Friday was the anniversary of the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Monday is the anniversary of its bombing of Nagasaki.
The explosion of the Fat Man atomic device over Nagasaki is pictured. It rose eleven miles into the sky over Ground Zero.
The important thing, though, is that it—together with the Little Boy device that was deployed over Hiroshima—killed approximately 200,000 human beings. And it ended the war with Japan.
It is understandable that many Americans at the time were relieved that the long burden of the bloodiest war in human history could finally be laid down. Many then, as now, saw the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a necessary step to preventing even more casualties.
However, some of the blogging being done to commemorate the attack is most unfortunate.
Consider Michael Graham, who wishes his readers a “Happy Peace Through Victory Day.”
Today marks the anniversary of the single greatest act in the cause of peace ever taken by the United States:
Dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. That one decision, that one device, saved more lives, did more to end war, and created more justice in the world in a single stroke than any other. It was done by America, for Americans. It saved the lives of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of American soldiers and sailors.
So, obviously, President Obama’s not too happy about it. . . .
Euroweenie peaceniks and an annoying number of American liberals see the bombing of Hiroshima as a shameful act. What is it America should be ashamed for—defeating an enemy that declared war on us? Bringing about the end of a fascist empire that killed millions of people, mostly Asians? Preventing the slaughter of the good guys—Americans—by killing the bad guys—the Japanese?
I am not a Euroweenie or a peacenik or a political liberal or even someone opposed to the use of nuclear weapons in principle. I can imagine scenarios in which their use would be justified. I can even deal with the cheeky “Happy Peace Through Victory Day” headline.
But Mr. Graham’s analysis of the situation on a moral level is faulty.
It is true that, by instilling terror in the Japanese government, the use of atomic weapons prevented further and, in all probability, greater casualties on both sides.
Preventing further and greater casualties is a good thing, but as the Catechism reminds us:
The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties [CCC 2312].
It isn’t just a question of the goal of an action. The goal may be a good one, but the means used to achieve it may be evil. The Catechism states:
Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons – especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons – to commit such crimes [CCC 2314].
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were definitely acts of war directed to the destruction of whole cities or—at least—vast areas with their inhabitants. The only quibbling could be about whether this was “indiscriminate” destruction. Someone might argue (stretching the word “indiscriminate” rather severely and taking it in a sense probably not meant by the Catechism) that they were not indiscriminate attacks in that they were aimed at vital Japanese war resources (munitions factories, troops, etc.) and the only practical way to take out these resources was to use atomic weapons.
Mounting such a case would face a number of problems. One would have to show that Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such resources (not that difficult to show) and that these resources themselves were proportionate in value to the massive collateral damage that would be inflicted (a much more difficult task) and that there was no other practical way—like a more targeted bombing—to take them out (again a difficult task).
But for purposes of argument, let’s grant all this. Let’s suppose that there were such resources, and that they were proportionate in value to the massive loss of civilian lives and that there was no other way to get rid of them.
Does that absolve the U.S. of guilt in these two bombings?
No.
You can see why in the logic that Mr. Graham used. It stresses the fact that the use of these weapons saved net lives. This was undoubtedly uppermost in the U.S. military planners’ thinking as they faced the possibility of an extremely bloody invasion of Japan in which huge numbers on both sides would die.
But notice what is not being said—either by Mr. Graham or anybody else: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such important war widgets that without those widgets Japan would be unable to prosecute the war. Thus by taking out those military resources we could deprive Japan of its ability to make war.”
Neither is anybody saying something like this: “We needed to scare Japan into surrender by showing them that we could destroy all of their military resources. We needed to make them terrified of losing all their military resources so that, out of a desperate desire to preserve their military resources, they would surrender.”
These are the dogs that didn’t bark, and they are why this line of argument is a dog that won’t hunt.
The reason nobody says these things is that they were not the thinking behind the U.S.‘s actions. The idea was not to end the war through the direct destruction of military resources in these two cities, nor was it to end the war by scaring Japan into thinking we might destroy all of its military resources. It was scaring Japan into surrendering by threatening (explicitly) to do this over and over again and inflict massive damage on the Japanese population. In other words, to make them scared that we would engage in “the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants.”
That means that, even if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had contained military resources that of themselves would have justified the use of atomic weapons (which is very hard to argue), our intention still was not pure. We were still using Japanese civilians as hostages to the war effort, still threatening to kill civilians if Japan did not surrender. That was the message we wanted the Japanese leadership to get—not, “We will take out your military resources if you keep this up,” but, “We will take out big chunks of your population if you keep this up.”
That meant that the U.S. leadership was formally participating in evil. It does not matter if the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could (through some stretch of the imagination) be justified in themselves. The fact is that they were used to send a message telling the Japanese government that we would kill massive numbers of the military and civilian population, without discrimination. That message is evil, and to knowingly and deliberately send that message is to formally participate in evil.
That made these attacks war crimes.
Now, make no mistake. I’m an American. I’m a fan of the U.S. But love of the United States should not preclude one from being able to look honestly at the mistakes it has committed in the past. Indeed, it is only by looking at and frankly acknowledging the mistakes of the past that we can learn from them. Love of one’s country should impel one to help it not commit such evils.
Racial discrimination? Bad thing. Allowing abortions? Bad thing. Dropping nukes to deliberately kill civilians? Bad thing. Let’s try not to have things like these mar America’s future.
READ ABOUT THE HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS.
What are your thoughts?
You said, speaking of Hiroshima, “And it ended the war with Japan. ”
That’s not true – and the truth directly contradicts your accusation that the USA committed a war crime by dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese did not surrender until one week after we dropped the second bomb, this time on Nagasaki.
Even then, despite the experience of those two cities’ instant destruction, and despite the fact that flights of more than 1,000 US bombers were able to carpet-bomb one-mile wide corridors across every major city in Japan every night without any significant opposition, fanatical warlords defied their Emperor and even invaded the Imperial Palace in an attempt to kill him and destroy the surrender announcement he had recorded that final morning.
As the deeply researched book Downfall revealed, only the previous day, Japan’s leading general said to the Emperor’s face that 20 Million Japanese were prepared to die and he would lead them to that death, charging against machine guns and cannons with sharpened bamboo spears. As a matter of fact, that challenge was a major factor in Emperor Hirohito’s decision to surrender. Then he went into hiding for fear of the attacks that did follow in the palace itself by crazy officers.
By that day, the Japanese Navy had cease to exist as a force capable of anything other than individual assaults on lone vessels. The nation was facing a winter without food, without coal, without medical supplies, without hope. yet the military said it would be better that the nation’s population die rather than surrender.
The example was still fresh, only a few months before, of Nazi fanaticism as they took down their own once beautiful and intelligent nation and forced us to turn it all to rubble, and even fought from within the rubble, until their insane leaders shot themselves or poisoned their children rather than stop the slaughter with a single word.
They were given ample notice that the destruction was coming. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima in the days before the bomb, warning the people to leave city before that destruction.
I was 12 years old at the time. I recall vividly the public sadness and anger that Japan did not stop after the first bomb and puzzlement that Japan seemed unaware even most of week after the second bomb that they would not be allowed to continue. Their leaders made that choice; not us.
Speaking of war crimes we must include George W. Bush and Dick Chaney. Two should be tried at the Haag and hanged on TV for the world to see. Weapons of mass destruction, give me a break. Why didn’t Big George invade Iran they have the nukes. Chicken ass just like his military record. http://www.awolbush.com check out the facts.
I don’t think Jimmy meant that Hiroshima by itself ended the war, and that the business was a war crime only because the unnecessarily followed up with bombing Nagasaki. The reason being claimed (and I agree with it) that the bombing was a war crime was because it deliberately targeted non-combatants. Carpet-bombing cities would have been equally a war crime.
You cannot do evil that good may come. In a just war, targetting military targets, even with the knowledge that non-combatants may be harmed as ‘co-lateral damage’, is licit. Deliberately targetting non-combatants is not. That there may have been militarily important targets in Hiroshima or Nagasaki is not the point. It does not take an atom bomb to destroy a munitions plant, a ship, or a military base.
jj
It is sophistry to claim that “noncombatants” are not participants in a war. When, in the entire history of the human race, has there ever been a war without targeting civilians? If anything, they are the ultimate goal of the aggressor and a defending army is merely the barrier to that. War is war. Nations that launch it – or fight back against it – cannot expect to avoid the consequences.
As for the claims that this was gratuitous violence on mere civilians, both cities contained large numbers of home-based manufacturing, complete with machine shops and forges. The government had long ago dispersed those activities away from formal factories.
It is delusional naievite (sp?) to say that factories, military facilities, etc. are the only permitted targets in war. Anything that is or near or part of or supportive of a war is an unavoidable and necessary target of whatever violence is needed to destroy the economic, military and political will to fight.
War itself is immoral. To parse out parts of it as sacrosanct exceeds the reach, if not the grasp, of even the most jesuitical hair-splitting. Acts are judged by their consequences, not parochial religious theory.
I was once confronted, when I was 18 years old, by a man with a knife. It was in a dark lonely place. He said he would kill me if I did not give him my money.
When he lunged at me, I was able to avoid him and while he was extended and off-balance I hit him so hard in the face that his upper front teeth came away embedded in my knuckles. When he went down I kicked him as hard as I could in his ribs and heard them break. As he lay there moaning I became sick of what I had done but when he tried to reach for the knife on the ground I kicked him again.
Was I immoral to use violence to stop further violence?
A few years ago, as I walked to catch a train, I came upon a man assaulting a prostitute because she would not surrender the dollars I could see clutched in her hand. He was bent over her and chocking her. I came up behind him without any warning and kicked so hard in the side of his head that when he fell over I thought I had killed him. Fortunately he was only knocked silly and stayed that way until the cops came.
Was I immoral to use violence to stop further violence?
Hirsoshima and Nagasaki were necessary. They were unavoidable. And because they stopped the continued violence, they were moral.
My father, in the Australian Air Force, was fighting the Japanese in the islands just above Australia. He has horrific memories of the way the Japanese treated his comrades and other prisoners of war. He also remembers that they would never surrender, they were embued with a warior cult that regarded death as preferable to defeat or surrender.
The Japanese came incredibly close to conquering Australia and from what we have subsequently learnt they apparrently had plans to virtually kill or enslave much of of the population.
Thanks to help from the US, Australia was saved from invasion and a fate too horrible to contemplate.
I get rather upset when I read people accusing the United States of a war crime by dropping the bombs. The Japanese had no intention of surrendering even after they saw Germany defeated. The war would have dragged on and on, in the most bloody island to island fighting, if the bombs had not been droppped.
And quite probably my father would NOT have survived, would not have come home and I would not be alive.
I must add as a postscript that years after the war my father, who until recently owned and ran an engineering business here in Australia, came to have business dealings with the Japanese.
In the course of time he formed a real friendship with some of the Japanese, visited Japan, and still exchanges Christmas cards and other letters with them.
I have the greatest sympathy for the feelings of Joe Harkins and Richard above. God knows, moral decisions are not always easy. They are sometimes excruciating – considering the root of that word – crux – ‘Cross’ – literally so.
My house has been invaded. My 16-year-old daughter is being help by the invader. He has another victim with him – so far as I know, an innocent person. He says, “here is this innocent person. Whilst I hold the gun pointed at you – to make sure you don’t attack me – take a knife and cut his throat. If you do not, I will rape and then dismember your daughter before your eyes.”
God help me, I do not say I would have the courage to do what I must, in fact, do: refuse to kill the innocent person, even to save my daughter from a terrible violation.
There is a fundamental difference between unavoidable innocent lives lost and a deliberate attack on the innocent. The terrorist, believing – indeed, in some cases, having – an honourable end in sight – threatens the innocent to achieve it. It is wrong. Our governments torture terrorists, with the possibly convincing aim of preventing thousands of deaths. It is wrong.
We may not do evil that good may come.
Is it really a certainty that the goal of the bombings was to scare Japan with the threat of attacking the population? This is something that is often read into the story, but is there any proof that this is in fact what the United States government had in mind?
I do not know the answer to this question myself. I only wish to point out that this is a very critical question as far as this analysis goes, and it’s really just glossed over. To make the argument stand, this point needs to be demonstrated. If it can be demonstrated, then the judgment that it was an unjust action and perhaps of a war-crime stand. If it is not demonstrable, then I do not believe the judgment is (at least by this argumentation) valid.
I’d like to propose what I think is a much more apt analogy for consideration:
Imagine that there is an epidemic sweeping the world, which has already caused the death of hundreds of thousands and, based on history and epidemiology, is projected to cause the deaths of at least 1,000,000, and more likely twice that, over the course of the next year, and possibly untold millions more beyond that first year, if unchecked.
Now imagine that US researchers have produced an immunization to this disease, but that this immunization itself directly causes the death of some certain percentage of those that receive it, so that if the drug is deployed, it is expected to halt the epidemic but also to directly cause the deaths of 100,000 people in the first few days, and 100,000 more over subsequent years.
Now, let’s say that the US government will, if it decides to make the drug available, warn everyone it can that it will cause many thousands of people to die, and leave to individuals the choice of receiving it or not. Of course, many children and dependents will naturally not in fact have a choice, as their parents and guardians will make the choice for them. And the US government knows that some other governments will not allow their citizens to have a choice in the matter (one way or the other), either through force or by deceit.
Would you say that the US government _must not_ make this drug available, per the dictum that “we may not do evil that good may come”, since it projects that doing so will _directly_ cause the swift death of 100,000 people, and perhaps 100,000 more over the subsequent years, though it will (likely) save millions more lives over those same years? Should the US government instead suppress the drug, allow the epidemic to run its course, and hope that its epidemiology turns out not to accurately predict the disease’s progression, so that in fact fewer than 200,000 more people die from it? And if it did make the drug available, with the intention of saving millions of lives, would you also say that it nonetheless _intended_ to cause the death of 200,000 as well, and thus did evil?
@Carl Hostetter:
No, of course it should make it available. An action that has a risk of harm is not the same as an action that is intended to do harm. It is the intent that counts.
Shane’s remark above is interesting – but it seems to me seriously questionable whether dropping an atom bomb on a city could conceivably not be intended to harm non-combatants – not, that is, simply intended to destroy war-making capacity, but intending to harm non-combatants as a direct end. At least I would say that anyone who made that case would be in the position of self-deception.
The bombs were, I am told, aimed at city centres, not at any munitions plants, etc.
Carl’s case might be more analogous if one said that you had a drug which could heal some people but that it had to kill others – not as an unintentional side-effect but that it could not heal except by killing people. Then I would say it was wrong.
The Catholic principal of double effect applies here. Joe’s case of the attack is a good example. His intent was to stop the attack, which was correct. That he could not do so without the risk of harming – perhaps killing – his attacker did not make it wrong.
Bombing an enemy missile site, even if you know that some innocent persons are going to be killed, is permissible. Killing those people is not a means to the end of destroying the site.
So in the case of the vaccine – if side deaths are unavoidable it could still be something you might have to do. If the side deaths were the way it cured others – then, no, that is wrong.
You may do good even if unavoidable evil is a side effect (though here you must use prudence – here, indeed, the end must justify the means). You may not do evil in order that good may come.
jj
John, I absolutely agree that it is the intent that counts. But I submit that those who decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no more _intent_ to kill innocents than would the US government in the analogy I propose (and no less). In both cases the death of large numbers of innocents is a foreseeable consequence: my analogy is meant to probe the question of whether that fact alone is equivalent to intent to kill innocents. You haven’t shown why it would be in the bombings but would not be in my analogy. Further, it is simply untrue that the bombings _had_ to kill innocents: if in fact every last person in those cities had evacuated, the bombs would have been just as massive and their destructive potential just as obvious. We knew that would not happen: but this fact again goes to _intent_, not to _necessity_,
P.S. You speak, John, as though neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were in any way military targets. That is simply not true. Hiroshima was an industrial and administrative center directly supporting the war effort, and a military assembly hub. Nagasaki was one of the largest sea-ports supporting the war effort, and also an industrial and munitions center. These facilities in each city were in fact the direct and proximate targets of the bombings.
John, I absolutely agree that it is the intent that counts. But I submit that those who decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no more _intent_ to kill innocents than would the US government in the analogy I propose (and no less). In both cases the death of large numbers of innocents is a foreseeable consequence: my analogy is meant to probe the question of whether that fact alone is equivalent to intent to kill innocents.
The deaths in the course of the vaccine are totally in God’s hands and as such, the knowledge lies outside of the mind of man who will live and who will die. Not so with an atom bomb. It can’t be used for anything else in this scenario but to kill and the leaders who dropped it knew that.
What they didn’t know was the effects on large populations. Radiation, etc. was not understood at the time. It is possible that the people who argued for dropping the boms saw it as just a bigger better bomb.
Making the argument that this is a war crime is a bit of historical retrojecting of modern understanding. Today, we know that if one were to drop a bomb, it would be a war crime. Back then, it may not have been clearly unserstood. Where there is a defect in knowldege, the culpability is mitigated.
By the way, what is the tyhreshold of a war crime: 1 kiloton, 100 kiloton?
The Chiken
Last year Jimmy gave an apologetic for using nukes in Japan as being morally licit. it was pretty contraversial.
Now, given the title of this blog entry, it seems like he’s schizophrenic on the issue.
“The deaths in the course of the vaccine are totally in God’s hands and as such, the knowledge lies outside of the mind of man who will live and who will die.”
I anticipated that someone might make this argument, and would dispute the notion that the question of who will or will not die is out of God’s hand in the case of the bombings, but won’t bother because that question is in fact beside the point: which is that in both case it is absolutely foreseeable that large numbers of people will die as a direct result of either action or inaction. You haven’t answered the questions with which I closed my post, and which the analogy was designed to explore.
If in fact the atom bombs were intended “only to kill”, which you flatly assert is their only possible use, then why did the US do everything it could to effect an evacuation of these cities? Why didn’t it just nuke one of the many cities of Japan that had far greater populations, and with absolutely no warning?
“Last year Jimmy gave an apologetic for using nukes in Japan as being morally licit. It was pretty controversial.”
Incorrect. Jimmy’s post last year on this subject was along the sames lines as this one.
I would like to see that article that Dan refers to; if possible.
Acts are judged by their consequences
Acts are not judged only by their consequences. They are also judged by their intentions and by the means used to achieve the consequence.
Suppose a man intends to kill another because he wants to take his property. He shoots him intending to kill him, but by some miracle (or crazy luck), instead of killing him, the bullet hits and removes a cancerous tumor, thus saving the would be victim’s life.
The consequence: the victim’s life is saved. Does that make the man’s attempted murder a moral act? I don’t think so.
These facilities in each city were in fact the direct and proximate targets of the bombings.
If these facilities were the targets, and not the cities themselves, why would you need nukes? It does not take a nuke to take out a port or a manufacturing facility.
It seems there was more at target than just the facilities.
I had heard that the US dropped leaflets over the cites telling everyone to get out as it was going to be bombed. Did we actually do that? If we did how does that affect the moral argument of dropping the bombs?
I do not understand this moaning, pissing, and wailing over the a-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese Empire was intent on taking over Asia. For decades, the armed forces of Japan fought wars of agression to take over Korea, China, and other contries. They cruely mistreated anyone who came under their power. Nanking and Baatan come to mind. Yet, people like you Mr Akin whine that we toasted two cities that were legitimate military targets. The inhabitents of those cities were warned weeks in advance that their towns were going to be flattened. It was their own stupidity and fanaticism that got them scorched by Fat Man and Little Boy. Your attempt at historical revisionism is a slap in the face of all the US soldiers, sailors, and aviators who served and sometimes died for our country. Many of these brave men went through hell on the battlefield and many of them suffered horribly as Jap POW’S, some being used as guinea pigs in medical ‘research’. Then, you come along years after the war, and crap on these men. As far as I’m concerned, people like you and Mark Shea are de facto propagandists for our enemies past and present. And in closing, The Japs never apologised for any of the real war crimes they committed, so I’m never going to be sorry for stomping Hiroshima and Nagasaki into rubble.
“If these facilities were the targets, and not the cities themselves, why would you need nukes?”
Because the nukes would guarantee the destruction of those facilities — which included, by the way, hardened bunkers and compounds and other such military facilities in those areas — thus clearing those areas of defenses against subsequent US invasion should the Japanese not capitulate (see here: <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf> for documentation of this deliberation); which could not be guaranteed by conventional bombing (as the previous history of WWII amply demonstrated). This would in turn demonstrate to the Japanese government that their hardened defenses would be of no avail, in a way that no other demonstration could.
Oops, the interface at my link: see if this works: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf
“steveL”, see here: http://www.damninteresting.com/ww2-america-warned-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-citizens
Joe, Richard, and Carl, bravo for telling the truth about the nuking of the Jap cities. It’s painfully obvisious that Mr Akin and many of the commentators here have no actual knowledge of WWII. It’s also plain to see they are driven by pre-conceived ideas that have never been tested by reality. The postings and behavior of both Akin and his buddy Mark Shea remind me of the 60’s protestors who wailed about American “aggression” against North Vietnam. well, we all know how that trned out, don’t we?
@steve dalton:
I think you misunderstand. I have heard no one complaining about American aggression against Japan during World War 2. The point is not whether Japan ought to have been fought against, and defeated soundly. I cannot conceive anyone thinking otherwise. The question is as to what means we can legitimately use in that, or any other, fight against evil. Some means are intrinsically evil and cannot be used, however good the end aimed at.
My own father was discharged from the US Navy as a result of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Had the war dragged on, he might have been a casualty. I am very glad he was not a casualty. That, and millions of other good results, cannot justify the means used. We become as bad as those we oppose if we go along those lines.
A very present argument is going on today about abortion. In many cases, abortion is being justified based on a good result. In some cases, the justification of abortion is supported by deeply emotionally gripping human circumstances. Who would not feel an agonising sympathy for the 14-year old girl pregnant as a result of rape, perhaps rape by her 19-year-old brother. But the child who is a product of that rape is an innocent. It is no less deserving of life because of the crime committed by its father in begetting it. We cannot save the mother from what is undeniably going to be a terrible change in what she might have expected her life to be by killing that child.
Neither may we save some unknown number – perhaps in the tens or hundreds of thousands – of lives – possibly including my father’s – by intentionally killing non-combatants.
jj
Jimmy, could you do a post further explicating the difference between combatant and non-combatant?
For example, what if the Japanese had gotten wind of what America’s plans were and decided to *target* all the scientists on the Manhattan Project for death. Could these scientists be considered combatants, since they were working to design the secret weapon to be used in America’s war effort? What about the guys in hard hats just working in the factory to build the bomb? What if they knew they were working on a secret weapon? What if they didn’t know and thought they were innocently making a roller coaster for a theme park? What if they volunteered to make the secret weapon. What if they were conscripted and forced to work on the weapon? What about the bus driver who took them to work everyday at the factory that was building the bomb? What about the farmer who grew the food that all of these people ate to keep them alive so they could do the designing and working that would build the secret weapon that would eventually be used by the army for a war crime. What about the banker who put up the financing to build the factory where the secret weapon would be built? What about the investors who put their money in the bank? What about all the other people working in all the other parts of the economy that produced the wealth that was then taxed by the government to use to fund the secret weapon project?
You see where I’m going with this. Where precisely is the line drawn between those that can be legitimately targeted and those that cannot be legitimately targeted for killing in war.
(Also, would whether or not a nation is the unjust aggressor, or the just wager of war, affect who they could and could not target? I’m thinking here that an unjust aggressor could not even legitimately target an innocent nation’s soldiers, because well, they’re innocent.)
I would really like to see you do one of your great posts on this.
Just to add to my previous “What ifs”, what if any of the people I listed above gave their moral (and material) support to the war effort? What if they did not? (And what if the moral/material support they gave was for an unjust war? What if it was for a just war?)
And here’s a second question for you, Jimmy. Let’s say that hypothetically speaking, in an alternate dimension very much like our own, the President Harry Truman of that dimension did not have the intention of killing a single innocent resident of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His intention was only the complete and utter destruction of the infrastructure and property of these entire cities. Essentially to wipe these cities off the map, but to spare all lives. So in order to accomplish this, let’s say he gave these cities an entire month to completely evacuate so that everyone could escape alive. He gave a very clear public warning to everyone that could not be mistaken. (Maybe he even offered all the assistance necessary to accomplish this in record time.)
Then he bombed the cities.
The threat then to the Japanese government that would convince them to surrender was not the continued killing of innocents, but the continued destruction of the property and infrastructure of city after city.
Would the moral calculus change under this hypothetical scenario?
Note to bill912 and Luciem Syme
In May 7, 2009, under the blog title, “The moral use of Nukes”, Jimmy Akin states that:
“I do think that there are situations in which the moral use of nuclear weapons is morally legitimate, even if it means that a city is destroyed as a result.”
He does then go on to state:
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t such cases,”
Hope that clarifies, as I did mis-quote Jimmy.
A.M.D.G.
2nd Annual Hiroshima Fight!
BillyHW: I’ll see what I can do!
Terrence: 🙂
A.M.D.G.
I commented about this last year and I was very wrong, too emotional and exceedingly stupid in my reasoning. The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki most definitely violated the natural moral law. I’m not judging President Truman or anyone else, of course. I’m just judging the action itself. I apologize to Mr. Akin and others for having to endure my foolishness at the time.
Thanks Dan for clarifying.
It makes sense that the teachings of the Church place restrictions on warfare, but beyond that I can’t see ever using nuclear weaponry. It’s insanity in terms of the survival of humanity. I recently visited the Trinity test sight in southern New Mexico. Out the highway there’s a sign that commemorates the test site. Someone wrote at the bottom with a Sharpie marker “Never Again.” I say amen.