Did this man have any morals at all.....(Hiroshima)

[RoyKinnear]

I do not grieve is demise

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royKinnear, if you have friends in the army then surely you know they have or will have to kill people?

I'm not saying the bombing was right, or that it wasn't. I don't think judging the bloke who dropped the bomb is any more justified than any other soldier who killed enemy soldiers during the war.

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How on earth can it be his fault? How could anything done by him have changed anything? Think of his family. I am sure that they mourn a man chosen for an awful task.

I think him saying that he doesn't regret itis not the same as saying he took great pleasure in it.

I agree that it is sad that his family should have to worry about protesters. Shameful

i was commenting on his comments
i dont mourn him
i have considered opinions not glib imFo

I imagine, when he said he did not regret it, he feels that although his action brought about many deaths, it also prevented many more.

My thoughts, Roy, would be that this is a man who has been defending himself for 60 years. He's probably hardened his approach along the way.

Dh's grandfather was a POW in Changi, having been capture during the fall of Singapore. He was almost startved to death duting his time as a Japanese POW.

He only survived because he was a doctor, and the other POWs strove to keep him alive, so that he could give them limited medical care.

He had to operate without anaestesia, or antiseptics, and often had to do this to try to save the life of people with horrific sores than had become gangrenous.

He learned to hypnotise people so that he could try that way to rehuce their horrific suffereings as he amputated their limbs.

In the 1960s they made a TV prog about him, and survivors said that he helped to save hundrads of POWs who were being starved,beaten and worked to death by the Japanese guards. The 'rules' of what was an appropriate response were somewhat different then, I think.

There are plenty of questions about these bombings and what they were really designed to achieve.

Oh, that is true for sure. Howvere a large part of the reason was to end the war in the East as soon as possible.

It also gave America a change to wave a big stick at Russia, who joined in at the very end of the war in order to claim/reclaim (dependingon your pont of view) some of the northely Japanese islands.

But a swift end to the war, and the avoiding of another Okinawa (where more people died than in Hiroshima remember), was central to the decisison.

There has been some discussion as to why they didn't take Japanese observeres and detonate another bomb to show them what it would do. This was discounted as the Americans were not 100% that the bomb would detonate (at the time of the first trial detonation at los alamos Enrico Fermi was still a little unsure if the bomb would cause a chain reaction that would cause all of the Earths atmosphere to combust, this was a very new area they were working in, with lots of uncertenties), they were not sure that the Jpanise observers would be listened to by the Milatary who were effectivly running the country with the puppet emperor, and they also probably 'wanted' to see it in action.

Large numbers of the scientists who had been part of the Manhatten project had petioned the President to do just this sort of thing, but they were refused.

Thats true, I think the likes of J.R. Oppenhiemer spent the rest of their lives regretting the whole affair. These were not cold callous people after all

"I'm not saying the bombing was right, or that it wasn't. I don't think judging the bloke who dropped the bomb is any more justified than any other soldier who killed enemy soldiers during the war."

You surely must understand the difference between killing enemy combatants and killing unarmed civilians - women and children. The latter is a war crime.

I thought the Japanese were about to surrender anyway. I'll have to go away and read my WWII history but I think this is a case of history being written by the victors. The real reason like Martianbishop was to show the Russians what they were capable of.

Anyhow if it was just to get the Japanese to surrender why didn't they just drop one? There were two atomic bombs.

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Elizabetth
i totally agree, though i always thought the main reason for hiroshima and nagasaki was really pearl harbour...

and alot of kamikasi pilots were young lads coerced into it...and were under orders, as all combatants are..

I have sympathy with the Japanese civilians who died but cannot forget the brutality of the Japanese war machine, its treatment of POWs and of the populations of China and Korea. Successive Japanese governments have found it difficult or impossible to apologise for their acts during WWII.

Elizabetth, I concede your point. I still don't see how anyone can condemn the commander of the bomber. The decision makers should be condemned, if anyone.

20,000 civiliams were forced to commit/commited suicide at Okinawa by the japanese troups fighting on the island.

they would have done the same on mainland Japan, to prevent the 'shame' of surrender.

Who knows what the civilian death toll would have been had a conventional invasion been stages. Personaly I think it would have been far higher than the civiliams at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

the Japanese treatment of the Chinese was similarly appalling.
I agree that the atomic bombs were a landmark in the escalating horrors of warfare and military capability but when faced with a rampantly expansionist agenda like that of Japan's in WW2, what is the solution?

martian bishop
that could be true, civilian death toll being higher due to convential war..
but
the atomic bombs seem to my mind be a chance to test these 'weapons' with no real idea of the consequences, like a test on real humans...that they could get 'away' with due to war
as they affected population at the time and future civilians surely is a war crime?..
conventional weapons will kill you
atomic bombs if you survive will result in unimaginable agonies and genetic defects for future generations...
and is the one big reason many japs in the past would never countenance having atomic weapons either..

its history by the victors again..

it can be very difficult to get hold of ww2 books in japan, they dont know what they did during war..

had my japanese friend in tears telling him about the rape of nanking by japs in 1937 iirc

"Elizabetth, I concede your point. I still don't see how anyone can condemn the commander of the bomber. The decision makers should be condemned, if anyone."

"Only following orders" got you hung at Nuremberg. But yes, the decision makers should be condemned too.

For those who have the stomach for it{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre\information on the way the Japanise treated the Chinese at Nanking}

It may also be of interest to people to note that the Japanise also had an atomic bomb program during the second world war, it was limited in range as materials became in short supply, and tose in power failed to see its full distructive potential.

the germans also had a program, but this was hampered by some mistaken decisions regarding the right way to develop the wepon. To this day there is a great deal of debate over the role of german Physisits, and whether they deliberatly 'blocked' development.

the use of radioactive (dirty) bombs was also considered by the Nazis.

Anyone who is interested in the history and science of the development of the atom bob should read the excellent 'The making of the atomic bomb' by Richard Rhodes, which was awarded the Pulitzer prize for 1988. It is excellent on the science, and pulls no punches anout the political/ ethical impact of the bombs