With the Second World War, we witnessed the end of a cruel and oppressive regime, of the Asian equivalent to the Nazis. They had lost all the territories they had conquered — China, Korea, French Indo-China,  Thailand, Burma, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia etc –, they were isolated back on the Japanese archipelago, without a hope of winning the war; Japan was on its knees.

The United States had finished and tested nuclear weapons, leaving them with a new tool to consider. Rather than accept the costs of a land invasion on Japan, which had refused to surrender, it was decided that nuclear weapons should be used, so as to force them into an unconditional surrender.

Was it necessary to use nuclear weapons on them? No, it was not, but few things in life are necessary; rather than focus on necessity, we should look at what was for the best.

From this angle, I believe it difficult to claim with certainty that it was for the best or for the worst, but I have no doubts that it could have been better executed.

It would have been possible to isolate Japan, as it was no longer a threat, but is this really what we wanted? Should we have hoped that the hardships of the post-war situation would have eased down nationalism, that Japan would have become democratic and that such violence would never be repeated on the part of Japan? Or should we have ensured, as we did, that Japan would not become an isolated and hostile regime, a threat to both international peace and internal freedom and happiness.

I do not believe in isolated regimes; it is important that countries be integrated in the world community and that if their policies do not only flow against the opinion of the world community, but they present themselves as a threat that will act without provocation or rationale except expansionism and nationalism, then I believe it appropriate to eliminate this regime, if this can be achieved at a reasonable cost. The use of nuclear weapons is at least something that we had a right to consider.

I have heard claims that Japan was already engaged in negotiations towards surrender and thus, that we could have achieved the same end without the use of bombs. It is true that an agreement could have been forged without the use of bombs, but it seems highly unlikely that Japan would have agreed to the unconditional surrender that it finally did agree to.

Would a conditional surrender have worked, and how would Japan look today if we had agreed to this? Well, for one, those who were engaged in negotiations with Japan — the Soviets — did not seem to have much faith in the peaceful way, as they planned to, like the rest of the Allies, force Japan into an unconditional surrender, rather than take the easy route. After World War II, it was clear that pacifism had its limits and that we should not be too agreeable with regimes that have proved themselves to be hostile. We did this mistake with Germany, a mistake that lead us to the war in the first place, and it would seem dangerously foolish to repeat this mistake again after the war; like the cliché of the woman who always expects a violent man to change, who thinks that she can appease him and that everything will become different.

Some say that the nuclear use of weapons on Japan had nothing to do with forcing them to surrender, but was done so as to impress the Russians. I believe this argument to be weak. Did it factor in? Perhaps, but this does not mean that it was the prime factor, or even, that it was anything more than a bonus, a favourable consequence. If the United States had done this for the sake of impressing the Russians rather than for any other particular goal, then why did they use two nuclear weapons? I see no reason to justify the use of two a-bombs if the purpose was to impress; surely, the first one was enough.

Even then, though I am not familiar with the military policy of the era, it is also possible that making such a display was not, in terms of the Russia-United States rivalry, advantageous to the United States, as it encouraged the Soviets to pursue nuclear weapons so as to catch up with the United States. The best weapon is one the enemy does not know of.

I have looked at the issue with negotiations, as well as the theory that it was done so as to impress the Russians. The latter theory seems fundamentally flawed. As for negotiations: it is certainly possible that they would have succeeded, that Japan would have become as great a country as it is today; but it is nothing more than a possibility amongst others. If we place ourselves in the context of the era, if we look at the attitude of the leaders within Japan, then it is very understandable that the Allies did not want to engage in drawn-out negotiations with the Japanese: they presented a peaceful end (the Potsdam Agreement) and Japan refused.

This left the Allies with the military option, as they knew the terms by which Japan should surrender and they were not going to be flexible or patient about it. An invasion would clearly have been messy, while nuclear weapons seemed like an easy way to put an end to the war. However, it did lead to massive lost of civilian lives. Is it acceptable to wipe civilian populations to save one’s own soldiers? This seems dangerously close to using civilians as shields and I do not believe that we should see our soldiers as being worth more than any civilian.

I believe that, at the very least, the Allies should have chosen different targets for its nuclear weapons. They could have shown the havoc that they were able to unleash without having to kill so many innocent people. It is true that the targets were well-chosen in terms of ensuring that the Japanese would understand what they were facing, that their largest cities could be entirely wiped out if they did not surrender. However, I believe that this should have been kept as a last resort, that it would have been better to start out with something involving less innocent blood. A Japanese civilian is worth just as much as any other in terms of ethics; would it have been acceptable to kill so many civilians to end the war, were these civilians English, for example? I believe that, had the Allies taken this approach to their moral dilemma, that they would have been more likely to decide upon the most just course of action, which may very well have differed from the one that was taken. War is bloody, but this is no excuse to treat another nation’s civilians as being of lesser moral value, as more “disposable” than our own.

-Dussault

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1. [...] The value of Japanese blood, and the destruction of Hiroshima and … [...]

   Pingback by invasion of japan » Sheldon Drobny: The Myth of Hiroshima — June 9, 2009 @ 3:21 PM

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