Well, you have named one decision maker involved, to wit: Truman (you also mentioned that FDR was President during the Manhattan Project); and you have also made reference to "some senior military or political people"!
Having previously said that the decision makers did not have access to a lot of information; and after stressing how important this was...you have done a very inadequate job of presenting a case for such an important issue: one name, and a mention of some (unspecified) post war interviews.
Even if you assume that the people interviewed where completely honest and that their opinion was correct, FDR would not have had access to this information or a lot of other historical information that we now have
No, Twofowler! FDR would have had some trouble having access to interviews conducted after WW11! But then, FDR didn't make the decision! Truman made the decision on July 21.
Nobody involved in making the decision had access to post war interviews. But they certainly had access to the knowledge that the only obstacle in the way of surrender was the "unconditional" clause, which was unacceptable to a people who worshiped their Emperor. Although this was said repeatedly, it was not accepted until after the bombs had had a live test: then they accepted a conditional surrender.
FDR was involved in the Manhattan Project so obviously had authorized the race to build the bomb. After his death the bomb did become feasible as a weapon. Many meetings took place between senior strategists as to when, or if, or how to employ such a deadly device. As you correctly assume: FDR had no input into this decision which was ultimately decided in favor of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima which was 95 % civilians.
As you either do not know who were involved in making this decision, or you do not wish to have what they knew scrutinized; I will, therefore, post a site which will allow you to see the people and processes involved in this terrible event. The people involved as senior strategists were Lee Butler, James Byrnes, Andrew Goodpaster, Joseph Grew, Leslie Groves, John McCLoy, FDR (involved in the Manhattan Project), Henry Stimson, and Truman.
I will post the timeline on the next post as everything does not here fit.
I have just wasted much time, some weeks back, in trying to hold a sensible discussion on this issue with a smallish person who preferred to take a weasel in the corner approach to fact finding. I do hope that you intend a more reasoned approach. If we simply ignore the words and advisements which were made by the people involved, then we are asessing our own ability to be impartial and rational.
My position is the same as that described by Lee Butler:
"my purpose is not to accuse but to assess. It's to try to understand the lessons that might be drawn from that. It's to try and understand the consequences of having dropped atomic devices on Japan."
We DO have the benefit of hindsight. We CAN seek to be honest enough to winnow out the facts, and to assess the moral lessons involved. Having done so we can view it in light of (for instance) "JUST WAR" theory:
plato.stanford.edu
"The just war tradition has enjoyed a long and distinguished pedigree, including such notables as Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Suarez, Vattel and Vitoria. Hugo Grotius probably deserves credit for being the most comprehensive and formidable member of the tradition; and James T. Johnson is the authoritative historian of this tradition. Many of the rules developed by the just war tradition have since been codified into contemporary international laws governing armed conflict, such as The Hague and Geneva Conventions. The tradition has thus been doubly influential, dominating both moral and legal discourse surrounding war. It sets the tone, and the parameters, for the great debate...
There are three widely recognized rules of jus in bello.
1. Discrimination. Soldiers are only entitled to target those who are, in Walzer’s words, "engaged in harm." Thus, when they take aim, soldiers must discriminate between the civilian population, which is morally immune from direct and intentional attack, and those legitimate military, political and industrial targets involved in rights-violating harm. While some collateral civilian casualties are excusable, it is wrong to take deliberate aim at civilian targets. An example would be saturation bombing of residential areas..."
Clearly both the allies and the enemy violated these ethical concerns. Some are smug about it (I don't mean you), while some recognize that with the incredible power to destroy which has come into the hands of many nations: there comes an ethical responsibility to assess the past, and not merely to defend it.
In any case, it is pointless to argue about minutia, when the issue is targeting the instant deaths of men, women, and children. It is hard to grasp, isn't it? Can you imagine the city in which you live being obliterated and all your family and everyone else being vaporised? I cannot. It must never happen again.
Truman made it clear that the objective was to only strike military targets, and to carefully avoid civilians. Then (and God is this ironic) he claims to have achieved his goal in Hiroshima. I wonder which "civilians" he was trying to avoid??
If the following post is read carefully, certain conclusions become evident, or at least highly probable. |
