[richlevy]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Never did consider the possibility, ever. There were no civilians in Japan. Every damn one of them was part of the national war effort and armed. They were all trained and prepared to fight to the death to protect Japan and the emperor.
Little did they know the Emperor was a prisoner in his own house but that's another matter.

Did they have tiny rifles for the infants and toddlers?

I hadn't read this thread, but this morning I was reflecting on the difference between 'evil' and 'enemy'.

Consider what happens when people visit countries like Vietnam. Some of the people who we meet there are directly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. If they were evil then, nothing has changed and they should be killed. However, the reality is that they were merely enemies, the war is over, and killing them would be immoral and illegal.

We acknowledge that targeting civilians is wrong. In WWII we dropped a devastating bomb without warning on a city. We destroyed the second city only 3 days later.

A lot of discussion went into the use of the Atomic Bomb

In the end we decided that conventional means were too difficult and the bomb would have an important pschological effect if the first public use was against a live target. Technically, the target was military, but the choice was made to specifically destroy as much of the city as possible. The decision may also have been political and intended for the Russians.

If you can picture a group of Islamic terrorists debating the detonation of a 'dirty bomb' in a US city, you can appreciate the conclusions reached. Expediency will always win over morality.

Between blast and radiation, we probably killed about 300,000 people. Estimates are that an invasion of Japan would have resulted in 1 million deaths. Of course, other factors, such as Japan accepting a conditional surrender instead of the unconditional surrender we demanded, make the equation less clear.

Don't ask me what is right and wrong in situations like this. War is never a good place to determine right and wrong. I will say that if we had been on the receiving end of either of those two bombs, we would have used the word 'terrorist' freely. Of course, that's just politics.


From here

(2) Hiroshima - This is an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focussing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target. (Classified as an AA Target)

B. In this respect Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. Hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. The Emperor's palace in Tokyo has a greater fame than any other target but is of least strategic value.