Was the use of atomic weapons that did little more structural damage than fire-bombing (but more personnel damage in the form of radiation) justified?
Was the dropping of a second atomic bomb justified (would Japan not have surrendered if it was only a single bomb)?
The first bomb was a strategic war operation
The second bomb was a war crime
Fun fact these bombs were actually made by the Reich, the allieds just happened upon them accidentally during their advance and seized them subsequently for later use
The use of weapons in war never requires justification.
WIR
WAREN
KÖNIGE N SHIEEET
NUKLEARPHYSIKER
Even against civilian targets?
Exactly as moral or immoral as any strategic bombing.
If it's a war-crime to target civilians to try and force a government to surrender, as it was in Nanking, then why not in Tokyo?
They should have surrendered
They thought the same of the Americans after Pearl Harbor
Tell me, how do you drop bombs without killing civilians? You can't even methodically take ground with infantry without killing civilians.
I personally think the United States should have nuked Kyoto and Tokyo, then waited a few months to make more bombs, nuke two more cities and then invade by land and genocided Japan until it was completely under US control.
The simply reason behind this is: "We will never surrender." - Japan & its Emperor during WWII. Should've made them keep to their word.
THEY DID. America convinced them they COULD kill every Japanese person, and that they WOULD kill every Japanese person, and they surrendered.
Japan had no reason to believe surrendering earlier would have helped them, they need only look at the treatment of the Native Americans or the overseas colonies of America to get an idea of how it would have gone.
In the end, the Cold War meant America was interested in a strong Japan.
Only if it provides a strategic advantage
Both nukes targeted industrial and military sectors of the cities, both of which were important strategic targets and perfectly valid and legal given the circumstances.
Seriously, if you're going to bitch about the Allied strategic bombing offensive, why not pick something that actually has some moral gray area like Operation Gomorrah, the 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, or the firebombing of Tokyo?
>America convinced them they COULD kill every Japanese person, and that they WOULD kill every Japanese person,
That's why they should have surrendered. Japan was making its own atomic bombs, and they were warned about the risks before hand.
Play stupid games
win stupid prizes
No such thing as a war crime.
They DID surrender.
Would America surrender unconditionally under the same circumstances?
Unironically, this. WW2 was total war, and every civilian was a viable war infrastructure target. Japan started the war, and if having their cities and people reduces to ash was unpalatable, they should have unconditionally surrendered.
Should China have surrendered unconditionally before Nanking?
Like the Romans, Greeks, Africans, Persians and Chinese before them, the fall of a citizen center is dominated by rape and murder and plundering unless it would be politically inconvenient. The idea of 'war crimes' is just another attempt to justify this as not the natural state of all war.
>justified
it was a pretty good option at the time, so yeah. In hindsight? No, probably not, but that's kind of irrelevant
>In hindsight? No, probably no
How do you figure?
Some user posted a while back something about how it was the russians that caused the japs to surrender, not nescecarily the atomic bombs. It was pretty convincing, and I wish I still had a link to it. Still, what ultimately ended the war is largely irrelevant to whether or not we should have dropped the bomb at the time.
Until those Imperial Records in Tokyo are unsealed, we're never going to really know exactly why the Japanese decided to surrender.
Nope
When will they be?
Yep, war crimes are nothing more than a way for the great powers to keep everyone else in line (not that they have to adhere to them of course).
Never. When that user said "unsealed" he should have said "unburned". The vast majority of imperial record keeping from the war was burned after the decision to surrender was made.