Most justifications for the A-bomb attacks present the decision in this way, as if it was a simple either/or proposition: EITHER the U.S. had to do a full-out ground invasion OR the U.S. had to nuke two major cities. Of course in real life there were many options, the outcomes and consequences of which we will never know. Such options included:
- Waging a war of attrition through continued conventional air strikes
- Blowing up a nearby island or two as a demonstration of the new A-bomb’s power
- Accepting different terms of surrender (Japan was pretty much ready to give up, it was just a matter of how)
- Waiting longer between Hiroshima and Nagasaki (leaders were still trying to figure out what the hell happened when the second bomb hit)
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Any indiscriminate killing of civilians by large-scale bombing or other means is reprehensible and arguably a war crime. But given the continuing horrors of the war for people on both sides, the stubbornness of the Japanese government, and an apparent lack of acceptable options for bringing the war to a quick conclusion, I’m hesitant to pass harsh judgement on those who made the decision to drop the atomic bombs. Even with decades to reflect on the events of the war and the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it’s not clear if the alternative options would have led to less suffering.
One thing that I wish that more people were aware of was the horrible suffering that was inflicted by the intense firebombing campaign against Tokyo. The single “Operation Meetinghouse” raid in 1945 killed more people than either atomic bomb (even counting any later health effects from radiation) and the burns sustained by many thousands of survivors were every bit as horrific as anything that the A-bomb victims endured. Why is it that we tend to fixate on the moral complexities of the A-bomb attacks (which did end the war, after all) but the firebombing raids are almost never discussed?
Along those lines, it’s incomprehensible to me that various incendiary weapons such as napalm, which historically have been shown to kill more people than the A-bombs did, are not classified as chemical weapons or WMDs under international law. If given the choice to be killed in an inferno or a gas attack, I’m not sure that I’d choose the inferno.
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That is true, we can’t know for sure if the other alternatives would have yielded a better or worse overall result. But it’s still disingenuous to claim there was no reasonable alternative to a double-atomic-bombing, since several were proposed and ultimately rejected.
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