Japanese perspective on atomic bomb
- “Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy’s will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk”1 . The American government justified their use of the atomic bomb with an argument similar to the one proposed by Rhodes in the Manhattan Project documentary: “Mr. President, what will you tell the American people at your impeachment…when they found out that you had a weapon that could have ended the war and saved American lives and you decided not to use it.” They believed it to be an instrument of peace, one that would bring an earlier end to the conflict and thereby prevent a higher death toll. However, when objections are made to its use within the context of the time it was used (in other words, without the knowledge of how history unfolded), there exists strong evidence of why the use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese people was an unsightly display of inhumanity.
- The behaviors that we employ in warfare in a limited capacity are always at risk of being employed to a greater, sometimes limitless capacity. The use of the atomic bomb on unarmed noncombatants (to include women and children), regardless of justification, demonstrated that the United States believed this behavior to be appropriate. By doing this, they could have potentially opened the door to the widespread use of this behavior not only by us, but also by the numerous other nations developing this technology concurrently with us. This essentially could have very easily placed our world on a path to its own destructiveness, as well marking the creation of a more cruel world, one which is virtually void of moral and ethical limitations on conflict.
- The massacre of the Japanese people during WWII marked a key degradation of our nation’s morals. The realm of policy and grand military strategy coexists during a time of war with the nature in which we fight. Following Hiroshima we could no longer lay claim to any distinction of moral uprightness and our reputation on a national scale was placed in significant jeopardy. Our actions were inhumane, were performed primarily out of anger and frustration towards an enemy that refused to yield, and as such abolished any moral or ethical foundation upon which we previously sat. We rid ourselves of any adherence to justice, honor, and showed the world that we as a nation were willing to engage in destructive behavior to a scale never before seen.
- Lastly, there exists a rebuttal to the argument of saving American lives and using the atomic bomb as a shortcut to peace. War is traditionally viewed as a formal, declared conflict between armed hostiles. The nameless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of non-combatants was not an act of war, but rather an act of genocide, made out of selfish personal interest and frustration towards a relentless enemy. Although indeed sparing American lives, these saved lives came at the expense of a population detached from combat and who had spent the previous years shedding the same tears for lost loved ones as their American counterpart.
Sources
- Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
- Modern Marvels: The Manhattan Project