The ethics of Hiroshima

[Doc63]

Amazing how willing people are to defend the indefensible. I exclude Tannin from that because, as much as I completely disagree with his interpretation, at least he's making a utilitarian argument (i.e. the standard Western propaganda position that Hiroshima saved more lives than it killed).

But let's go through some of the more preposterous arguments:

If Japan had the bomb, what do you think they would have done with it, being the bastions of humanitarianism that ther were?

Flip it around: would the fact that the American military were willing to drop bombs on Japanese civilians morally justify other countries slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the US? That's a terrible argument.

What a ridiculous response.

Obviously, the point of my post was that if Japan had the bomb, there is no doubt whatsoever that they would have used it. That is not why the US dropped the bomb - they dropped it to stop the war.

The fact that they had to drop two for them to surrender (and only then on the proviso that the Emperor could remain) gives you an insight to their mindset.

The bomb, as horrific as it was, stopped the war, and saved lives. It is an irrefutable fact.

[Tannin]

we don't have conclusive evidence that their calculations were right (your refutations a couple of pages relied on a great deal of conjecture)

Nonsense. It is not mere "conjecture" to have rational expectations based on the outcomes of a long series of directly comparable events.

• At Buna and Gona, 2000 Australian and American soldiers died, and 7000 Japanese. Most of the deaths occurred long after there was no concievable hope of a Japanese victory, or even a stalemate.
• At Guadalcanal, 7000 American soldiers and sailors died, and 31,000 Japanese. About a third of the deaths occurred after there was no concievable hope of a Japanese victory, or even a stalemate.
• In the Burma Campaign, 22,000 British and Indian soldiers died, and 31,000 Japanese. Probably about a third of the deaths occurred after there was no concievable hope of a Japanese victory or stalemate.
• At Iwo Jima, 7000 American soldiers and sailors died, and 18,000 Japanese. Most of the deaths occurred after there was no concievable hope of a Japanese victory, or even a stalemate.
• On Okinawa, 20,000 American soldiers and sailors died, and 110,000 Japanese. All of the deaths occurred after there was no concievable hope of a Japanese victory, or even a stalemate.
• In Manchuria, 10,000 Soviet soldiers died, and 80,000 Japanese. All of these deaths occurred long after the Japanese had no possible hope of victory, or even stalemate.

These are just the first few examples to come to mind. It would a simple matter to dig up more examples - for starters we haven't even considered China. Off the top of my head, I can't think of one single example of a major Japanese defeat which was not followed by a long, bloody, and utterly pointless last man standing defence which achieved absolutely nothing except huge casualties. In fact, I can't even think of a minor defeat where the Japanese did not fight on mindlessly until almost every single one was killed, though there is probably an example or two to be found somewhere if you look hard enough.

Now what do you reckon they were going to do when the Americans landed on Kyushu? Put flowers in their rifles? Say "It's a fair cop Gov, I'll come quietly"? David, it's time you learned how to let the facts alter your opinions. Mate, you have a far more flexible mind than I do. I'm as stubborn as a mule standing in concrete. (Ask anyone.) But I changed my very firm, deeply-held view on the atom bombings when I learned the facts of history. I had no choice. I would be delighted to agree with you and scream blue bloody murder at the bastard Yanks - I do on every other opportunity, as you know - but in this case, they did exactly the right thing, and did it for the right reasons.

Does it not worry you that even I, a card-carrying founder member of the Yank Are Scum Club, cannot find anything to condemn them for in this instance?

[Mugwump]

I stand with some of the last century's greatest minds, including Albert Einstein and Noam Chomsky......

Getting just a tad ahead of yourself there, aren't you - though in your mind, probably not.

That's not fair, Doc63. It is clear what David was arguing in the context, and it is not what you suggested here. Assailed on all sides, credit to David for at least keeping his line and being fair to his assailants !

[HAL]

Do you experience any effects of global warming there?

[Mugwump]

It pisses me off that such a great post just gets ignored

Wasn't ignored TP - read carefully, and well-appreciated.

[David]

[Tannin]

OK David. Seeing as you are now (to some extent) agreeing with me, we had better declare half time and change ends. I shall now argue that the atomic bombs were war crimes.

[David]

[Tannin]

There are two main weaknesses that scoundrel Tannin's two-faced defence of the American murderers. One is obvious, the other more subtle. First the obvious one.

The Allies repeatedly made peace overtures towards Japan, but in terms which, realistically, the Japanese government was never going to accept.

The best-known version of the Allied position is the Potsdam Declaration of early July 1945. This was very late in the day - only a few weeks before Hiroshima - but it was essentially a rehash of previous declarations with little by way of major change. It's worth quoting an abridged version of the Wikipedia summary:

On July 26, the United States, Britain and China released the Potsdam Declaration announcing the terms for Japan's surrender, with the warning, "We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay." For Japan, the terms of the declaration specified:

• the elimination "for all time of the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest"
• the occupation of "points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies"
• that the "Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine." Japan was to be reduced to her pre-1894 territory and stripped of her pre-war empire including Korea and Taiwan, as well as all her recent conquests.
• Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives.
• "we do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners."
• "The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established."
• "Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those which would enable her to rearm for war. To this end, access to, as distinguished from control of, raw materials shall be permitted. Eventual Japanese participation in world trade relations shall be permitted."
• "The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established, in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people, a peacefully inclined and responsible government."

The only use of the term "unconditional surrender" came at the end of the declaration: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

The Declaration made no mention of the Emperor at all. Allied intentions on issues of utmost importance to the Japanese, including whether Hirohito was to be regarded as one of those who had "misled the people of Japan" or even a war criminal, or alternatively, whether the Emperor might become part of a "peacefully inclined and responsible government" were thus left unstated.

On face value, this all seems very measured and reasonable. But it was always going to be very, very hard for the Japanese to swallow the entire loss of their empire. Japan had fought hard and with utter ruthlessness to conquer an empire between about 1890 and 1941, in particular Japan had fought very nasty wars with much bigger, albeit shambolic and incompetent, nations in China and then Russia. Japan then invaded Korea and, step by step, swallowed up vast areas of China. Japan's self image, its pride - and the Japanese are huge on pride, then as now - its standing as a grown-up nation fit to stand alongside the great colonial powers depended on its conquered empire.

Second, the elimination "for all time of the authority and influence of those" who had started the war - i.e., the military junta ruling Japan - mean that the very people supposedly offering to surrender the nation would be themselves immediately thrown out of power. Worse, there was the threat that "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals". This seemed to mean that most of the cabinet would be facing a firing squad.

(As indeed they should have done. In fact, although Tojo and Hirota were hanged, and Koiso, Kido, and Araki were given life terms, many other senior government (i.e., military) officials got off far too lightly, as did the Emperor himself. Rightly or wrongly, the Allies (well, the Americans, no-one else got much say) decided that it would be expedient to pretend the Emperor was an innocent dupe of the military, which wasn't altogether true. In particular, the Americans made a last minute concession allowing the Imperial family to remain in power as they (correctly) judged that to insist on complete surrender would only prolong the war as most Japanese were utterly loyal to the Emperor.)

Finally, the Allies insisted that the war crimes trials would be before international courts. The Japanese were completely unwilling to agree to this.

Overall, there was a failure of understanding and a failure of communication between Japan and the Allies. Japan might well have surrendered earlier if the Allies had explicitly promised to the retain the rule of the Imperial Family. Possibly - just possibly mark you - the military junta might have, in that peculiar all or nothing Japanese way, have found a way to accept that, to "take one for the team", if you like. But probably not. And in any case, it was very, very difficult for the Allies to swallow the notion of allowing the leader who had overseen such a horrible war of brutal aggression to remain in power. It would have been like Germany surrendering provided that Hitler could stay in charge. The wonder is that they (the Allies) eventually did swallow that pill - albeit sugar-coating it in a vast amount of post-hoc propaganda about him being a mere tool in the hands of the military nuts, which was only half true.

And on the Japanese side of things, there was a near total failure to communicate the real sticking points to the Allies. Perhaps if they had managed to let the Allies know that many of their demands were, although unwelcome, at least acceptable, then there might have been more room to move on the two or three things the Japanese found hardest to swallow.

Japan was negotiating via the Soviet Union for most of this time. These negotiations went nowhere at all. This was because they weren't really negotiations. The Japanese didn't seem to take them seriously - honest, humble negotiation isn't usually something a power-mad military junta is very good at - and yet at the same time seemed to have some child-like faith that something would suddenly emerge from the peace talks if they could only hang on for long enough, shedding oceans of blood with every passing hour while they waited for the miracle. One gets the sense that peace negotiations were not a fit task for grown men, they were more like women's work: not honourable or heroic, just something that some other person did and suddenly your room was clean and a tasty meal arrived.

On the Soviet side, there seems to have been no real effort either. I don't recall seeing any evidence of this, but the obvious conclusion is probably correct: Stalin had not the slightest interest in ending the war early. He just wanted to keep them talking for as long as it took to ship the Red Army from Berlin to Manchuria and then start grabbing territory. If they had surrendered to the Americans in, say, May 1945 Stalin would not have been best pleased.

One last point should be mentioned before we leave the peace talks theme. It is trust. By their manner of waging war - undeclared sneak attacks, torture of prisoners, no respect for life, or indeed for any of the normal civilised behaviours such as staying surrendered once surrendered and not surrendering only as a ruse to let you kill another dozen enemy by shooting them in the back - by all these things, the Japanese Army (which controlled the government and indeed was the government to all intents) had made it almost impossible for an opponent to trust them. How could anyone take a surrender from these people who routinely violated the normal rules of war? how could you trust them not to simply wait for an opportune moment and then start fighting again? In the end, the Allies did, and the Japanese did stop fighting, did stop the suicide attacks ... but what would have happened if the Yanks had insisted on locking up the Emperor?

[Tannin]

Second, the more subtle weakness in Tannin's argument. The history of western involvement with Japan.

The way I learned it in school, Japan was an insular, inward-looking society which totally ignored the outside world for hundreds of years. (This is in fact true. It was even illegal to own a ship of any kind apart from small boats for fishing.) Then the Americans turned up with battleships and shot the crap out of various Japanese coastal cities until the Emperor agreed to let them do whatever they wanted. (This is not true. It was a good deal more complex than that and it wasn't just the Americans, but it's close enough to the truth to be a decent working fiction. Japan was turned upside down by unwanted foreign contact and wound up having a 15-year civil war as a pretty direct result of it. Foreigners used their overwhelming naval power to ride roughshod over the Japanese and humiliate the entire nation. Foreigners, for example, were not subject to Japanese law - on one famous occasion, the British shelled an entire city, razing it to the ground and killing god only knows how many unsuspecting citizens in response to an incident involving one British citizen who broke Japanese law and was punished for it the same way any Japanese citizen would have been. The law was a monumentally bad one, to be sure, but that's not the point.)

The key take-home fact here is that Japan was both threatened and humiliated by the west. At that point, the Japanese decided that they couldn't beat the giant colonial powers, so they would join them. Almost overnight, Japan created a modern navy from scratch (an incredible achievement) and a strong army as well. The navy was modeled on the Royal Navy, and (with the help of hired British officers) quickly developed a culture of efficiency, consummate seamanship, and honour in the play hard-play fair tradition.

The army was modeled on the German army and perhaps for that reason, perhaps for others, became a very different and much nastier animal. (I know much less about the Japanese Army than I do about the Navy. I must read up on it as it is really the key to all that followed.)

By the closing years of the 19th Century, Japan was ready to make its mark. It began by beating up the vastly larger but weak and disorganised China. To the surprise of everyone except the Japanese, they defeated China easily. The Navy fought well and hard, the Army fought well and with a touch of the savagery it would later become infamous for.

Next, Japan took on Russia, and to the great surprise of the rest of the world (and even to their own surprise and delight) beat them pointless. The Navy in particular was well-led and vastly superior.

From this time on, Japan involved itself in a series of wars of aggression, all aimed at carving out an empire. The west largely turned a blind eye. The west was really much more interested in European power struggles and Japan only figured as a bit player. England formed a naval alliance with Japan early in the 20th Century, which allowed England to focus on the main game (German naval power), and Japan to feel safe in case of war with Russia and China. The Japanese were perfectly capable of beating either one of those two, and indeed already had beaten each of them once, but were not confident of beating both at once.

In the First World War, Japan did just enough to comply with the letter of its alliance with England, and took full measure of this opportunity to snap up various German territorial possessions in the Pacific. Nevertheless, the Japanese Navy freed up vital English forces in the Pacific for use elsewhere, and made a small but important contribution in Europe by providing a squadron of destroyers for service in the Mediterranean, where the U-boat menace was significant.

After the Great War, Japan continued to expand, mainly in China - and by "expand" I mean "invade ruthlessly and exploit all gains without compunction". The friendship between Japan and England had soured by this time. Meanwhile, America followed a senseless policy which amounted to turning a blind eye, making threats, and dropping various insults. The Japanese problem in Asia grew and grew, but America failed to address it and indeed probably fanned the flames by consistently treating Japan with thinly veiled contempt. If you asked me to come up with a policy by which America could have made matters worse than it did, I don't think I could imagine one.

In short, the West, with its arrogance, its greed, and above all its contempt goaded Japan into its actions and did little or nothing to restrain them. Given that the West bears so much responsibility for sewing the seeds of the Pacific War, it seems only fair to also assign the West some responsibility for the casualties which resulted from that war. This is why Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be regarded as war crimes.

PS: it will probably be useful to re-read my previous post in the light of this one.

[Tannin]

Your turn, David.

[Wokko]

America also imposed an industrial trade embargo on Japan while still supposedly 'Neutral' that led Japan on the path to Pearl Harbour.

[Tannin]

Indeed they did, Wokko. It was another example of their inability to find the right mix of responses. They seemed to excel at handing out carrot where a stick was needed, and then reaching for the stick when a little bit of carrot was in order. Having said that, by the time of the embargo it was almost certainly too late: Japan was set on war by that stage, it just a matter of who else with and when.

[Jezza]

It sometimes seems like people understand the gravity of killing a single person but toss off the deaths of a couple of hundred thousand in a foreign country as if they were delousing a dog.

Ever heard the old saying David that the "death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic"?

In any context where deaths occur on a large scale this quote rings true for mine even though it was quoted by a psychopathic dictator in Joseph Stalin and I think the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are no different in this context with the way everyone perceives those events 70 years ago.

In saying that, Tannin's opinion on this is where my views are at with these events especially since I learnt it briefly in first year History at uni two years ago and the key question to come out of that topic was whether the bombings were justified or not. Many primary sources seemed to suggest that it was whereas secondary sources with the benefit of hindsight finds this issue much more challenging to confront and understand in its full totality.

[Tannin]

Ever heard the old saying David that the "death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic"? .....
it was quoted by a psychopathic dictator in Joseph Stalin

I think you will find that it was in fact Napoleon.