Without the bomings in Japan, the culture of lord and servitude would never have been toppled. This is why the war would never have ended. Children would have been armed and would have graciously marched into war. The Germans did it with their young and that was less than a generation of war implanting. I do not agree with the aftermath and conditions placed into their culture, I think, no I believe that the Japanese were aware of the new world that arose from the cauldron that was ground zero. Plus one.

A personal note; I am saddened that they chose baseball, which I claim turned artisans into henchmen or tree fellers.

Possibly, just possibly, Hiroshima could be argued to have been necessary, however, Germany finally succumbed to the allied forces. If it is accepted that Hiroshima had the effect of showing the Japanese government and people what was now possible, how can Nagasaki be either explained or condoned? Mass murder is mass murder, no matter how one tries to make it sound like a necessity to save further lives.


PaulG.

War is hell and hell on earth was present the day the bomb was dropped on the first target. The Japanese would not submit, so maybe, most likely, it was a necessity. I am not happy about agreeing with this sentiment, just as I do not know enough about the reasoning for the second bombing. I do know that the Japanese had not surrendered following the first attack but I do not want to speculate. Nothing short of deadly force was going to bring about the capitulation of the Imperial Japanese forces. Was this worth one more American life, two or three, maybe someone online's father or grandfather. Maybe a relative you have loved your whole life. War is hell, you were not there and I do not want to be.

Thank you, yes - I agree these sentiments

It's such a dark thing; war, almost as if during such times all morality, all compassion and respect get suspended. They do injury to those lost, scarred both mentally and physically - emotional trauma echos right on down the line (person to person, family to family through every connection). This pain ripples along without end, down generations and crossing borders for years, causing untold grief.

I'm not sure there'll every come a time where we can be rid of such maladies. When I was young I'd look with great hope upon stories and shows that projected a mature, considered future where people of vastly-divergent cultures and religions lived together peacefully. Hell, I even came to believe that perhaps during *my* lifetime I could see this 'dream' come to fruition. Yet when I'm reminded of these dank periods of abject pain; not just what's past but what's happening today, I recoil. Slowly the reality sinks in that Man's Inhumanity to Man endures - and will, far past my lowly existence. I think the last straw was losing faith at the results of the 2004 U.S. election [1] (despite the morality of what was being perpetuated in Iraq), it was at this point I lost faith in the morals of my people. Then on reflection, realized that this wasn't just my country, that a lack of moral center concerning the horror of war is all widespread.

In the same program I referenced in the opening post, there was an interview with an old Japanese man. Eacy day, he said, he prays for the sufferers of that day and cannot do so without each day shedding tears. Coincidentally, last night, I watched another documentary of the internment camps during this same war.

No, there's no morality in war. There are, perhaps, degrees of expediency and necessity (most-certainly to protect ones' survival), but on the whole there isn't a more terrible, degrading and horrific bastian of human pain such as war brings.

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[1] If you please, I'd prefer not to get into agreements or disagreements on this, my feeling of the election and the U.S. actions in Iraq. At least not in this thread. I understand there are a great many well-considered philosophies both supporting and condemning such action. This, read above, is but *my* feeling, nothing more.

Knowing what we know now, the atomic bombs were probably NOT necessary to get the Japanese to capitulate, and in fact they probably weren't what caused the surrender in the end. The most important reason why the Japanese surrendered was because the Soviets declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, which was 2 days after Hiroshima and 1 day before Nagasaki.

A two-front war between the Americans and the Red Army was an unthinkable prospect for Japan, which they had known from the beginning. Japan had been strongly in favor of the German war against the Soviets, because it drew their attention away from Japan's activities in Asia.

The Avalon Project : Soviet Declaration of War on Japan

That said, the atomic bombs in combination with the Soviet declaration certainly hastened the surrender -- which would have been otherwise accomplished by a bloody invasion or a brutal siege.

But more importantly the atomic bombs were a message from the US to the Soviet Union. The Allies didn't trust the Soviets even before the war, and it only got worse as they encroached on Berlin. The Cold War was already in effect during the war in Europe, and the bombing of Japan was a major "diplomatic" statement.

Whether it was "right" or not? I'm not sure complicated strategic acts like this can be so simply categorized. But I have less problem with the atomic bombs than I do with the firebombing and virtual incineration of Tokyo, to say nothing of Dresden, Munich, etc. Of course when we compare this to Japan's and Germany's atrocities, it certainly suggests to me that hastening the end of this war by whatever means was probably acceptable.

The thing is, though, even though Germany didn't surrender until May 8, 1945, they NEVER had a chance of winning the war once they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, especially once they collapsed in front of Moscow and nonsensically declared war on the US at the same time. After the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, by the spring of 1943 Germany didn't launch a single significant offensive for the rest of the war -- they were retreating continually for 2 years. They were prepared only for blitzkrieg -- they never had the army, industry, strategy, economy, or military leadership to sustain a protracted total war against the Red Army. Even if D-day had failed Germany would have still lost -- because by June 1944 the Soviets were already near the border with Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine.