It will always boggled me why they dropped it on cities of citizens? Why not bomb their biggest military factories, wiping out their capacity and warning - next we coming for your citizens. Wouldn't that be more effective (assuming Japan would not surrender) and more humane ?

That's the whole question with Dresden (and "Slaughterhouse Five").

The reasoning was to pick biggest cities that were not completely destroyed yet (as Tokyo and others were in pretty bad shape by that time). Military bases are small targets compared to a city, and I assume they wanted to make a statement.

The United States wanted to drop the bomb on a relatively undisturbed city so they could better-evaluate its effects. If you drop a bomb of never-before-seen power on a city that is already rubble, it’s much harder to determine how much damage it caused.

They did bomb the largest military factories. That's why they moved their production to the cities.

Japanese military industrial production was heavily distributed to tens of thousands of small workshops with only a few workers in each and minimal mechanization. The cities with civilians were themselves the factories.

It was a lot of death 110-220k dead. There is a lot remarkable about that. About .3% of the 1940 population of Japan.

However… 70-80 million people died in WWII, or about 3% of the population of the world.

I don’t agree with using nuclear weapons. But… how many Japanese lives were spared with a quick end to the war? That’s not a justification, it’s the counterpoint to “we can never do x”.

It's the trolley problem. Do you let the war go on and kill 1M more people or drop the bomb and kill 100K? I actually wonder if that was the origin of the thought experiment. I think most people in this crowd would say of course you switch tracks, but at that scale it takes on a different gravity.

There are quite a few countries currently who possess nukes. What do you say if they apply the same logic should they have military conflict?

There's an interesting piece from 2020, republished a few days ago, in the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, titled "Counting the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki" [1]. The bottom line is that the number of people killed is unlikely ever to be known.

[1] https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshi...

You assume that those two bombings had an effect or sped up the surrender. They provingly did not. The decision was made to show a) force to USSR and the rest of the world b) explain the funds spent on creating nuclear weapons.

They had been firebombing and eradicating whole Japanese cities for days/weeks. (Another topic to discuss -- that the pressure was applied to the civilian non-fighting population, regardless of the method.)

The late Japanese surrender is a failure of diplomacy -- the two sides could not communicate and neither side could swallow the whole "emperor question."

When the Russians started moving and declared war to Japan, both sides gave up something: "unconditional" surrender and emperor got to stay and not implicated in anything related to the war.

See the whole background behind the following trials, where a lot of people either did not get prosecuted or chose to die instead of implicating the emperor in any way.

Go speak to someone from Korea's older generations. Ask them to tell you about the Japanese-run rape camps and "comfort women". Ask them about the human biological experimentation camps in Korea. Ask them about the mass killings. And go ask them if the bombings should have never been used.

Japan was already defeated*, how would the bombings have prevented those crimes, since they weren't being committed anymore?

The bombings were justified for revenge?

* It was a formality, the Soviets were about to invade Manchuria, we should have just blockaded the Japanese mainland and let events play out, not evaporate 100k civilians.

Following this line of thinking, the US did all of that and worse (slavery and Vietnam war alone). Do you believe we should drop the nuke on them?

I don't.

I’m sure many of them would rather see the war criminals prosecuted for their crimes over the terrors of nuclear bomb. Surely Korea could have been liberated with traditional means, just like other colonies of imperial Japan were. However, I don’t think the people that decided to use the nuclear bomb on cities cared that much about justice for the crimes of the Japanese army. If they had, they probably wouldn’t have given the war criminals high positions at the US army after the war.

Where could I read more about Japanese war criminals being given high positions in the US Army after the war? The closest I'm able to find is that Shiro Ishii (director of Unit 731) managed to negotiate immunity from prosecution in exchange for data from their experiments, but he was not given any US government or military position, nor was his second in command, Masaji Kitano. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir%C5%8D_Ishii

You are right. Sorry, I lied. I thought I had read something about it, but I must not have because I can’t find it my self. Perhaps I was thinking about Operation Paperclip, but more likely I might have read an unreliable claim on social media and not checked if it was true.

It was used on cities full of civilians - and essentially just a show of force. That could have been done elsewhere, without the pure suffering caused. Justifying it as saving lives can be used ad nauseam for most wars, and pure propaganda. Would we justify Russias use of nuclear weapons on a Ukrainian city to stop the war "early"? We'd call it war crimes.

>That could have been done elsewhere, without the pure suffering caused.

This is certainly wrong because the first bomb wasn't enough for them to surrender. In fact, the general didn't want to surrender at all and commited suicide after the emperor forced them to stop. It isn't clear under what other conditions Japan would surrender. In my view Japan would probably still control Manchukuo today if not for the bomb.

We can debate after the fact whether using a nuclear bomb was correct but the brutal Japanese regime had to be stopped immediately. We don't have the privilege of knowing the future when making difficult decisions.

> It isn't clear under what other conditions Japan would surrender.

It’s potentially very important to know that the terms of surrender changed after the dropping of the second bomb. The new terms allowed the emperor to remain. Which is a huge deal. Maybe the Allies could have offered that before dropping two nukes?

The Emperor didn't really have all the power. The military was on the cusp of mutiny after the second bomb, fearing the Emperor would surrender. It is really unlikely that the emperor would surrender without one nuclear bomb. The generals wouldn't have it. So yes, maybe one bomb might have been enough, and the only reason anything changed after the second bomb was a change in the surrender conditions. Do you know for certain that they didn't discuss allowing the emperor to remain after the first bomb? Do you have any link I could read about this?

The emperor’s power didn’t matter as much as his central importance in their religion. He was like a god, and the Postdam Declaration didn’t make it clear that the emperor would be safe. Hence why it was rejected.

https://homework.study.com/explanation/why-did-japan-reject-...

I may have misremembered reading about this years ago. I don’t think the terms changed, but there’s an argument that if the US was more clear about the emperor’s position post-surrender, the Japanese would have surrendered much sooner.

What's your point? Allied firebombing had leveled nearly every other city in Japan already and those cities were, unsurprisingly, full of civilians too. Much more Japanese were incinerated as a result of firebombing than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Civilian casualties were not a huge concern when waging war for anyone (and certainly not for the Japanese military!) so bringing that up is anachronistic thinking.

Notably, strategic air power (i.e. mass civilian bombing) is likely rather ineffective [1]. That makes both the nuclear bombs and the firebombings horrible tragedies.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...

There was an article on HN that asked the question "why was a second bomb dropped". The conclusion was that the plan was to drop many nuclear bombs, and it was presidential intervention that limited it to two. Due to miscommunication the president didn't even know about the second bomb until after the fact.

Edit: the article link was https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/08/09/why-nagasaki/

Illegal bombing of Bangladesh with conventional weapons killed about the same number of civilians. You think they felt any better? I do not hear any cries about it however. All swept under the rug.

It’s not even a question if nukes are ever justified, in Japan they definitely weren’t because the military leadership didn’t value the citizens lives at all. It was more about vengeance and flexing than trying to end the war.

I was born in Southeast Asia, lived in China for a while, everyone I've met views it as some kind of karmic justice. It's the idea you get from school (we were living peacefully, then we got attacked and they did all these brutal crimes) and from our grandparents.

I've only seen the contrarian opinion coming from westerners. Perhaps because there's barely any media from Hollywood about the pacific theater, and if there was (eg. HBO's The Pacific), it does not show the horrors of it.

If one is more interested in an objective take on history, especially those using the argument that the Japanese were already "defeated" before the bombs came, then the book Downfall by Richard B Frank is a good book to start with for those who hold a firm anti-nuke stance.

Revenge - especially in the form of massive civilian murder - is not justice.

"If one is more interested in an objective take on history,"

There is no such thing.

That's why I said karmic justice.

I think it's a close book. The book details the decision process from both sides. Japan's plans to continue the war. The way the high command coped with the first atomic bomb, etc. It does not sway you into thinking any side was justified, but it expands one's perspective to help you understand the other's side.

No matter how much you don't like it, the use of that weapon was neither revenge or murder.

I personally don't see the world in terms of revenge and murder, so it's hard for me to understand how such specifically personal behaviors factor into the first Atomic attack.

>I was born in Southeast Asia, lived in China for a while, everyone I've met views it as some kind of karmic justice. It's the idea you get from school (we were living peacefully, then we got attacked and they did all these brutal crimes) and from our grandparents.

>I've only seen the contrarian opinion coming from westerners.

Not even Japanese believe otherwise. When John Hersey (discussed elsewhere) revisited Japan in the 1960s, the Japanese he met with were amazed by the notion that the US should apologize for the atomic bombs. They viewed it as an understandable thing to do in wartime.

I didn't live here in the 1960s, but my experience in Japan for the last many years doesn't bear this out.

Most would prefer not think about it, of course. Amongst those that do, the majority are opposed to nuclear weapons' possession and use.

In Japan it would be hard to find either a dove or a hawk or anything between who'd say bombing those two cities was justified. Hawks are more likely to say Japan was minding its own imperialistic business, just as Europeans had been doing for centuries prior. So Japan didn't deserve those bombings. Doves will be opposed to any kind of nuclear weapon and tend to showcase their compatriots' suffering to help prevent further proliferation and destruction.

Some Japanese Buddhists believe that their constant prayers for peace have been directly responsible for averting destruction of the world since 1945. I'd guess that's 15% of the population.

Ask the Chinese, Koreans, and other countries that were brutalized by Imperial Japan and you will find that they mostly do not have a problem with it.

The handwringing tends to be more of a white westerner thing.

Regardless of popular opinion, can this ever be justified as a moral act?

The common justification that I have read is that the bombings shortened what would have otherwise been a protracted defeat, potentially saving many more lives than were taken. A Utilitarian argument. However, if we were to take a Kantian point of view, the bombed civilians were used as an “ends” to achieve victory. Or more simply, an immoral act can never be justified, whatever the outcome.

So which is right? I enjoyed a recent Star Trek episode that examined the Utilitarian philosophy taken to an extreme (spoilers follow). In it an advanced utopian society is powered by the suffering of one child, chosen before birth. The joy and happiness of millions, at the expense of one innocent. Utilitarian philosophy (and modern economic theory), would call this an obviously acceptable trade-off, but Kant would argue that it is immoral as a person can never be used as an ends.

In the real world, we saw this argument play out in regards to whether the torture of terrorists was acceptable if it meant the extraction of information that would save lives.

Personally, I am of the Kantian view point, and I think the nuclear bombing of the two Japanese cities can never, and should never, be justified as moral acts.

The Star Trek story you describe sounded exactly like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas — indeed the “References” section of the Wikipedia article mentions the Star Trek episode taking inspiration from it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_...

Bombing of civilians was the norm for that era. The atomic bombs are pretty much not unique on that dimension. It happened in the European theatre too, where there was an actual distinction between civilians and military. In Japan this distinction essentially didn’t exist anywhere and would completely dissolve near the front.

Kant never had to choose between 225,000 dead (Hiroshima + Nagasaki) or 70,000,000 (the rest of the population who showed every sign of willingness to fight to the last child).

As I said, the argument for this being an ethically appropriate approach can be made from a Utilitarian or Consequentialist view point. That view becomes complicated by the difficulty of knowing what would have happened had alternative decisions been made (others have debated that point ad infinitum). It’s a partial knowledge problem.

It’s not my point though. Regardless of the actual trade in lives and human suffering between the two alternatives, a deontological viewpoint judges the rightness of an action by the action itself - no matter the outcome.

So that’s my point. The bombing of civilians (whatever the prevailing norms, and no matter the consequences), is always wrong, and can never be justified on the grounds of “it shortened the war“ or “it would have saved millions of lives”.

However, it’s not a simple and clear cut argument, and perhaps it can be justified in other ways. I reject the utilitarian arguments, but I’m open to considering other justifications.

Just goes to show you the silliness of how people use ethical systems. These systems are generalized out of example cases, not created de novo in concept-space and then applied unquestioned to every new example case.

The real world has many more real variables and tradeoffs than any ethical system could reasonably account for even abstractly. The systems provide a surface to bounce new cases off of, but IMO if an ethical system says it's preferable to pick near-certain death of say 1 million people (a mere 1.4% hypothetical casualty rate) over the certain death of 250,000 people, it should very obviously be discarded for that case.

In the real world every person performs acts they believe to be justified. If the ends justify the means, then all manner of evil acts can be accommodated. If we can’t turn and point at the destruction of entire cities with a weapon of unimaginable devastation and say “that is bad”, something is wrong.

No ethical system, including Kantian, says it’s better to pick a million dead over 250k. Kant says “you can’t kill 250000 people to save a million, and call yourself righteous”. A man can sell his soul to save his family but the price must be paid.

It's worth remembering that the US was neutral in the war until https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor happened.

Are nuclear weapons that special? I am not saying 'are nuclear weapons really that bad', I fully believe they are horrifying. But I am asking 'are nuclear bombings that much worse than other mass bombings'. Consider the firebombing campaigns, Dresden, etc. Those were also indescribably horrible to live through.

I see an argument that nuclear bombs are 'too easy to use', making their existence horrible. But I don't see why the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki get a special place (other than symbolic) when compared to other mass bombings of population centers. All such bombings are horrifying and evil.

>> Are nuclear weapons that special?

Yes, they are. Aside from a few scientists and engineers who witnessed Trinity, the entire world changed after 8/6/45. It wasn't just the immediate impact of those two bombs, but recognising the potential of all the to-be constructed bombs that would surely (and did) follow.

> I wonder what percentage of humanity given the details surrounding these bombings, the destruction and aftermath, would see it as justified or necessary. I personally don't accept that. Nuclear weapons should never be used by humans on humans.

The best response to all criticism of the bombings is "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" by Paul Fussell, The New Republic, August 1981.

<https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/unde...>