :wink: We are 15-18 year olds, with me being the youngest. Truman was never put on trial anyway, so that doesn't matter. If he had been tried and found innocent then that would stand true in the real world. It still wouldn't stand true in this fantasy world, where it is 1953, Truman is being tried for war crimes, and Joseph Stalin is one of our witnesses. This is a mock trial. Fantasy. A school projecct. Oh well. Stalin will get eaten up in cross exam, but his testimony is important:

Cross Exam Lawyer: "Was that ten or twenty million you killed"
Me: Objection; Relevance.
Cross Exam Lawyer: Credibility. If a serial killer took the stand his testimony would be less credible than a someone else. I am trying to establish a link that confirms the witness as a mass murderer.
Judge: Objection Denied.
Me: Damn. Can't he take the fifth'd on the grounds he would incriminate himself?
Judge: He's not a US citizen.
Me: ****************************
Stalin: Nope. That was 26 million.

When i was 18, Johnson was President; C.I. goes back further than that. It's not a good idea to make too many assumptions in a setting such as this.

Morphling, You keep saying you're playing lawyer. If you're going to play lawyer (even as teenagers), you should at least follow the rules of law. Otherwise, nothing makes sense. Everything you are doing is fictional to begin with; there is no lesson learned from "playing lawyer" if actual laws and events are ignored.

What laws and events am I ignoring. I am simply saying that this takes place in another universe where it has not yet been decided who are the war criminals.

By the way, our judge was a lawyer who prosecuted corrupt cops in Detriot for over 12 years, and is subsequently well versed in the ins and outs of law. He also appeared on Jeapordy in the 60s so...BOYA!

Oh, I missed your "another universe." Excuse me for missing that very important point. Go on with your imagination, as you were.

The Historian's View


Imaturity is the vice of stubborn and the desperate.

Here's a very good article by accredited historian Mark Weber. Mark Weber is an accredited historian who is currently editor of The Journal of Historical Review, which is published six times yearly by the southern California-based Institute for Historical Review.

Weber has been a guest on numerous radio talk shows, and on the nationally-syndicated "Montel Williams" television program. Millions of Americans saw and heard Weber speak about the Holocaust issue on the March 20, 1994, edition of the CBS network television program "60 Minutes."

On August 6, 1945, the world dramatically entered the atomic age: without either warning or precedent, an American plane dropped a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion utterly destroyed more than four square miles of the city center. About about 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians.

Between the two bombings, Soviet Russia joined the United States in war against Japan. Under strong US prodding, Stalin broke his regime's 1941 non-aggression treaty with Tokyo. On the same day that Nagasaki was destroyed, Soviet troops began pouring into Manchuria, overwhelming Japanese forces there. Although Soviet participation did little or nothing to change the military outcome of the war, Moscow benefitted enormously from joining the conflict.

In a broadcast from Tokyo the next day, August 10, the Japanese government announced its readiness to accept the joint American-British "unconditional surrender" declaration of Potsdam, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

A day later came the American reply, which included these words: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." Finally, on August 14, the Japanese formally accepted the provisions of the Potsdam declaration, and a "cease fire" was announced. On September 2, Japanese envoys signed the instrument of surrender aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

A Beaten Country
Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.

On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.

On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Japan Seeks Peace
Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.

In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:

Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...

In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.

A Secret Memorandum
It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

Peace Overtures
In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.

By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."

By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.

On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."

The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."

On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."

Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved."

Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."

In spite of this, on July 26 the leaders of the United States and Britain issued the Potsdam declaration, which included this grim ultimatum: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.

The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

Justifications
President Truman steadfastly defended his use of the atomic bomb, claiming that it "saved millions of lives" by bringing the war to a quick end. Justifying his decision, he went so far as to declare: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This was a preposterous statement. In fact, almost all of the victims were civilians, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

If the atomic bomb was dropped to impress the Japanese leaders with the immense destructive power of a new weapon, this could have been accomplished by deploying it on an isolated military base. It was not necessary to destroy a large city. And whatever the justification for the Hiroshima blast, it is much more difficult to defend the second bombing of Nagasaki.

All the same, most Americans accepted, and continue to accept, the official justifications for the bombings. Accustomed to crude propagandistic portrayals of the "Japs" as virtually subhuman beasts, most Americans in 1945 heartily welcomed any new weapon that would wipe out more of the detested Asians, and help avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the young Americans who were fighting the Japanese in bitter combat, the attitude was "Thank God for the atom bomb." Almost to a man, they were grateful for a weapon whose deployment seemed to end the war and thus allow them to return home.

After the July 1943 firestorm destruction of Hamburg, the mid-February 1945 holocaust of Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, America's leaders -- as US Army General Leslie Groves later commented -- "were generally inured to the mass killing of civilians." For President Harry Truman, the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians was simply not a consideration in his decision to use the atom bomb.

Critical Voices
Amid the general clamor of enthusiasm, there were some who had grave misgivings. "We are the inheritors to the mantle of Genghis Khan," wrote New York Times editorial writer Hanson Baldwin, "and of all those in history who have justified the use of utter ruthlessness in war." Norman Thomas called Nagasaki "the greatest single atrocity of a very cruel war." Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the President, was similarly appalled.

A leading voice of American Protestantism, Christian Century, strongly condemned the bombings. An editorial entitled "America's Atomic Atrocity" in the issue of August 29, 1945, told readers:

The atomic bomb was used at a time when Japan's navy was sunk, her air force virtually destroyed, her homeland surrounded, her supplies cut off, and our forces poised for the final stroke ... Our leaders seem not to have weighed the moral considerations involved. No sooner was the bomb ready than it was rushed to the front and dropped on two helpless cities ... The atomic bomb can fairly be said to have struck Christianity itself ... The churches of America must dissociate themselves and their faith from this inhuman and reckless act of the American Government.

A leading American Catholic voice, Commonweal, took a similar view. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the magazine editorialized, "are names for American guilt and shame."

Pope Pius XII likewise condemned the bombings, expressing a view in keeping with the traditional Roman Catholic position that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man." The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano commented in its August 7, 1945, issue: "This war provides a catastrophic conclusion. Incredibly this destructive weapon remains as a temptation for posterity, which, we know by bitter experience, learns so little from history."

Authoritative Voices of Dissent
American leaders who were in a position to know the facts did not believe, either at the time or later, that the atomic bombings were needed to end the war.

When he was informed in mid-July 1945 by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson of the decision to use the atomic bomb, General Dwight Eisenhower was deeply troubled. He disclosed his strong reservations about using the new weapon in his 1963 memoir, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (pp. 312-313):

During his [Stimson's] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face."

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon," Eisenhower said in 1963.

Shortly after "V-J Day," the end of the Pacific war, Brig. General Bonnie Fellers summed up in a memo for General MacArthur: "Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan's unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either these events took place."

Similarly, Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented:

It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan ... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

If the United States had been willing to wait, said Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations, "the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

US Strategic Bombing Survey Verdict
After studying this matter in great detail, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey rejected the notion that Japan gave up because of the atomic bombings. In its authoritative 1946 report, the Survey concluded:

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The Emperor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Navy Minister had decided as early as May of 1945 that the war should be ended even if it meant acceptance of defeat on allied terms ...

The mission of the Suzuki government, appointed 7 April 1945, was to make peace. An appearance of negotiating for terms less onerous than unconditional surrender was maintained in order to contain the military and bureaucratic elements still determined on a final Bushido defense, and perhaps even more importantly to obtain freedom to create peace with a minimum of personal danger and internal obstruction. It seems clear, however, that in extremis the peacemakers would have peace, and peace on any terms. This was the gist of advice given to Hirohito by the Jushin in February, the declared conclusion of Kido in April, the underlying reason for Koiso's fall in April, the specific injunction of the Emperor to Suzuki on becoming premier which was known to all members of his cabinet ...

Negotiations for Russia to intercede began the forepart of May 1945 in both Tokyo and Moscow. Konoye, the intended emissary to the Soviets, stated to the Survey that while ostensibly he was to negotiate, he received direct and secret instructions from the Emperor to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity ...

It seems clear ... that air supremacy and its later exploitation over Japan proper was the major factor which determined the timing of Japan's surrender and obviated any need for invasion.

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 [the date of the planned American invasion], Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

Historians' Views
In a 1986 study, historian and journalist Edwin P. Hoyt nailed the "great myth, perpetuated by well-meaning people throughout the world," that "the atomic bomb caused the surrender of Japan." In Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict (p. 420), he explained:

The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito's realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve "unconditional surrender" that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan's surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day.

In a trenchant new book, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Praeger, 1996), historian Dennis D. Wainstock concludes that the bombings were not only unnecessary, but were based on a vengeful policy that actually harmed American interests. He writes (pp. 124, 132):

... By April 1945, Japan's leaders realized that the war was lost. Their main stumbling block to surrender was the United States' insistence on unconditional surrender. They specifically needed to know whether the United States would allow Hirohito to remain on the throne. They feared that the United States would depose him, try him as a war criminal, or even execute him ...

Unconditional surrender was a policy of revenge, and it hurt America's national self-interest. It prolonged the war in both Europe and East Asia, and it helped to expand Soviet power in those areas.

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."

General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."

URL: http://www.marynet.com/hirosh.html

Morphing, Why are you posting actual statements by people to equate it to your make-believe universe? Do you understand anything about logic? Before you accuse anybody of "inmaturity," look in the mirror; you'll find the one who thinks 'it' knows everything at such a young age.

*sigh* Please refrain from attempting to insult me in EVERY post you make.

It may suprise you, but I do not own a "make believe universe". Apparantly you cannot understand the value of actively debating a moral issue such as the bombing in Hiroshima in an active debate forum such as a court of law. The idea is develop historical knowledge, as well as research and debating abilities, and for someone like me this is fun. We cannot have a fair enviroment for debate unless the jury relieves their predjudices at the door and votes based on the evidence. It would not make any sense to say: The US won the war and declared Japan a war criminal, so therefore you cannot vote for the Prosecution. That would destroy the whole purpose of the trail. The point is to ask same question this thread is asking: would you have done what Truman would have done?

Furthermore, I do not claim to know everything. Far from it. If you would like to clarifyt what allegation you based that allocation on, then be my guest. Furthermore, I see no reason why my age has any significance to the credibility of my argument.

The point of posting the historian's article was not to "support my make believe universe" but to provide food for thought. He can certainly articulate himself better than I can. Read it for yourself and see if it achieves that goal:

URL: http://www.marynet.com/hirosh.html

P.S. Please don't refer to me as "it".

It's a bit confusing when you say 1) you and your classmates are playing lawyers, 2) you're in an imaginary universe, and 3) there is no consistency between your "imaginary universe/playing lawyer" and statements made by "real" past personalities.
I'm not angry or bitter; there's nothing I stated that says "hey, I'm angry because..." I'm here to make an attempt to understand what you are trying to do with "fiction/facts" which didn't make any sense. Now that you have made it clear that you and the other students are making an effort to "develop historical knowledge, to do research, and improve your skills in debating" it makes more sense. I say, "bravo!" I was only playing devil's advocate. I think we both learned something from this exchange.

Morphling, I suspect your research so far has not included the reading of this entire thread. I offer for your consideration This Post. Hindsight is always better than 20/20. When the battle is on, the smoke and debris are swirling around, and one's focus is on the immediate task at hand, vision is rather more limited.

For your further consideration, I offer this:



Japan had been charged with immediate, unconditional surrender as requirement for ending the war. Japan repeatedly, unambiguously, and publicly rejected those demands. Rather than accept unconditional surrender, the Japanese sought, through foreign intermediaries, to negotiate a war-ending settlement accommodating terms of their own. 2 nuclear bombs were dropped. So were the Japanese attempts to negotiate a cessation of hostilities.

The United States knew why Japan refused to except unconditional surrender. As early as Jan. 1945, 7 months before Hiroshima was bombed, General Douglas MacArthur handed the White House a 40 page report on the recent peace attempts of the Japanese. The peace attempts were exactly identical to the terms eventually accepted. They differed by only one clause: that Hiroheto be granted safety. The United States repeatedly refused to meet this one condition to peace, and as a result thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Japanese died. In truth, however, the US had no intention of removing Hiroheto from power. They allowed him to stay on.

There is no 7 month "heat of the moment".

Note: I have not used ANY hindsight. I have only used the information that Truman had known for months when he dropped the bomb.

Let me qoute the article:

"The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito's realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve "unconditional surrender" that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan's surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day."

They had somewhat of an understanding of the fallout, but the understanding wasn't complete.

If your intent is to consider fallout as a "poison weapon" then you should note that the bombings were airbursts, with little in the way of deadly fallout.

All the people who received radiation injury got their does directly from the fireball in the first minute of the explosion.

Almost all of the people who received radiation injury got their dose in the first second of the blast.

Such direct radiation wouldn't count as a poison in the way fallout would.

The messages were from the Emperor, acting without the backing of the government.

The messages also did NOT tell us any of the conditions Japan was seeking.


A couple days before Hiroshima, we finally intercepted a message indicating that the entire Japanese government was seeking a negotiated surrender.

However, this message still did not indicate what terms they sought (though it did indicate they sought more than one term).


Historians have now shown us that the Japanese government was seeking four terms at this point in time:

No occupation of the Japanese home Islands,

Hirohito retain full sovereignty as Japan's ruler,

Japan be in charge of standing down and disarming their own military, and

Japan be in charge of trying all Japanese war criminals.



The first time they tried to surrender just with a guarantee that "Hirohito retain full sovereignty as ruler of Japan" came after the second A-bomb was dropped.

You got a cite for that?

Note that if the guy made a statement 20 years after the war was over, that doesn't mean he said it to Truman during the war.





Actually the intercepted messages never told Truman what terms they were seeking, just that they were seeking more than one.

And the intercepted messages indicated that for most of the summer, the overture to the Soviets was being done without the support of the Japanese government (although the government finally got on board a few days before Hiroshima).

When the Japanese did try to surrender with just one term (which was after the second A-bomb), they were not just seeking "the safety of the Emperor". They were seeking a guarantee of his complete sovereignty as ruler of Japan.

In any case, we had no intention of giving Japan any guarantees for their Emperor.





We did not accept any of Japan's terms.

Japan accepted all of our terms.


The notion that the people of Japan would be allowed to choose the form of their own government was our term, not Japan's.

The Japanese government, which saw imperial rule as a divine right of the Emperor, were horrified at the notion that the people would be allowed to choose, even though they were sure the people would choose to have an Emperor.


And the fact that the people were allowed to choose, and were expected to choose a Constitutional monarchy, was no guarantee that we were going to allow Hirohito or his line to be the person selected as Emperor.





Actually, we were rather desperate for them to surrender before we had to mount an invasion.

However, we still insisted on them surrendering on our terms.





Actually, everyone was still hoping the Soviets would go to war against Japan, as they hoped it would shock Japan into surrendering on our terms before an invasion was necessary.





Truman didn't care if he wasn't able to use the bomb. And at the time, he was not focused on the Soviets as a threat. His primary focus was on making Japan accept our terms before an invasion was necessary.





Cite?





Actually that blockade was only about a month away from causing the starvation death of 10 million Japanese civilians.

Re: The Historian's View


Ah, the infamous neo-Nazi holocaust-denier organization.

Accredited by who?





Depends on the details.

We knew, for instance that Japan was seeking more than one term, and that until August 2, this surrender movement did not have the backing of the Japanese government.





Gar Alperovitz is an anti-American propagandist who frequently lies about this issue.





An overture from high level Japanese officials is meaningless if they are not acting with the support of the actual Japanese government.


The actual government of Japan was not willing to contemplate surrender until August 2. At that time they had four terms:

No occupation of the Japanese home Islands,
Hirohito retain full sovereignty as Japan's ruler,
Japan be in charge of standing down and disarming their own military, and
Japan be in charge of trying all Japanese war criminals.


On August 10, the actual government of Japan was willing to offer surrender with only one term:

Hirohito retain full sovereignty as Japan's ruler.



On August 14, the actual government of Japan was willing to accept our terms unconditionally. They were days away from being nuked again when they finally gave up.





Nope. "Japan" made no such offers.

What happened was that these embassies took it upon themselves to make the offers without the permission of their government.

We did not give the offers much credence because they could not confirm that they were acting on the authority of their government.

And when the Japanese government denounced these offers, it further undermined them.





The intercepted messages also showed that the overture to the Soviets was not being done with the backing of the government itself, just a faction of the government (most notably, the faction that was not in control).

It is true that our demand for unconditional surrender precluded any negotiations, though. Japan was going to accept our terms without condition, no matter what the cost.





I see we're still mucking through Alperovitz tainted stuff.

There was certainly a real desire of some Japanese to get out of the war. The Japanese government itself did not have this desire until August 2. Before that, it was only a powerless faction within the government.

However, a desire to get out of the war did not translate into a desire to accept our surrender terms. They did not try to do that until after the second A-bomb had already been dropped.





Actually, we received no indication that they were willing to end the war on only that term until August 10, after the Second A-bomb.

And there is widespread belief (backed by some of the reactions of Japan's leaders) that softer terms would be seen as weakness on our part, and make Japan less likely to surrender.





Hiroshima was not a "base". But it was a major military town with large military districts and many important military targets.

Most notably, it held the headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army, which was in charge of repelling any invasion of the southern half of the Japanese home islands (which is were our invasion would have begun).

It is not accurate to say "almost all" of the victims were civilians.

The A-bomb killed an estimated 70,000 - 120,000 civilians, but it also killed 20,000 fresh troops awaiting deployment.


The US Strategic Bombing Survey was not a non-biased look back at the war. It was an Air Force propaganda work which tried to convince Congress that the only weapons worth funding were conventional air power.

It is true that we were looking for a concentration of people and activity, but the documents from the people doing the targeting show that military activity was a significant factor in the choices made.





Dropping it on an isolated base would not have begun to convey to the Japanese leaders the power of the bomb.

And the second bomb was dropped because we hadn't yet heard any offers of surrender from the Japanese.





Acts of the UK, not the US, I might add.





Yes but Ike was lying. Stimson always recorded dissent from officials regarding the bombs, and he recorded no such outburst from Ike.

And Ike gave earlier accounts of the meeting which contradict his later claim of vehement objection.



The other objections from officials came in hindsight. The one from Admiral King was also clearly pro-Navy propaganda, much like the US Strategic Bombing Survey was propaganda to the Air Force.





That's a new one.

I'm not familiar with the book, but I note that it goes against the consensus of mainstream historians.