Pros And Cons Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki
Debate: The bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki was an unnecessary war crime.
Human civilization 2
4/9/2014
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki involved two nuclear attacks against the Empire of Japan by the United States of America (USA) under USA President Harry S. Truman. On August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9, 1945 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki, for the first and only time in history, atomic bombs were used against mankind killing over 200,000 civilians. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki became a common place of death, and living became the exception. People’s eyes came out of their sockets and peeled skin hung off their bodies. Many flocked to the rivers looking for water. People no longer looked human. Parents had to abandon their children, children could not rescue their parents, and family members were unable to recognize one another. Victims overflowed out of hospitals and …show more content…
relief stations. Agonized cries from the injured in damaged air raid shelters and burnt ruins, shouts for family members and calls for help continued through the night, as person after person died.”
These were some of the words used by the International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (IPT) in its judgment of July 16, 2007, to describe the immediate and enduring effects of the atomic bombs that were detonated by the United States Air Force in order to secure Japan’s surrender and a victory for the Allies in the Pacific. Over 60 years later, the US Government has refused to apologize to the victims and their families, nor has it paid compensation.
Hiroshima was the primary target (the secondary was Kokura and the tertiary target was Nagasaki) of the first nuclear attack, on August 6, 1945. The attack was carried out as planned, and a gravity bomb, a gun-type fission weapon, with 60 kg (130 pounds) of uranium-235, performed as expected.
In estimating the death toll from the attacks, there are several factors that make it difficult to arrive at reliable figures. Inadequacies in the records given the confusion of the times, the many victims who died months or years after the bombing as a result of radiation exposure, and the pressure to either exaggerate or minimise the numbers, depending upon political agenda.
The below shows the information about the estimation on amount of victims from these two bombings.
Hiroshima deaths (Aug. 6 to late Dec. 1945): 140,000
Nagasaki deaths (Aug. 9 to late Dec. 1945): 74,000
Hiroshima injuries (Aug. 9 to 1990): 352,550
Nagasaki injuries (Aug. 9 to late Dec. 1945): 75,000
Total deaths: 215,000
Total casualties (deaths and injured): 520,000
There has been no official US acknowledgement that the bombings were carried out in violation of international law. The only official rulings with respect to the legality of the atomic bombings have been issued from Japanese tribunals. This hesitation to characterize the bombings as violations of international law can be attributed to the argument that there were very few international humanitarian law treaties in force at the time, much less customary norms. But it can also be argued that there were two customary principles in existence at the time that legally prohibited attacks such as those against Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the prohibition on weapons that cause unnecessary suffering.
Our argument is that it was simply an extension of the already fierce conventional air raids on Japan and, therefore, militarily unnecessary, inherently immoral, a war crime, or a form of state terrorism. At least one historian (Tsuyoshi Hasegawa) states that the Soviet declaration of war on Japan had more of an effect than the two nuclear bombings.
So we would like to bring up our argument and elaborate more under following topics.
1. Fundamentally immoral
2. The bombings as war crimes
3. State terrorism
4. Militarily unnecessary
5. Nagasaki bombing unnecessary
6. Racism and dehumanization
Fundamentally immoral
On August 8, 1945, Albert Camus addressed the bombing of Hiroshima in an editorial in the French newspaper Combat:
"Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests. This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason."
In 1946, a report by the Federal Council of Churches entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, includes the following passage:
"As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one 's judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible."
A continuation of previous behavior
American historian Gabriel Kolko has said discussion regarding the moral dimension of the attacks is wrong-headed, given the fundamental moral decision had already been made:
During November 1944 American B-29s began their first incendiary bomb raids on Tokyo, and on 9 March 1945, wave upon wave dropped masses of small incendiaries containing an early version of napalm on the city 's population—for they directed this assault against civilians. Soon small fires spread, connected, grew into a vast firestorm that sucked the oxygen out of the lower atmosphere. The bomb raid was a 'success ' for the Americans; they killed 125,000 Japanese in one attack. The Allies bombed Hamburg and Dresden in the same manner, and Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, and Tokyo again on May 24.
The basic moral decision that the Americans had to make during the war was whether or not they would violate international law by indiscriminately attacking and destroying civilians, and they resolved that dilemma within the context of conventional weapons. Neither fanfare nor hesitation accompanied their choice, and in fact the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima was less lethal than massive fire bombing. The war had so brutalized the American leaders that burning vast numbers of civilians no longer posed a real predicament by the spring of 1945. Given the anticipated power of the atomic bomb, which was far less than that of fire bombing, no one expected small quantities of it to end the war. Only its technique was novel—nothing more. By June 1945 the mass destruction of civilians via strategic bombing did impress Stimson as something of a moral problem, but the thought no sooner arose than he forgot it, and in no appreciable manner did it shape American use of conventional or atomic bombs. "I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," he noted telling the President on June 6. There was another difficulty posed by mass conventional bombing, and that was its very success, a success that made the two modes of human destruction qualitatively identical in fact and in the minds of the American military. "I was a little fearful," Stimson told Truman, "that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength." To this the President "laughed and said he understood."
The bombings as war crimes
A number of notable individuals and organizations have criticized the bombings, many of them characterizing them as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and/or state terrorism.
Early critics of the bombings were Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard, who had together spurred the first bomb research in 1939 with a jointly written letter to President Roosevelt. Szilard, who had gone on to play a major role in the Manhattan Project, argued:
Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged
them?
A number of scientists who worked on the bomb were against its use. Led by Dr. James Franck, seven scientists submitted a report to the Interim Committee (which advised the President) in May 1945, saying:
If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.
Mark Selden writes, "Perhaps the most trenchant contemporary critique of the American moral position on the bomb and the scales of justice in the war was voiced by the Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal, a dissenting voice at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, who balked at accepting the uniqueness of Japanese war crimes. Recalling Kaiser Wilhelm II 's account of his duty to bring World War I to a swift end—"everything must be put to fire and sword; men, women and children and old men must be slaughtered and not a tree or house be left standing." Pal observed:
This policy of indiscriminate murder to shorten the war was considered to be a crime. In the Pacific war under our consideration, if there was anything approaching what is indicated in the above letter of the German Emperor, it is the decision coming from the Allied powers to use the bomb. Future generations will judge this dire decision... If any indiscriminate destruction of civilian life and property is still illegal in warfare, then, in the Pacific War, this decision to use the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of the German Emperor during the first World War and of the Nazi leaders during the second World War.
Selden mentions another critique of the nuclear bombing, which he says the U.S. government effectively suppressed for twenty-five years, as worth mention. On 11 August 1945, the Japanese government filed an official protest over the atomic bombing to the U.S. State Department through the Swiss Legation in Tokyo, observing:
Combatant and noncombatant men and women, old and young, are massacred without discrimination by the atmospheric pressure of the explosion, as well as by the radiating heat which result therefrom. Consequently there is involved a bomb having the most cruel effects humanity has ever known … The bombs in question, used by the Americans, by their cruelty and by their terrorizing effects, surpass by far gas or any other arm, the use of which is prohibited. Japanese protests against U.S. desecration of international principles of war paired the use of the atomic bomb with the earlier firebombing, which massacred old people, women and children, destroying and burning down Shinto and Buddhist temples, schools, hospitals, living quarters, etc... They now use this new bomb, having an uncontrollable and cruel effect much greater than any other arms or projectiles ever used to date. This constitutes a new crime against humanity and civilization.
Selden concludes, despite the war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan, nevertheless, "the Japanese protest correctly pointed to U.S. violations of internationally accepted principles of war with respect to the wholesale destruction of populations."
In 1963, the bombings were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State.On the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found, "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war."
In the opinion of the court, the act of dropping an atomic bomb on cities was at the time governed by international law found in the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907 and the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923 and was therefore illegal.
In the documentary The Fog of War, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara recalls General Curtis LeMay, who relayed the Presidential order to drop nuclear bombs on Japan,said:
"If we 'd lost the war, we 'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he 's right. He, and I 'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
As the first military use of nuclear weapons, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent to some the crossing of a crucial barrier. Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute atAmerican University, wrote of President Truman: "He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species."Kuznick said the atomic bombing of Japan "was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."
Takashi Hiraoka, mayor of Hiroshima, upholding nuclear disarmament, said in a hearing to The Hague International Court of Justice (ICJ): "It is clear that the use of nuclear weapons, which cause indiscriminate mass murder that leaves [effects on] survivors for decades, is a violation of international law".Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki, declared in the same hearing:
It is said that the descendants of the atomic bomb survivors will have to be monitored for several generations to clarify the genetic impact, which means that the descendants will live in anxiety for [decades] to come... with their colossal power and capacity for slaughter and destruction, nuclear weapons make no distinction between combatants and non-combatants or between military installations and civilian communities... The use of nuclear weapons... therefore is a manifest infraction of international law.
Although bombings do not meet the definition of genocide, some consider this definition is too strict, and these bombings do represent a genocide. For example, University of Chicagohistorian Bruce Cumings states there is a consensus among historians to Martin Sherwin 's statement "the Nagasaki bomb was gratuitous at best and genocidal at worst."
The scholar R. J. Rummel instead extends the definition of genocide to what he calls democide, and includes the major part of deaths from the atom bombings in these. His definition of democide includes not only genocide, but also an excessive killing of civilians in war, to the extent this is against the agreed rules for warfare; he argues the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, and thus democide. Rummel quotes among others an official protest from the US government in 1938 to Japan, for its bombing of Chinese cities: "The bombing of non-combatant populations violated international and humanitarian laws." He also considers excess deaths of civilians in conflagrations caused by conventional means, such as in Tokyo, as acts of democide.
In 1967, Noam Chomsky described the atomic bombings as "among the most unspeakable crimes in history". Chomsky pointed to the complicity of the American people in the bombings, referring to the bitter experiences they had undergone prior to the event as the cause for their acceptance of its legitimacy.
In 2007, a group of intellectuals in Hiroshima established an unofficial body called International Peoples ' Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On 16 July 2007, it delivered its verdict, stating:
The Tribunal finds that the nature of damage caused by the atomic bombs can be described as indiscriminate extermination of all life forms or inflicting unnecessary pain to the survivors.
About the legality and the morality of the action, the unofficial tribunal found:
The... use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was illegal in the light of the principles and rules of International Humanitarian Law applicable in armed conflicts, since the bombing of both cities, made civilians the object of attack, using nuclear weapons that were incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets and consequently, caused unnecessary suffering to the civilian survivors.
Militarily unnecessary
The 1946 United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan, whose members included Paul Nitze, the atomic bombs had been unnecessary to win the war. After reviewing numerous documents, and interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, they reported:
There is little point in attempting precisely to impute Japan 's unconditional surrender to any one of the numerous causes which jointly and cumulatively were responsible for Japan 's disaster. The time lapse between military impotence and political acceptance of the inevitable might have been shorter had the political structure of Japan permitted a more rapid and decisive determination of national policies. Nevertheless, it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the 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, 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.
This conclusion assumed conventional fire bombing would have continued, with ever-increasing numbers of B-29s, and a greater level of destruction to Japan 's cities and population. One of Nitze 's most influential sources was Prince Fumimaro Konoe, who responded to a question asking whether Japan would have surrendered if the atomic bombs had not been dropped by saying resistance would have continued through November or December, 1945.
Historians such as Bernstein, Hasegawa, and Newman have criticized Nitze for drawing a conclusion they say went far beyond what the available evidence warranted, in order to promote the reputation of the Air Force at the expense of the Army and Navy.
Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his 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.
Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The use of [the atomic bombs] 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... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. 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." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.[
Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa wrote the atomic bombings themselves were not the principal reason for Japan 's capitulation. Instead, he contends, it was the Soviet entry in the war on 8 August, allowed by the Potsdam Declaration signed by the other Allies. The fact the Soviet Union did not sign this declaration gave Japan reason to believe the Soviets could be kept out of the war. As late as 25 July, the day before the declaration was issued, Japan had asked for a diplomatic envoy led by Konoe to come to Moscow hoping to mediate peace in the Pacific. Konoe was supposed to bring a letter from the Emperor stating:
His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice of the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But as long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender the Japanese Empire has no alternative to fight on with all its strength for the honour and existence of the Motherland…It is the Emperor 's private intention to send Prince Konoe to Moscow as a Special Envoy…
Hasegawa 's view is, when the Soviet Union declared war on 8 August, it crushed all hope in Japan 's leading circles the Soviets could be kept out of the war, and/or allow reinforcement from Asia to the Japanese islands for the expected invasion. Hasegawa wrote:
On the basis of available evidence, however, it is clear that the two atomic bombs… alone were not decisive in inducing Japan to surrender. Despite their destructive power, the atomic bombs were not sufficient to change the direction of Japanese diplomacy. The Soviet invasion was. Without the Soviet entry in the war, the Japanese would have continued to fight until numerous atomic bombs, a successful allied invasion of the home islands, or continued aerial bombardments, combined with a naval blockade, rendered them incapable of doing so.
Truman argued that the effects of Japan witnessing a failed test would be too great of a risk to arrange such a demonstration.
State terrorism
Historical accounts indicate the decision to use the atomic bombs was made in order to provoke a surrender of Japan by use of an awe-inspiring power. These observations have caused Michael Walzer to state the incident was an act of "war terrorism: the effort to kill civilians in such large numbers that their government is forced to surrender. Hiroshima seems to me the classic case." This type of claim eventually prompted historian Robert P. Newman, a supporter of the bombings, to say "there can be justified terror, as there can be just wars."
Certain scholars and historians have characterized the atomic bombings of Japan as a form of "state terrorism". This interpretation is based on a definition of terrorism as "the targeting of innocents to achieve a political goal". As Frances V. Harbour points out, the meeting of the Target Committee in Los Alamos on 10 and 11 May 1945 suggested targeting the large population centers of Kyoto or Hiroshima for a "psychological effect" and to make "the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized." As such, Professor Harbour suggests the goal was to create terror for political ends both in and beyond Japan. However, Burleigh Taylor Wilkins believes it stretches the meaning of "terrorism" to include wartime acts.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote that the bombings were terrorism. Zinn cites the sociologist Kai Erikson who said that the bombings could not be called "combat" because they targeted civilians. Just War theorist Michael Walzer said that while taking the lives of civilians can be justified under conditions of 'supreme emergency ', the war situation at that time did not constitute such an emergency.
Tony Coady, Frances V. Harbour, and Jamal Nassar also view the targeting of civilians during the bombings as a form of terrorism. Nassar classifies the atomic bombings as terrorism in the same vein as the firebombing of Tokyo, the firebombing of Dresden, and the Holocaust.
Richard A. Falk, professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University has written in detail about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as instances of state terrorism. He said that "the explicit function of the attacks was to terrorize the population through mass slaughter and to confront its leaders with the prospect of national annihilation."
Author Steven Poole said that the "people killed by terrorism" are not the targets of the intended terror effect. He said that the atomic bombings were "designed as an awful demonstration" aimed at Stalin and the government of Japan.
Japanese nuclear weapons program
During the war, and 1945 in particular, due to state secrecy, very little was known outside of Japan about the slow progress of the Japanese nuclear weapons program. The US knew that Japan had requested materials from their German allies, and 560 kg (1,230 lb) of unprocessed uranium oxide was dispatched to Japan in April 1945 aboard the submarine U-234, which however surrendered to US forces in the Atlantic following Germany 's surrender. The uranium oxide was reportedly labeled as "U-235", which may have been a mislabeling of the submarine 's name; its exact characteristics remain unknown. Some sources believe that it was not weapons-grade material and was intended for use as a catalyst in the production of synthetic methanol to be used for aviation fuel.
If post-war analysis had found that Japanese nuclear weapons development was near completion, this discovery might have served in a revisionist sense to justify the atomic attack on Japan. However, it is known that the poorly coordinated Japanese project was considerably behind the US developments in 1945, and also behind the unsuccessful German nuclear energy project of WWII.
A review in 1986 of the fringe hypothesis that Japan had already created a nuclear weapon, by Department of Energy employee Roger M. Anders, appeared in the journal Military Affairs:
Journalist Wilcox 's book describes the Japanese wartime atomic energy projects. This is laudable, in that it illuminates a little-known episode; nevertheless, the work is marred by Wilcox 's seeming eagerness to show that Japan created an atomic bomb. Tales of Japanese atomic explosions, one a fictional attack on Los Angeles, the other an unsubstantiated account of a post-Hiroshima test, begin the book. (Wilcox accepts the test story because the author [Snell], "was a distinguished journalist"). The tales, combined with Wilcox 's failure to discuss the difficulty of translating scientific theory into a workable bomb, obscure the actual story of the Japanese effort: uncoordinated laboratory-scale projects which took paths least likely to produce a bomb.
Nagasaki bombing unnecessary
The second atomic bombing, on Nagasaki, came only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, when the devastation at Hiroshima had yet to be fully comprehended by the Japanese. The lack of time between the bombings has led some historians to state that the second bombing was "certainly unnecessary", "gratuitous at best and genocidal at worst", and not jus in bello In response to the claim that the atomic bombing of Nagasaki was unnecessary, Maddox wrote:
Some historians have argued that while the first bomb might have been required to achieve Japanese surrender, dropping the second constituted a needless barbarism. However, the record shows otherwise. American officials believed more than one bomb would be necessary because they assumed Japanese hard-liners would minimize the first explosion or attempt to explain it away as some sort of natural catastrophe, which is precisely what they did. In the three days between the bombings, the Japanese minister of war, for instance, refused even to admit that the Hiroshima bomb was atomic. A few hours after Nagasaki, he told the cabinet that "the Americans appeared to have one hundred atomic bombs … they could drop three per day. The next target might well be Tokyo."
Jerome Hagen indicates that War Minister Anami 's revised briefing was partly based on interrogating captured American B-29 pilot Marcus McDilda. Under torture, McDilda reported that the Americans had 100 atomic bombs, and that Tokyo and Kyoto would be the next atomic bomb targets. Both were lies; McDilda was not involved or briefed on the Manhattan Project and simply told the Japanese what he thought they wanted to hear.
One day before the bombing of Nagasaki, the Emperor notified Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō of his desire to "insure a prompt ending of hostilities". Togo wrote in his memoir that the Emperor "warned [him] that since we could no longer continue the struggle, now that a weapon of this devastating power was used against us, we should not let slip the opportunity [to end the war] by engaging in attempts to gain more favorable conditions." The Emperor then requested Togo to communicate his wishes to the Prime Minister.
Racism and dehumanization
Historian James J. Weingartner sees a connection between the American mutilation of Japanese war dead and the bombings. According to Weingartner both were partially the result of a dehumanization of the enemy. "The widespread image of the Japanese as sub-human constituted an emotional context which provided another justification for decisions which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands." On the second day after the Nagasaki bomb, President Truman had stated: "The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him like a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true".
International law
At the time of the atomic bombings, there was no international treaty or instrument protecting a civilian population specifically from attack by aircraft. Many critics of the atomic bombings point to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 as setting rules in place regarding the attack of civilian populations. The Hague Conventions contained no specific air warfare provisions but it prohibited the targeting of undefended civilians by naval artillery, field artillery, or siege engines, all of which were classified as "bombardment". However, the Conventions allowed the targeting of military establishments in cities, including military depots, industrial plants, and workshops which could be used for war. This set of rules was not followed during World War I which saw bombs dropped indiscriminately on cities by Zeppelins and multi-engine bombers. Afterward, another series of meetings were held at The Hague in 1922–23, but no binding agreement was reached regarding air warfare. During the 1930s and 1940s, the aerial bombing of cities was resumed, notably by the German Condor Legion against the cities of Guernica and Durango in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. This led to an escalation of various cities bombed, including Chongqing, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. All of the major belligerents in World War II dropped bombs on civilians in cities.
Modern debate over the applicability of the Hague Conventions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolves around whether the Conventions can be assumed to cover modes of warfare that were at the time unknown; whether rules for artillery bombardment can be applied to rules for aerial bombing. As well, the debate hinges on to what degree the Hague Conventions was being followed by the warring countries.
If the Hague Conventions is admitted as applicable, the critical question becomes whether the bombed cities met the definition of "undefended". Some observers consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki undefended, some say that both cities were legitimate military targets, and others say that Hiroshima could be considered a military target while Nagasaki was comparatively undefended. Hiroshima has been argued as not a legitimate target because the major industrial plants were just outside of the target area. It has also been argued as a legitimate target because Hiroshima was the headquarters of the regional Second General Army and Fifth Division with 40,000 military personnel stationed in the city. Both cities were protected by anti-aircraft guns, which is an argument against the definition of "undefended".
The Hague Conventions prohibited poison weapons. The radioactivity of the atomic bombings has been described as poisonous, especially in the form of nuclear fallout which kills more slowly. However, this view was rejected by the International Court of Justice in 1996, which stated that the primary and exclusive use of (air burst) nuclear weapons is not to poison or asphyxiate and thus is not prohibited by the Geneva Protocol.
The Hague Conventions also prohibited the employment of "arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering". The Japanese government cited this prohibition on 10 August 1945 after submitting a letter of protest to the United States denouncing the use of atomic bombs. However, the prohibition only applied to weapons as lances with a barbed head, irregularly shaped bullets, projectiles filled with glass, the use of any substance on bullets that would tend unnecessarily to inflame a wounded inflicted by them, and the scoring of the surface or the soft point bullet filling off the ends of the hard cases of bullets. It did not apply to the use of explosives contained in artillery projectiles, mines, aerial torpedoes, or hand grenades. In 1962 and in 1963, the Japanese government retracted its previous statement by saying that there was no international law prohibiting the use of atomic bombs.
The Hague Conventions stated that religious buildings, art and science centers, charities, hospitals, and historic monuments were to be spared as far as possible in a bombardment, unless they were being used for military purposes. Critics of the atomic bombings point to many of these kinds of structures which were destroyed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the Hague Conventions also stated that for the destruction of the enemy 's property to be justified, it must be "imperatively demanded by the necessities of war".Because of the inaccuracy of heavy bombers in World War II, it was not practical to target military assets in cities without damage to civilian targets.
Even after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, no international treaty banning or condemning nuclear warfare has ever been ratified. The closest example is a resolution by the UN General Assembly which stated that nuclear warfare was not in keeping with the UN charter, passed in 1953 with a vote of 25 to 20, and 26 abstentions.
Impact on surrender
On the question of what role the bombings played in Japan 's surrender, there are varied opinions, ranging from the bombings being the deciding factor, to the bombs being a minor factor, to the entire question being unknowable.
That the bombings were the decisive factor in ending the war was the mainstream position in the United States from 1945 through the 1960s, and is termed by some the "traditionalist" view, or pejoratively as the "patriotic orthodoxy."
Others argue that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was instead primary or decisive. In the US, this view has been particularly advanced by Robert Pape and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, and found convincing by some, while criticized by others.
Robert Pape also argues that:
Military vulnerability, not civilian vulnerability, accounts for Japan 's decision to surrender. Japan 's military position was so poor that its leaders would likely have surrendered before invasion, and at roughly the same time in August 1945, even if the United States had not employed strategic bombing or the atomic bomb. Rather than concern for the costs and risks to the population, or even Japan 's overall military weakness vis-a-vis the United States, the decisive factor was Japanese leaders ' recognition that their strategy for holding the most important territory at issue—the home islands—could not succeed.
In some Japanese writing about the surrender, the Soviet entry into the war is considered the primary reason or equal with the atomic bombs in many accounts, while others, such as the work of Sadao Asada, give primacy to the atomic bombings, particularly their impact on the emperor. The primacy of the Soviet entry as a reason for surrender is a long-standing view among some Japanese historians, and has appeared in some Japanese junior high school textbooks.
The argument about the Soviet role in Japan 's surrender is connected to the argument about the Soviet role in America 's decision to drop the bomb: both emphasize the importance of the Soviet Union, while the former argues that Japan surrendered to the US out of fear of the Soviet Union, and the latter argues that the US dropped the bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union.
Still others have argued that war-weary Japan would likely have surrendered regardless, due to a collapse of the economy, lack of army, food, and industrial materials, threat of internal revolution, and talk of surrender since earlier in the year, while others find this unlikely, arguing that Japan may well have, or likely would have, put up a spirited resistance.
The Japanese historian Sadao Asada argues that the ultimate decision to surrender was a personal decision by the emperor, influenced by the atomic bombings.
Appendix Hiroshima Nagasaki
Hiroshima After
Nagasaki After
This soldier is severely burned from the thermal radiation.
Lunch Box
Reiko Watanabe (15 at the time) was doing fire prevention work under the Student Mobilization Order, at a place 500 meters from the hypocenter. Her lunch box was found by school authorities under a fallen mud wall. Its contents of boiled peas and rice, a rare feast at the time, were completely carbonized. Her body was not found.
Geta (Wooden Clog)
Miyoko Inoue (15 at the time) was doing fire prevention work with other students under the Student Mobilization Order in Zaimoku-cho at a place 500 meters from the hypocenter. All the students died. This is what her mother, Tomiko, found near the hypocenter , where she searched for her daughter for three months after the bombing. Her daughter 's body was not found.
Deformed Nail
Yoshio Hamada (26 at the time) was at Army Division Headquarters, 700 meters from the hypocenter. His left hand, which was hanging out of a window when the bomb fell, was burned by thermal radiation. His injury resulted in an abnormal growth of fingernails on his left hand. Even today he suffers from this continual abnormal growth. As the nails contain blood vessels, they cannot be trimmed without bleeding.
Hair
Hiroko Yamashita (18 at the time) was at home. 800 meters from the hypocenter. She and her six-year-old brother were caught under the house as it collapsed. After rescuing her brother, she sought refuge elsewhere in the fire-ravaged town. On August 21, her younger brother died. Around August 25, when her mother combed her hair, all of it fell out with only three strokes
Water Bottle
Yoshiko Kitamura (16 at the time) was mobilized to do fire prevention work in Zakoba-cho (1,200 meters from the hypocenter). Her body was not found. Only this water bottle was recovered.
First-Aid Kit
Mariko Fujii (16 at the time) was doing fire prevention work 1,000 meters from the hypocenter. After a desperate search by her father, only her first-aid kit was found. In it were medicines and diapers for her younger brother. Her body was not found.
Damaged Lens with One Frame
Although the body of Moto Mosoro (54 at the time) was not found, a part of her burned head was discovered on September 6, one month after the atomic bombing, at a place 1,500 meters from the hypocenter. This was taken from an eye socket.
References
"Crimesof War." Crimes of War – Hiroshima and Nagasaki Anniversary: A Call to Disarm. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
"Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Part 2)." About.com 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. .
"JapanToday." Japan Today RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
"bombings." angelfire. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. .
"Â ." Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. .
Human civilization 2
4/9/2014
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki involved two nuclear attacks against the Empire of Japan by the United States of America (USA) under USA President Harry S. Truman. On August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9, 1945 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki, for the first and only time in history, atomic bombs were used against mankind killing over 200,000 civilians. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki became a common place of death, and living became the exception. People’s eyes came out of their sockets and peeled skin hung off their bodies. Many flocked to the rivers looking for water. People no longer looked human. Parents had to abandon their children, children could not rescue their parents, and family members were unable to recognize one another. Victims overflowed out of hospitals and …show more content…
relief stations. Agonized cries from the injured in damaged air raid shelters and burnt ruins, shouts for family members and calls for help continued through the night, as person after person died.”
These were some of the words used by the International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (IPT) in its judgment of July 16, 2007, to describe the immediate and enduring effects of the atomic bombs that were detonated by the United States Air Force in order to secure Japan’s surrender and a victory for the Allies in the Pacific. Over 60 years later, the US Government has refused to apologize to the victims and their families, nor has it paid compensation.
Hiroshima was the primary target (the secondary was Kokura and the tertiary target was Nagasaki) of the first nuclear attack, on August 6, 1945. The attack was carried out as planned, and a gravity bomb, a gun-type fission weapon, with 60 kg (130 pounds) of uranium-235, performed as expected.
In estimating the death toll from the attacks, there are several factors that make it difficult to arrive at reliable figures. Inadequacies in the records given the confusion of the times, the many victims who died months or years after the bombing as a result of radiation exposure, and the pressure to either exaggerate or minimise the numbers, depending upon political agenda.
The below shows the information about the estimation on amount of victims from these two bombings.
Hiroshima deaths (Aug. 6 to late Dec. 1945): 140,000
Nagasaki deaths (Aug. 9 to late Dec. 1945): 74,000
Hiroshima injuries (Aug. 9 to 1990): 352,550
Nagasaki injuries (Aug. 9 to late Dec. 1945): 75,000
Total deaths: 215,000
Total casualties (deaths and injured): 520,000
There has been no official US acknowledgement that the bombings were carried out in violation of international law. The only official rulings with respect to the legality of the atomic bombings have been issued from Japanese tribunals. This hesitation to characterize the bombings as violations of international law can be attributed to the argument that there were very few international humanitarian law treaties in force at the time, much less customary norms. But it can also be argued that there were two customary principles in existence at the time that legally prohibited attacks such as those against Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the prohibition on weapons that cause unnecessary suffering.
Our argument is that it was simply an extension of the already fierce conventional air raids on Japan and, therefore, militarily unnecessary, inherently immoral, a war crime, or a form of state terrorism. At least one historian (Tsuyoshi Hasegawa) states that the Soviet declaration of war on Japan had more of an effect than the two nuclear bombings.
So we would like to bring up our argument and elaborate more under following topics.
1. Fundamentally immoral
2. The bombings as war crimes
3. State terrorism
4. Militarily unnecessary
5. Nagasaki bombing unnecessary
6. Racism and dehumanization
Fundamentally immoral
On August 8, 1945, Albert Camus addressed the bombing of Hiroshima in an editorial in the French newspaper Combat:
"Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests. This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason."
In 1946, a report by the Federal Council of Churches entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, includes the following passage:
"As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one 's judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible."
A continuation of previous behavior
American historian Gabriel Kolko has said discussion regarding the moral dimension of the attacks is wrong-headed, given the fundamental moral decision had already been made:
During November 1944 American B-29s began their first incendiary bomb raids on Tokyo, and on 9 March 1945, wave upon wave dropped masses of small incendiaries containing an early version of napalm on the city 's population—for they directed this assault against civilians. Soon small fires spread, connected, grew into a vast firestorm that sucked the oxygen out of the lower atmosphere. The bomb raid was a 'success ' for the Americans; they killed 125,000 Japanese in one attack. The Allies bombed Hamburg and Dresden in the same manner, and Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, and Tokyo again on May 24.
The basic moral decision that the Americans had to make during the war was whether or not they would violate international law by indiscriminately attacking and destroying civilians, and they resolved that dilemma within the context of conventional weapons. Neither fanfare nor hesitation accompanied their choice, and in fact the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima was less lethal than massive fire bombing. The war had so brutalized the American leaders that burning vast numbers of civilians no longer posed a real predicament by the spring of 1945. Given the anticipated power of the atomic bomb, which was far less than that of fire bombing, no one expected small quantities of it to end the war. Only its technique was novel—nothing more. By June 1945 the mass destruction of civilians via strategic bombing did impress Stimson as something of a moral problem, but the thought no sooner arose than he forgot it, and in no appreciable manner did it shape American use of conventional or atomic bombs. "I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," he noted telling the President on June 6. There was another difficulty posed by mass conventional bombing, and that was its very success, a success that made the two modes of human destruction qualitatively identical in fact and in the minds of the American military. "I was a little fearful," Stimson told Truman, "that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength." To this the President "laughed and said he understood."
The bombings as war crimes
A number of notable individuals and organizations have criticized the bombings, many of them characterizing them as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and/or state terrorism.
Early critics of the bombings were Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard, who had together spurred the first bomb research in 1939 with a jointly written letter to President Roosevelt. Szilard, who had gone on to play a major role in the Manhattan Project, argued:
Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged
them?
A number of scientists who worked on the bomb were against its use. Led by Dr. James Franck, seven scientists submitted a report to the Interim Committee (which advised the President) in May 1945, saying:
If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.
Mark Selden writes, "Perhaps the most trenchant contemporary critique of the American moral position on the bomb and the scales of justice in the war was voiced by the Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal, a dissenting voice at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, who balked at accepting the uniqueness of Japanese war crimes. Recalling Kaiser Wilhelm II 's account of his duty to bring World War I to a swift end—"everything must be put to fire and sword; men, women and children and old men must be slaughtered and not a tree or house be left standing." Pal observed:
This policy of indiscriminate murder to shorten the war was considered to be a crime. In the Pacific war under our consideration, if there was anything approaching what is indicated in the above letter of the German Emperor, it is the decision coming from the Allied powers to use the bomb. Future generations will judge this dire decision... If any indiscriminate destruction of civilian life and property is still illegal in warfare, then, in the Pacific War, this decision to use the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of the German Emperor during the first World War and of the Nazi leaders during the second World War.
Selden mentions another critique of the nuclear bombing, which he says the U.S. government effectively suppressed for twenty-five years, as worth mention. On 11 August 1945, the Japanese government filed an official protest over the atomic bombing to the U.S. State Department through the Swiss Legation in Tokyo, observing:
Combatant and noncombatant men and women, old and young, are massacred without discrimination by the atmospheric pressure of the explosion, as well as by the radiating heat which result therefrom. Consequently there is involved a bomb having the most cruel effects humanity has ever known … The bombs in question, used by the Americans, by their cruelty and by their terrorizing effects, surpass by far gas or any other arm, the use of which is prohibited. Japanese protests against U.S. desecration of international principles of war paired the use of the atomic bomb with the earlier firebombing, which massacred old people, women and children, destroying and burning down Shinto and Buddhist temples, schools, hospitals, living quarters, etc... They now use this new bomb, having an uncontrollable and cruel effect much greater than any other arms or projectiles ever used to date. This constitutes a new crime against humanity and civilization.
Selden concludes, despite the war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan, nevertheless, "the Japanese protest correctly pointed to U.S. violations of internationally accepted principles of war with respect to the wholesale destruction of populations."
In 1963, the bombings were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State.On the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found, "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war."
In the opinion of the court, the act of dropping an atomic bomb on cities was at the time governed by international law found in the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907 and the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923 and was therefore illegal.
In the documentary The Fog of War, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara recalls General Curtis LeMay, who relayed the Presidential order to drop nuclear bombs on Japan,said:
"If we 'd lost the war, we 'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he 's right. He, and I 'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
As the first military use of nuclear weapons, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent to some the crossing of a crucial barrier. Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute atAmerican University, wrote of President Truman: "He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species."Kuznick said the atomic bombing of Japan "was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."
Takashi Hiraoka, mayor of Hiroshima, upholding nuclear disarmament, said in a hearing to The Hague International Court of Justice (ICJ): "It is clear that the use of nuclear weapons, which cause indiscriminate mass murder that leaves [effects on] survivors for decades, is a violation of international law".Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki, declared in the same hearing:
It is said that the descendants of the atomic bomb survivors will have to be monitored for several generations to clarify the genetic impact, which means that the descendants will live in anxiety for [decades] to come... with their colossal power and capacity for slaughter and destruction, nuclear weapons make no distinction between combatants and non-combatants or between military installations and civilian communities... The use of nuclear weapons... therefore is a manifest infraction of international law.
Although bombings do not meet the definition of genocide, some consider this definition is too strict, and these bombings do represent a genocide. For example, University of Chicagohistorian Bruce Cumings states there is a consensus among historians to Martin Sherwin 's statement "the Nagasaki bomb was gratuitous at best and genocidal at worst."
The scholar R. J. Rummel instead extends the definition of genocide to what he calls democide, and includes the major part of deaths from the atom bombings in these. His definition of democide includes not only genocide, but also an excessive killing of civilians in war, to the extent this is against the agreed rules for warfare; he argues the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, and thus democide. Rummel quotes among others an official protest from the US government in 1938 to Japan, for its bombing of Chinese cities: "The bombing of non-combatant populations violated international and humanitarian laws." He also considers excess deaths of civilians in conflagrations caused by conventional means, such as in Tokyo, as acts of democide.
In 1967, Noam Chomsky described the atomic bombings as "among the most unspeakable crimes in history". Chomsky pointed to the complicity of the American people in the bombings, referring to the bitter experiences they had undergone prior to the event as the cause for their acceptance of its legitimacy.
In 2007, a group of intellectuals in Hiroshima established an unofficial body called International Peoples ' Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On 16 July 2007, it delivered its verdict, stating:
The Tribunal finds that the nature of damage caused by the atomic bombs can be described as indiscriminate extermination of all life forms or inflicting unnecessary pain to the survivors.
About the legality and the morality of the action, the unofficial tribunal found:
The... use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was illegal in the light of the principles and rules of International Humanitarian Law applicable in armed conflicts, since the bombing of both cities, made civilians the object of attack, using nuclear weapons that were incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets and consequently, caused unnecessary suffering to the civilian survivors.
Militarily unnecessary
The 1946 United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan, whose members included Paul Nitze, the atomic bombs had been unnecessary to win the war. After reviewing numerous documents, and interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, they reported:
There is little point in attempting precisely to impute Japan 's unconditional surrender to any one of the numerous causes which jointly and cumulatively were responsible for Japan 's disaster. The time lapse between military impotence and political acceptance of the inevitable might have been shorter had the political structure of Japan permitted a more rapid and decisive determination of national policies. Nevertheless, it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the 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, 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.
This conclusion assumed conventional fire bombing would have continued, with ever-increasing numbers of B-29s, and a greater level of destruction to Japan 's cities and population. One of Nitze 's most influential sources was Prince Fumimaro Konoe, who responded to a question asking whether Japan would have surrendered if the atomic bombs had not been dropped by saying resistance would have continued through November or December, 1945.
Historians such as Bernstein, Hasegawa, and Newman have criticized Nitze for drawing a conclusion they say went far beyond what the available evidence warranted, in order to promote the reputation of the Air Force at the expense of the Army and Navy.
Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his 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.
Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The use of [the atomic bombs] 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... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. 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." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.[
Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa wrote the atomic bombings themselves were not the principal reason for Japan 's capitulation. Instead, he contends, it was the Soviet entry in the war on 8 August, allowed by the Potsdam Declaration signed by the other Allies. The fact the Soviet Union did not sign this declaration gave Japan reason to believe the Soviets could be kept out of the war. As late as 25 July, the day before the declaration was issued, Japan had asked for a diplomatic envoy led by Konoe to come to Moscow hoping to mediate peace in the Pacific. Konoe was supposed to bring a letter from the Emperor stating:
His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice of the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But as long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender the Japanese Empire has no alternative to fight on with all its strength for the honour and existence of the Motherland…It is the Emperor 's private intention to send Prince Konoe to Moscow as a Special Envoy…
Hasegawa 's view is, when the Soviet Union declared war on 8 August, it crushed all hope in Japan 's leading circles the Soviets could be kept out of the war, and/or allow reinforcement from Asia to the Japanese islands for the expected invasion. Hasegawa wrote:
On the basis of available evidence, however, it is clear that the two atomic bombs… alone were not decisive in inducing Japan to surrender. Despite their destructive power, the atomic bombs were not sufficient to change the direction of Japanese diplomacy. The Soviet invasion was. Without the Soviet entry in the war, the Japanese would have continued to fight until numerous atomic bombs, a successful allied invasion of the home islands, or continued aerial bombardments, combined with a naval blockade, rendered them incapable of doing so.
Truman argued that the effects of Japan witnessing a failed test would be too great of a risk to arrange such a demonstration.
State terrorism
Historical accounts indicate the decision to use the atomic bombs was made in order to provoke a surrender of Japan by use of an awe-inspiring power. These observations have caused Michael Walzer to state the incident was an act of "war terrorism: the effort to kill civilians in such large numbers that their government is forced to surrender. Hiroshima seems to me the classic case." This type of claim eventually prompted historian Robert P. Newman, a supporter of the bombings, to say "there can be justified terror, as there can be just wars."
Certain scholars and historians have characterized the atomic bombings of Japan as a form of "state terrorism". This interpretation is based on a definition of terrorism as "the targeting of innocents to achieve a political goal". As Frances V. Harbour points out, the meeting of the Target Committee in Los Alamos on 10 and 11 May 1945 suggested targeting the large population centers of Kyoto or Hiroshima for a "psychological effect" and to make "the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized." As such, Professor Harbour suggests the goal was to create terror for political ends both in and beyond Japan. However, Burleigh Taylor Wilkins believes it stretches the meaning of "terrorism" to include wartime acts.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote that the bombings were terrorism. Zinn cites the sociologist Kai Erikson who said that the bombings could not be called "combat" because they targeted civilians. Just War theorist Michael Walzer said that while taking the lives of civilians can be justified under conditions of 'supreme emergency ', the war situation at that time did not constitute such an emergency.
Tony Coady, Frances V. Harbour, and Jamal Nassar also view the targeting of civilians during the bombings as a form of terrorism. Nassar classifies the atomic bombings as terrorism in the same vein as the firebombing of Tokyo, the firebombing of Dresden, and the Holocaust.
Richard A. Falk, professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University has written in detail about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as instances of state terrorism. He said that "the explicit function of the attacks was to terrorize the population through mass slaughter and to confront its leaders with the prospect of national annihilation."
Author Steven Poole said that the "people killed by terrorism" are not the targets of the intended terror effect. He said that the atomic bombings were "designed as an awful demonstration" aimed at Stalin and the government of Japan.
Japanese nuclear weapons program
During the war, and 1945 in particular, due to state secrecy, very little was known outside of Japan about the slow progress of the Japanese nuclear weapons program. The US knew that Japan had requested materials from their German allies, and 560 kg (1,230 lb) of unprocessed uranium oxide was dispatched to Japan in April 1945 aboard the submarine U-234, which however surrendered to US forces in the Atlantic following Germany 's surrender. The uranium oxide was reportedly labeled as "U-235", which may have been a mislabeling of the submarine 's name; its exact characteristics remain unknown. Some sources believe that it was not weapons-grade material and was intended for use as a catalyst in the production of synthetic methanol to be used for aviation fuel.
If post-war analysis had found that Japanese nuclear weapons development was near completion, this discovery might have served in a revisionist sense to justify the atomic attack on Japan. However, it is known that the poorly coordinated Japanese project was considerably behind the US developments in 1945, and also behind the unsuccessful German nuclear energy project of WWII.
A review in 1986 of the fringe hypothesis that Japan had already created a nuclear weapon, by Department of Energy employee Roger M. Anders, appeared in the journal Military Affairs:
Journalist Wilcox 's book describes the Japanese wartime atomic energy projects. This is laudable, in that it illuminates a little-known episode; nevertheless, the work is marred by Wilcox 's seeming eagerness to show that Japan created an atomic bomb. Tales of Japanese atomic explosions, one a fictional attack on Los Angeles, the other an unsubstantiated account of a post-Hiroshima test, begin the book. (Wilcox accepts the test story because the author [Snell], "was a distinguished journalist"). The tales, combined with Wilcox 's failure to discuss the difficulty of translating scientific theory into a workable bomb, obscure the actual story of the Japanese effort: uncoordinated laboratory-scale projects which took paths least likely to produce a bomb.
Nagasaki bombing unnecessary
The second atomic bombing, on Nagasaki, came only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, when the devastation at Hiroshima had yet to be fully comprehended by the Japanese. The lack of time between the bombings has led some historians to state that the second bombing was "certainly unnecessary", "gratuitous at best and genocidal at worst", and not jus in bello In response to the claim that the atomic bombing of Nagasaki was unnecessary, Maddox wrote:
Some historians have argued that while the first bomb might have been required to achieve Japanese surrender, dropping the second constituted a needless barbarism. However, the record shows otherwise. American officials believed more than one bomb would be necessary because they assumed Japanese hard-liners would minimize the first explosion or attempt to explain it away as some sort of natural catastrophe, which is precisely what they did. In the three days between the bombings, the Japanese minister of war, for instance, refused even to admit that the Hiroshima bomb was atomic. A few hours after Nagasaki, he told the cabinet that "the Americans appeared to have one hundred atomic bombs … they could drop three per day. The next target might well be Tokyo."
Jerome Hagen indicates that War Minister Anami 's revised briefing was partly based on interrogating captured American B-29 pilot Marcus McDilda. Under torture, McDilda reported that the Americans had 100 atomic bombs, and that Tokyo and Kyoto would be the next atomic bomb targets. Both were lies; McDilda was not involved or briefed on the Manhattan Project and simply told the Japanese what he thought they wanted to hear.
One day before the bombing of Nagasaki, the Emperor notified Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō of his desire to "insure a prompt ending of hostilities". Togo wrote in his memoir that the Emperor "warned [him] that since we could no longer continue the struggle, now that a weapon of this devastating power was used against us, we should not let slip the opportunity [to end the war] by engaging in attempts to gain more favorable conditions." The Emperor then requested Togo to communicate his wishes to the Prime Minister.
Racism and dehumanization
Historian James J. Weingartner sees a connection between the American mutilation of Japanese war dead and the bombings. According to Weingartner both were partially the result of a dehumanization of the enemy. "The widespread image of the Japanese as sub-human constituted an emotional context which provided another justification for decisions which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands." On the second day after the Nagasaki bomb, President Truman had stated: "The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him like a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true".
International law
At the time of the atomic bombings, there was no international treaty or instrument protecting a civilian population specifically from attack by aircraft. Many critics of the atomic bombings point to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 as setting rules in place regarding the attack of civilian populations. The Hague Conventions contained no specific air warfare provisions but it prohibited the targeting of undefended civilians by naval artillery, field artillery, or siege engines, all of which were classified as "bombardment". However, the Conventions allowed the targeting of military establishments in cities, including military depots, industrial plants, and workshops which could be used for war. This set of rules was not followed during World War I which saw bombs dropped indiscriminately on cities by Zeppelins and multi-engine bombers. Afterward, another series of meetings were held at The Hague in 1922–23, but no binding agreement was reached regarding air warfare. During the 1930s and 1940s, the aerial bombing of cities was resumed, notably by the German Condor Legion against the cities of Guernica and Durango in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. This led to an escalation of various cities bombed, including Chongqing, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. All of the major belligerents in World War II dropped bombs on civilians in cities.
Modern debate over the applicability of the Hague Conventions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolves around whether the Conventions can be assumed to cover modes of warfare that were at the time unknown; whether rules for artillery bombardment can be applied to rules for aerial bombing. As well, the debate hinges on to what degree the Hague Conventions was being followed by the warring countries.
If the Hague Conventions is admitted as applicable, the critical question becomes whether the bombed cities met the definition of "undefended". Some observers consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki undefended, some say that both cities were legitimate military targets, and others say that Hiroshima could be considered a military target while Nagasaki was comparatively undefended. Hiroshima has been argued as not a legitimate target because the major industrial plants were just outside of the target area. It has also been argued as a legitimate target because Hiroshima was the headquarters of the regional Second General Army and Fifth Division with 40,000 military personnel stationed in the city. Both cities were protected by anti-aircraft guns, which is an argument against the definition of "undefended".
The Hague Conventions prohibited poison weapons. The radioactivity of the atomic bombings has been described as poisonous, especially in the form of nuclear fallout which kills more slowly. However, this view was rejected by the International Court of Justice in 1996, which stated that the primary and exclusive use of (air burst) nuclear weapons is not to poison or asphyxiate and thus is not prohibited by the Geneva Protocol.
The Hague Conventions also prohibited the employment of "arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering". The Japanese government cited this prohibition on 10 August 1945 after submitting a letter of protest to the United States denouncing the use of atomic bombs. However, the prohibition only applied to weapons as lances with a barbed head, irregularly shaped bullets, projectiles filled with glass, the use of any substance on bullets that would tend unnecessarily to inflame a wounded inflicted by them, and the scoring of the surface or the soft point bullet filling off the ends of the hard cases of bullets. It did not apply to the use of explosives contained in artillery projectiles, mines, aerial torpedoes, or hand grenades. In 1962 and in 1963, the Japanese government retracted its previous statement by saying that there was no international law prohibiting the use of atomic bombs.
The Hague Conventions stated that religious buildings, art and science centers, charities, hospitals, and historic monuments were to be spared as far as possible in a bombardment, unless they were being used for military purposes. Critics of the atomic bombings point to many of these kinds of structures which were destroyed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the Hague Conventions also stated that for the destruction of the enemy 's property to be justified, it must be "imperatively demanded by the necessities of war".Because of the inaccuracy of heavy bombers in World War II, it was not practical to target military assets in cities without damage to civilian targets.
Even after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, no international treaty banning or condemning nuclear warfare has ever been ratified. The closest example is a resolution by the UN General Assembly which stated that nuclear warfare was not in keeping with the UN charter, passed in 1953 with a vote of 25 to 20, and 26 abstentions.
Impact on surrender
On the question of what role the bombings played in Japan 's surrender, there are varied opinions, ranging from the bombings being the deciding factor, to the bombs being a minor factor, to the entire question being unknowable.
That the bombings were the decisive factor in ending the war was the mainstream position in the United States from 1945 through the 1960s, and is termed by some the "traditionalist" view, or pejoratively as the "patriotic orthodoxy."
Others argue that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was instead primary or decisive. In the US, this view has been particularly advanced by Robert Pape and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, and found convincing by some, while criticized by others.
Robert Pape also argues that:
Military vulnerability, not civilian vulnerability, accounts for Japan 's decision to surrender. Japan 's military position was so poor that its leaders would likely have surrendered before invasion, and at roughly the same time in August 1945, even if the United States had not employed strategic bombing or the atomic bomb. Rather than concern for the costs and risks to the population, or even Japan 's overall military weakness vis-a-vis the United States, the decisive factor was Japanese leaders ' recognition that their strategy for holding the most important territory at issue—the home islands—could not succeed.
In some Japanese writing about the surrender, the Soviet entry into the war is considered the primary reason or equal with the atomic bombs in many accounts, while others, such as the work of Sadao Asada, give primacy to the atomic bombings, particularly their impact on the emperor. The primacy of the Soviet entry as a reason for surrender is a long-standing view among some Japanese historians, and has appeared in some Japanese junior high school textbooks.
The argument about the Soviet role in Japan 's surrender is connected to the argument about the Soviet role in America 's decision to drop the bomb: both emphasize the importance of the Soviet Union, while the former argues that Japan surrendered to the US out of fear of the Soviet Union, and the latter argues that the US dropped the bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union.
Still others have argued that war-weary Japan would likely have surrendered regardless, due to a collapse of the economy, lack of army, food, and industrial materials, threat of internal revolution, and talk of surrender since earlier in the year, while others find this unlikely, arguing that Japan may well have, or likely would have, put up a spirited resistance.
The Japanese historian Sadao Asada argues that the ultimate decision to surrender was a personal decision by the emperor, influenced by the atomic bombings.
Appendix Hiroshima Nagasaki
Hiroshima After
Nagasaki After
This soldier is severely burned from the thermal radiation.
Lunch Box
Reiko Watanabe (15 at the time) was doing fire prevention work under the Student Mobilization Order, at a place 500 meters from the hypocenter. Her lunch box was found by school authorities under a fallen mud wall. Its contents of boiled peas and rice, a rare feast at the time, were completely carbonized. Her body was not found.
Geta (Wooden Clog)
Miyoko Inoue (15 at the time) was doing fire prevention work with other students under the Student Mobilization Order in Zaimoku-cho at a place 500 meters from the hypocenter. All the students died. This is what her mother, Tomiko, found near the hypocenter , where she searched for her daughter for three months after the bombing. Her daughter 's body was not found.
Deformed Nail
Yoshio Hamada (26 at the time) was at Army Division Headquarters, 700 meters from the hypocenter. His left hand, which was hanging out of a window when the bomb fell, was burned by thermal radiation. His injury resulted in an abnormal growth of fingernails on his left hand. Even today he suffers from this continual abnormal growth. As the nails contain blood vessels, they cannot be trimmed without bleeding.
Hair
Hiroko Yamashita (18 at the time) was at home. 800 meters from the hypocenter. She and her six-year-old brother were caught under the house as it collapsed. After rescuing her brother, she sought refuge elsewhere in the fire-ravaged town. On August 21, her younger brother died. Around August 25, when her mother combed her hair, all of it fell out with only three strokes
Water Bottle
Yoshiko Kitamura (16 at the time) was mobilized to do fire prevention work in Zakoba-cho (1,200 meters from the hypocenter). Her body was not found. Only this water bottle was recovered.
First-Aid Kit
Mariko Fujii (16 at the time) was doing fire prevention work 1,000 meters from the hypocenter. After a desperate search by her father, only her first-aid kit was found. In it were medicines and diapers for her younger brother. Her body was not found.
Damaged Lens with One Frame
Although the body of Moto Mosoro (54 at the time) was not found, a part of her burned head was discovered on September 6, one month after the atomic bombing, at a place 1,500 meters from the hypocenter. This was taken from an eye socket.
References
"Crimesof War." Crimes of War – Hiroshima and Nagasaki Anniversary: A Call to Disarm. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
"Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Part 2)." About.com 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. .
"JapanToday." Japan Today RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
"bombings." angelfire. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. .
"Â ." Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. .