The bombs on Hiroshima and (Catholic) Nagasaki

Bob Crowley

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I'm not trying to start an argument, but there was an article in the ABC news about a Japanese lady in Hiroshima.

The day Koko met the man who dropped a nuclear bomb on her family

This led me to read the another item, which was about Japanese Catholics. Nagasaki was probably the main centre of Japanese Catholicism at that time, and possibly still is.

Belief in God stopped Japan's Catholics from speaking out about the bomb, but not anymore

And then this.

Back to Hiroshima: Why Dropping the Bomb Saved Ten Million Lives

I've always believed that the bomb was a necessity, unfortunately. The problem is that now the genie is out of the bottle, it doesn't look like it wants to go back inside, and pop the cork closed after it.
 

Olmhinlu

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I'm trying to find it... your thread reminds me of a message I heard from Bishop Fulton Sheen in which he attributed the loosening of moral restraint in America to this very act.

I'll keep looking, but this article features relevant quotes from two separate sermons: Horror of Limitless Freedom: The Moral Fallout of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Highlights:

"Both obliteration bombing and use of the atomic bomb are immoral, Msgr. Sheen said, because 'they do away with the moral distinction that must be made in every war - a distinction between civilians and the military' ... [1946]

"Discussing arguments that use of the atomic bomb shortened the war and saved the lives of American fighting men, Msgr. Sheen declared: 'That was precisely the argument Hitler used in bombing Holland'." [1946]

"See how much the world has changed? Now, what made it change? I think maybe we can pinpoint a date: 8:15 in the morning, the sixth of August, 1945. Can any of you recall what happened on that day? ... it was the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima in Japan. When we flew an American plane over this Japanese city and dropped the atomic bomb on it we blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the civilian and the military, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, between the living and the dead - for even the living who escaped the bomb were already half-dead. So we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said 'We want no one limiting me'. So that, you people have heard the song, you've sung it yourselves: 'I gotta be me, I gotta be free'. We want no restraint, no boundaries, no limits. Have to do what I want to do. Now let's analyse that for a moment. Is that happiness: I gotta be me, I've got to have my own identity?" [1974]
 
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paul1149

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"Both obliteration bombing and use of the atomic bomb are immoral, Msgr. Sheen said, because 'they do away with the moral distinction that must be made in every war - a distinction between civilians and the military' ... [1946]
The problem with that line of thinking (and it generally is a good and necessary line of thinking), is that the Japanese population at large had been militarized. Their emperor was their god, and they had been indoctrinated to defend him and their homeland with pitchforks against atomic bombs if necessary, because they had been systematically lied to about the cruelty of the conquering Allies. Consequently, the lives saved by dropping those bombs greatly overshadows what was lost at the two cities. And the lives saved pertains to both Allied soldiers and Japanese civilians. Dropping the bombs was a lousy thing and no one should be happy about it; but it was a necessary thing.

In the same sense war itself is immoral, because we know going in that there is always going to be some degree of "collateral damage" in terms of the loss or maiming of human life. And yet sometimes we nonetheless must, taking what precautions we can, fight wars.
 
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Rhamiel

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Why do you need an atomic bomb or land invasion to defeat an island nation?

limited bombings focused on factories and military bases would have won the war, the Japanese surrendered in August after the two nuclear bombs were dropped but back in May of 1945 there were offers of a conditional surrender from Japan, but the USA would only accept unconditional surrender.
This unreasonable expectation extended the war, many lives were lost because Truman wanted to write Japans constitution.

imagine the USA looses a war with China and China gets to write our new Constitution!
Of course loosing wars have consequences, loss of land, restrictions on building up the military, paying debts, but to loose the right of National self determination, the principle this nation was founded on, well that is hypocritical and absurd
 
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Bob Crowley

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Most of the service men and women who fought in World War II are now dead through the toll of the years, if they didn't die during the war. There are very few left, and they're disappearing rapidly.

I extracted this paragraph from an ABC article written in April 2019. "In June last year (2018), the DVA (Australian Department of Veteran's Affairs) had just 13,278 veterans on its health card list, down from 23,000 the year before (2017)." I wonder how many are on the DVA health card system now?

But I don't think you'd find a lot of sympathy amongst them about whether the bomb should have been dropped or not. They were sick and tired of a prolonged and savage war, and the sooner it was ended the better. Who cared about the means?

And we'd be the same if we had been doing the fighting, not sitting in armchairs decades after the event.

I remember discussing the fact India had gotten the bomb in 1974 with my father, who was a WWII veteran.

We didn't get on to put it mildly, but his reply was "I don't blame them. They've got China and Pakistan just over the border, and they've had wars with both of them."
 
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