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Thanks Mrs. Don-o. Both the Axis & the Allies believed that by bombing cities & killing civilians, the other side would surrender. The Axis did this to Nanking, Shanghai, London, Sarajevo, Warsaw etc. while the Allies did it to Dresden, Pforzeim, Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, etc. Hiroshima & Nagasaki are the 1s which continue to be discussed so many years after the war because nuclear/atom bombs were used, but they would’ve been inevitable as again it continued our policy of bombing cities with the hope of the enemy surrendering.

I understand that those born in August 1942 & killed in August 1945 are innocent war victims who did nothing wrong even if their fathers or other relatives took part in atrocities-Rape of Nanking, Unit-731 in Manchuria, etc. But @ the same time, I also understand why President Harry S. Truman dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki though again, I think he should’ve dropped the atom bomb(s) elsewhere in Japan with fewer civilian deaths.

The problem I have is that there are too many people who express hate towards Hiroshima & Nagasaki’s victims. If they say ‘unfortunately, dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki was what was needed to end the war though the small kids are innocent war victims’, then that’s fine. But way too many have told me that they’re glad ‘we fried them’ incl. kids. There’s no reason to express happiness over the children killed & maimed even if you think their deaths was needed to end a war.

There’s no justification to hate Hiroshima & Nagasaki’s victims-definitely not the kids who were killed though 1 may agree with the decision to drop the atom bombs. Also the hostility & personal attacks given by some against Jimmy Akin is bad. Anyhow, wars are just out of the ordinary understanding. As long as we’ve had them, more who are innocent & don’t want part of a war end up being the 1s killed & wounded.

Finally you may have known that after WW2 in Europe, there were cases where Czechs & Poles killed their German neighbors in both nations. The Czechs & Poles sometimes killed German children & they said that because the Nazis pillaged their nations, that they had the right to kill Germans incl. children. I once had a Polish man tell me that he doesn’t care about the German children killed. His view is that when your nation has been raped & pillaged, after 6 years of war, you’re probably not going to have good humor. He said that the German children may have been innocent but because their parents were Nazis, this excuses what their neighbors did. Anyhow, it’s sad that those who didn’t take part nor want part of a war end up being the victims & how hostility is there towards the victims-that’s what Jimmy Akin should’ve said.

As a vet of WWII and just a few days from the invasion of Japan, no previous combat, I generally believe that combat, air, ground and sea, is the place to wage wars. However. reviewing scenes of Nazi and Japanese youth celebrating victories and growing into the regular combat age where they would actually be killing persons like myself (my brother as a young man died in the battle for Okinawa) I pause and think the situation is one of ‘sooner better than later’. Harsh if not uncivilized thinking but war kills no matter where or how. All sides and populations get involved.

I understand that those born in August 1942 & killed in August 1945 are innocent war victims who did nothing wrong even if their fathers or other relatives took part in atrocities-Rape of Nanking, Unit-731 in Manchuria, etc.

There's another factor to consider as well: the responsibility of a nation to safeguard the innocents within its own population during wartime.

Exemplified by how the British evacuated children from London out to the countryside during the Blitz.

Militarized industrial capacity and urban population centers pretty much went hand-in-hand during WWII (and before, and afterwards). That capacity was a legitimate target, as were the civilians directly employed within it or indirectly employed supporting it. Japan, and Germany for that matter, had a moral obligation to ensure that true "innocents" weren't in the target zone.

The original article lays out three qualifications:

1.) (T)hat Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such resources (not that difficult to show)

2.) (T)hat these resources themselves were proportionate in value to the massive collateral damage that would be inflicted (a much more difficult task)

3.) (T)hat there was no other practical way—like a more targeted bombing—to take them out (again a difficult task)

Despite the writers conclusions, 2 and 3 really aren't all that difficult tasks. For 2, Hiroshima was a military city and regional IJA headquarters (located within Hiroshima Castle and the surrounding areas). Nagasaki was a major industrial city with massive military production/output (the naval shipyard there build the superbattleship Musashi, amongst many other ships). The populations were militarized, with women and young children being schooled in how to fight to the last ... using sharpened bamboo pikes.

For 3, anyone who understands what "precision" WWII bombing was like knows that it was anything but "precise". Yes, the Norden Bombsight was a great technological achievement, but the concept that a bomber (let alone bomber streams containing hundreds of aircraft) could put bombs into a pickle-barrel with one was rah-rah wartime propaganda. Successful "targeted" destruction of legitimate military targets usually took what was later referred to as "carpet bombing". And in situations where the legitimate military targets were placed within population centers, destruction of such targets inevitably resulted in mass civilian deaths.