Ultimately, the deaths of Japanese civilians were not desired as an end, but were intended as a means. The reasons given included: Japanese military leaders would be unconvinced of the bomb’s destructiveness against cities and even if impressive, a demonstration would eliminate the shock effect, especially the psychological impact on leaders, of any subsequent bombs. More disturbingly, a proposal to drop a demonstration bomb on an uninhabited area was rejected. Regarding discrimination, the claim that civilians were not targeted-not intentionally used as means to a good end-seems dubious. On the other hand, a military target that would have produced proportionate collateral damage was available and ignored: Japanese troops massing in the south around Kyushu. Regarding proportionality, although legitimate military targets existed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their military value was not proportionate to the foreseeable collateral damage. In fact, I don’t believe the bombings were defensible through standard just war in bello reasoning about proportionality and discrimination. However, I would defend the morality of the two bombs, but not for the conventional reasons. Obviously, the most common complaint is that Japanese civilians were intentionally targeted as a means of coercing the regime’s unconditional surrender-which is what terrorists do. While the bombings were widely supported after the war, approval has waned over the years, especially in academia. Since 1945, public opinion about the ethics of the two bombs has shifted. Proportionality requires that the innocent lives saved by the use of force against a legitimate military target be greater than the innocent lives lost as unavoidable collateral damage. Discrimination requires that rights-bearing noncombatants never be intentionally targeted as ends or means. An undeniably good consequence.Īll the Midshipmen have learned from their favorite course, NE203, the in bello principles of discrimination and proportionality. But on August 15 th, and arguably because of these bombs, the Japanese regime surrendered unconditionally, thus ending the Second World War. At least 150,000 civilians were immediately killed, and more would later die. On the 6 th of August 1945, and then again on the 9 th of August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This past August marked the 75 th anniversary of the most ethically controversial decisions in the history of warfare.
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