Obama's visit to Hiroshima and some reactions I've seen online makes me wonder why Amerifats think Pearl Harbor was one...

>war criminal
>war crimes
literally something that doesn't exist until the victor is decided.

Literally something that exists since major world powers agreed to such laws in the late 18fuckinghundreds.

Also it wasn't even war crimes: they just broke international treaties and downright invaded places.

Exactly. Pretty sure nuking cities is a war crime.

>but it was a military target at the end of the day.

So were the cities

It's honestly no more of a war crime than the Allied civilian bombing campaigns,which killed more than the nukes overall. I don't know why so much focus is put on the nukes. Dubya Dubya 2 was a brutal war for all parties involved.

If it ain't on the Hague treaty or cited in the Geneva convention, it's not a war crime.

Coming from a country who genocided the native americans and where niggers were still considered sub-humans, it's a bit rich

Literally whataboutism. Fuck off, Marxist scum.

This. You cant make something a war crime retro-actively

>be in an Asian bar
>drunk white guy comes in
>says the bar is now his property
>one of the Asian guys tries to form an alliance
>can't do it because the white guy has already bought off everyone else
>have to resort to sneaky tricks to fight off the hypocritical white man

fix'd, Asia for Asians wasn't just a meme

Because it's the only time we were attacked at home? It's the worst by default.

Bombing cities is not a war crime and it's ridiculous that you would think such a thing.

Is shelling the living shit out of a city while besieging it a war crime now as well,

For those who contend that America brought Pearl Harbor on themselves because of the 'oil embargo', do you at least acknowledge that the embargo was a reasonable & measured response to the Japanese aggression in East Asia? A response that came after several denunciations of Imperial Japan's aggressive conduct?

Or do you think America was beholden to subsidize Japan's territorial designs on China (who was a nominal friend & valued commercial partner of the US)?

>JAPAN IS ASIA'S SAVIOR
>t. Japan
Oh and America was literally preparing to liberate the fucking Philippines, their only colony in the region.

Japan were the aggressor, and by that standard alone, anything that happens after kind of is justified tbqh.

But I do think that there is a real moral difference between deliberately attacking a military target, and nuking civilians though.

Hawaii wasn't a state in 1941.

I'm far from expert, but I thought the disproportionate intentional killing of civilians (as in, more collateral than actual damage to military targets) is considered a war crime?

No it isn't. But at least you acknowledge upfront that you are probably wrong.

You forgot Canucks burning down the white house but whatever.

Save Australia from what?

japanese consider themselves generically asian, thats why they have an open door policy on immigration. sure thing.

A sneak attack is pretty fucked up desu. Plus they targeted civilians as well.

Japan attacked civilians at Pearl Harbor. And the nukes saved lives. American AND Japanese lives.

>some reactions I've seen online makes me wonder why...

Ya goofed.

Japs targets were 100% military.

t. shinji nakamura

Yeah that's why they were strafing random cars around the island.

The rape of Nanking disagrees with you.

>And the nukes saved lives

Nukes don't save lives. They kill people. What ever kind of consequentialism you want to invoke to justify the nuking is just your own assumptions and conjecture.

Collateral damage. They were not instructed to target civilians.

Not Pearl Harbor.

You are right. A full invasion of Japan wouldn't have killed may Japanese civilians, that's a silly assumption of us to make

So I guess I'm morally wrong if I shoot someone that's about to kill your family? Okay then.

>intentionally attacking civilian targets
>collateral damage

pick one

>hey maybe, just maybe targeting civilians at the end of ww2 was not as ethical as we like to believe
>TALK SHIT GET HIT! REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR! WE SAVED MORE NIP LIFES! LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT NANJING!

murrikan indoctrination at it's best

Great argument there. Please explain how you think a full invasion of Japan would result in less civilian causalities than the previous bombings? It was a necessary action to save lives, your sperging out won't change that. You seem mentally deficient, so please take your time.

The choice isn't between "Use the most destructive weapon known to man, or full-scale invasion".

Reality isn't fractured into black and white scenarios, and if you think it is, you might have a personality disorder and should see a doctor.

>So I guess I'm morally wrong if I shoot someone that's about to kill your family?

This isn't analogous at all, because Japan, at the point in time when America nuked them, did not have thousands upon thousands of troops in America killing civilians.

There were plans in place for a full invasion of Japan, that is a fact. Just because you want to put your head in the sand and deny it doesn't mean it's not true. But by all means, explain to me how you think the war could have ended with less civilian causalities.

>get utterly BTFO in your shit nip-apologist argument every single day
>resort to desperate strawman arguments

>But by all means, explain to me how you think the war could have ended with less civilian causalities.

Oh, I never said the war would ever end with less civilians casualties. I said the choice isn't between nukes and a full-scale invasion, as you should know, because the most comprehensive and destructive air raid in the history of human civilization was done 2 weeks prior to the nuking, which also killed between 80-200k people.

The problem isn't that you have collateral damage and kill civilians, but your target is military. The problem is when you use civilians as an object for winning a war.

If you do not see the moral difference between the two, there is no point having this discussion.

>The problem is when you use civilians as an object for winning a war.

Wow it's almost like it was part of the largest and most civilian-intensive total war in history.

>US cutting off trade would have destroyed the Japanese economy
>Only option was to either bend to western demands or find resources elsewhere (SE Asia)
>Attack on US only a means of securing the ability to sue for some kind of peace after taking SE Asia since the Japs knew they couldn't 1v1
>Japs underestimated US industrial might

>Japan did have a declaration of war but they fucked up and it didn't get sent to the US before the attack occurred
>atom bombs were just considered as large bombs and nothing particularly heinous like they are now

I'm glad Veeky Forums is full of people who are actually aware of history.

You can win a war without deliberately using civilians as a target.

Is this really hard to understand?

Not when the opposing government is using civilians to bolster the war effort through production of military materials, food supplies, an ever-growing pool of potential conscripts, etc.

Unless, what, you expect the US to root out and nuke very single Japanese soldier on the entirety of the islands?

This

War with the West was inevitable. The US and the colonial powers had done everything they could to prevent Japan from rising and becoming a major regional power, this was proven with the scraps they were given after WWI and they were laughed at the League of Nations when demanding fair treatment.

This. Only the losing side has war criminals anyone who disagrees is a dumb faggot.

They didn't intentionally attack civilians at Pearl Harbor. They couldn't afford to, considering they had barely any force for the massive military presence there. Jap target list is freely available online.

>Not when the opposing government is using civilians to bolster the war effort through production of military materials, food supplies, an ever-growing pool of potential conscripts, etc.

This literally happens in every war. Do you think civilians just sit around doing nothing in a time of war?

>hurr this, this, this, look at my epic upvote system guys its just like back home at reddit

Why was Japan so righteously entitled to having an empire in East Asia? And how was their treatment after WWI not fair? It's not like Japan was a significant factor in the Entente victory. They should have been perfectly happy with their possessions by the 20s and they had no obligation to invade China or European colonial possessions.

Hence militaries target industrial civilian centers in almost every war.

>Hence militaries target industrial civilian centers in almost every war.

Yes, perhaps with targeted munitions, but not with bombs that literally annihilated everything around the industrial center in a 10+ mile radius.

My history teacher in high school claimed that it was a Japanese mistake in calculating time difference that meant they declared war slightly after instead of slightly before they attacked.

It's a big industrial center

Just a sidenote. During the negotiations in Versaille the Japanese people wanted to add some anti racist clause to some paper. The Japanese also felt they got fucked in the negotiations in general. Not that that's an excuse to invade all of east Asia

Weeb get out.

>Why was Japan so righteously entitled to having an empire in East Asia?

Why were the Europeans and Americans?

>And how was their treatment after WWI not fair? It's not like Japan was a significant factor in the Entente victory.

Irrelevant. They wanted German territories on the Chinese mainland and denied. The Washington Naval Treaty hampered Japanese ability to produce warships which pissed them off and gave the ultranationalists a gigantic boost in support leading to the militarization of Japan.

> They should have been perfectly happy with their possessions by the 20s and they had no obligation to invade China or European colonial possessions.

Well by that fucking logic neither the Americans or Europeans had any right to be in Asia. Which is exactly what the Japanese thought since they industrialized.

Sounds like they completely destroyed the factory and made it significantly harder to rebuild it by kill most of the former workers. Seems like a good way to save American lives, what's the problem? If people in the past had these weapons, you are sure as shit they would do what's in their power to save their own soldiers lives.

Because the nukes in Japan set a precedent that dropping nukes were an acceptable way of conducting warfare. This led to the Soviets getting keen on acquiring nukes and then the whole arms race, and then the Cuban missile crisis and many other situations were the doomsday clock was practically at zero

But yeah the firebombing of Tokyo etc. etc.

>Start a war with an industiral superpower
>get shit pushed in from the start
>1945
>"Surrender" "No"
It was either invasion or the nuke. Litterally anything else is historic revisionism. Advocating for another option is ignoring history, and if you side with invasion you should be locked up for being a threat to humanity for advocating for mass killing.

>Is shelling the living shit out of a city while besieging it a war crime now as well

>Is murdering civilians a war crime?

yes, or it should be

>If people in the past had these weapons, you are sure as shit they would do what's in their power to save their own soldiers lives.

That doesn't make it right.

Japs got the best deal out of the naval treaties. Anyone not blinded by weeabooness could see this.

> a full invasion of Japan would result in less civilian causalities than the previous bombings

Yeah because that would have caused the death of million people right?

Not that guy, but you are really eating out of the trash can that is American propaganda. Gongrats, you can maybe get work at Fox or something

The truth is of course that the Japanese surrendered when they realized the Soviets were entering the war.

You can't bomb a people into submission.

When is war ever right? It's a necessary evil at best. War is chaos and you do whatever is in your power to make it end as quickly as possible with the least amount of civilian causalities. In this case the nukes + fire bombings created less casualties than a full scale invasion of Japan would have produced.

Chad go back to /pol/

>spot the vatnik

>Soviet meme

The soviets had no means of invading Japan. By that point in the war the United States had destroyed Japan's navy and air force, yet they still persisted. even after the soviets had retaken manchurian the Japanese had not surrendered.

>created less casualties than a full scale invasion of Japan would have produced.

Like I said in my first post in this thread, that's only your consequentialist notion, and doesn't correspond to reality in any way.

I can also say that if I nuke Europe right this instant, I will prevent a future war in the year 2028. That wouldn't make the action correct, nor would it make the presumed reason I am doing it any more plausible.

You are correct, proportionality is a big factor. Blowing up a city that has a few military targets is undoubtedly a war crime. Pic related, its a relevant article of the Geneva Convention.

>inb4 "ending the war means its proportional"

Except they were in fucking war at the time. They used this judgement based off 4 years of experience, not some random fucking event you idiot. The Japs had no intention of surrendering and even attempted a coup to prevent it. You are ignoring facts just because "muh feelings'.

And like I said earlier in the thread, how else would the war have ended with less civilian casualties? You analogy is trash because we are not at war with Europe, we were at war with jap .

They did warn them.

Are you really saying that a warning makes the articles in the convention irrelevant?

I'd rather save millions of lives and have a few people call it a crime than do the alternative and let more people die.

Im not arguing about the morality of it, im arguing that the term war crime applies. So yes, you may be right, i dont know enough specifics about the situation, but it is a war crime nonetheless.

If anyone is arguing based on feelings here it's you.

You're so adamant that nuking people is okay, simply because of feelings of patriotism.

But, I'll remember it in the future, that next time someone attacks America, I know you'll deserve it because you're just a bunch of immoral inbred mutt dogs anyway.

Never once did I advocate on patriotism, dont lie. All you did was personally attack and say "no you" so I'm assuming you've realized your argument has no basis and should kys.

Firebombing and getting ready to carry out Operation Downfall, and keep Soviet shits out of Hok. saved lives.

All is fair in love and war, but there is a fine line between bombing a naval/air base on US territory and leveling complete cities full of civies to the ground, twice. Sure, the japanese were warned and the americans were not. But its hard to tell who is worse when the aggressor throws a sucker punch and a nut kick and the defender beats their head in with a bat until they whimper a surrender.

I'm a bit ignorant on the subject, so correct me if I'm wrong. But wasn't the Geneva convention that outlined these types of war crimes in 1949? If so than it was before this would be considered a war crime, which is unfair to judge them on some thing they didn't know existed.

how has this not been posted yet?

foxnews.com/world/2010/08/14/historians-soviet-offensive-key-japans-wwii-surrender-eclipsed-bombs.html

>Operation August Storm was launched Aug. 9, 1945, as the Nagasaki bomb was dropped, and would claim the lives of 84,000 Japanese and 12,000 Soviet soldiers in two weeks of fighting. The Soviets ended up just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Japan's main northern island, Hokkaido.

>"The Soviet entry into the war played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation," said Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, whose recently published "Racing the Enemy" examines the conclusion of the Pacific war and is based on recently declassified Soviet archives as well as U.S. and Japanese documents..

Fox news isn't too left wing for you is it? Didn't know that Soviets were just 50 kilometers from a significant Japanese island.

Look. First of all. The idea that the Americans dropped the nukes specifically to "end the war" doesn't have any empirical data to back it up. The two bombs were slightly different, so the American military command wanted to test how both of these bombs worked. No humanistic tendencies can be found in the decision to drop those nukes imo. There was no

>Sir, we should kill around 10000 Japs so that they will surrender immideatly
>Hmm, if we dont do that we will have to invade and 5 million people will die, so this decision is very good

This whole idea that the nukes were dropped for a somehow "just cause" is a way for American society to justify an act that is so obviously amoral and evil. They frame the history in such a way that they will look good, and the myth of American exceptionalism can live on.

In the parallel universe were Germans win the war there might be historians arguing that the holacaust was humanitarian because the Jews were conspiring with the Soviets and otherwise millions would have died in some weird scenario

>Why were the Americans.

>Well by that fucking logic neither the Americans had any right to be in Asia.

Wew lad you are dumb.

>It's okay to nuke civilians because of some conflated shitty consequentialist assumption
>This doesn't apply to the Japanese though, it was obviously immoral of them to attack Pearl Harbor as a reaction to the U.S stopping trade with them

Yeah, I'm sure it isn't patriotism.

Youre right. Its just irrelevant semantics really, but i just thought it'd be interesting for people to know that by any modern standard, this would be a heinous war crime. I dont apply morality to history, so its just a bit of entertaining hindsight. However, these morals are collectively agreed upon, and just because they werent written down 4 years before the convention, doesnt mean that they were useless back then.

So do with it what you will, i just enjoy applying the basic knowledge i have of international law to these real examples.

not that guy but what are you trying to say here? Are you making an argument?

You still haven't told me HOW the soviets were going to invade Japan. The Japanese did not want to surrender, there was even a coup to prevent them from doing so. The soviets did not have enough landing crafts or were even properly trained for a beach landings, so if they were 50 KM or 5 is irrelevant. The fact is that there was an American invasion in place that would have killed many more people than all the previous bombings combined did.

Again, never once did I advocate for Pearl Harbor being the justification. Dont put words in my mouth. America committed war crimes (See bombing of German Citizens, firebombing). But the Japenese had Nanking, Unit 871, their treatment of POW's, entire occupation of China etc etc.

>shitty assumption
Except that's direct military intelligence you're arguing against so you need to stop getting buttmad over history. Weeaboos need to die.

Maybe the Japanese wouldn't have gotten embargoed if they didn't invade a US trading partner. They were the aggressors, not the US.

>Maybe the Japanese wouldn't have gotten embargoed if they didn't invade a US trading partner. They were the aggressors, not the US.

So what, you've conceded that morality doesn't matter at all in wartime, so anything the Japanese did wasn't wrong or right anyway.

Then the Atomic bombings were fine. There is no fucking reason not to use the nukes developed at the time, leave the fucking thread already.

When they are at war with that country you fucking idiot. They weren't at war with the US when the attacked Pearl Harbor. And are you trying to say that the US should just let the Japanese aggression go unchecked and continue to invade a valuable US trade partner? Because that would be moronic.

>What is the Philippines and islands in the Pacific
>What is sphere of influence

Read a fucking book retard.