Was the decision to drop the bombs on civilians morally justifiable?
Answers
Explanation:
Absolutely! Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both valid military targets and both had been leafleted telling the inhabitants that the cities were going to be bombed. If they chose to stay in a target area, that was on them.
Besides, it was the only way to get the Japanese to stop fighting. The people who argue against the use of bombs seem to have no idea of the circumstances of their use and no idea of what the alternatives were. Apparently, people who take this position don't understand that we were attacked by Japan. We didn't attack them. They attacked us! We didn't start it, they did. And the only way to stop them from killing was to drop bombs.
Japan had begun a war of aggression in 1931 with the invasion of China. Imperial Japan waged the Great East Asia War (Daitoa Senso) to supposedly “liberate” the Asian peoples from the yoke of Western Imperialism. This “selfless goal” was to bring the enlightened modernization of Meiji Japan to the hopelessly backward Asians who were under the heel of the West. The United States was appalled at the brutal invasion of a huge but largely helpless country and began to apply diplomatic pressure to end the invasion, but without success.