JAPAN: Hiroshima and the Bomb

David Pike writes in reply to Edith Coliver:

"In my essay, "Why either? why both?", that closes the forthcoming Closing of the Second World War, I think I have looked carefully at every argument before concluding that dropping the bomb and dropping the second was "right" since it saved hundreds of thousands of lives: the lives of Allied prisoners of war, Allied civilians interned (who were dying in thousands a week), Japanese civilians, and last of all Allied and Japanese soldiers, who like all soldiers accepted the principle that once in uniform you run the risk of dying.

As for the moral argument against the use of the bomb qua bomb, I find it too sophisticated for me. The 60,000 or more civilians living in the caves of Okinawa who were roasted by the flame-throwers, or those caught in the Great Fire of Tokyo, did not die less horribly. The genetic factor is the most powerful argument against Truman's decision, but who around Truman knew about the genetic factor? If those around Truman knew about Japanese Unit 631 and the use of the plague bomb on two Chinese Nationalist cities, making Japan the only country in the world to wage war with biological weapons, they might not have been deterred even by the genetic factor. Professor Alan Younger (who worked on BW in the UK in WW II) was on television recently to declare that the plague bomb was "a thousand or a hundred thousand (sic) times more deadly than the atomic bomb, because there is no known prophylaxis and no known cure, and because it is effective over many generations." Finally, on the racist question, there is a dossier somewhere in the Roosevelt archives to show that in March 1945 FDR gave his approval to using the bomb against Nazi Germany, "if necessary."

Ronald Hilton - 8/18/00