On March 23, 1945 the Japanese government ordered the formation of the Volunteer Fighting Corps. Contrary to the name of the organization, there was nothing voluntary about it. All Japanese males from 15-60 and all Japanese women from 17-40 were considered to have “enlisted” in this organization. This produced a force of approximately 28,000,000, overwhelmingly made up of old men, girls and women, since the Japanese had already conscripted virtually every male of military age. The Japanese military was made responsible for training and arming this huge force. In practice this often resulted in masses of Japanese civilians drilling with spears, Japan lacking sufficient small arms to intially arm the civilian-soldiers.
Although it had its comical “Dad’s Army” aspect, the mobilization scheme was deadly serious. Volunteer Fighting Corps units in the event of invasion were to be “married” to regular units and provide combat support and combat services. They would in effect serve as cannon fodder to spare the trained and armed Japanese regular Army units. They were planned to serve as garrisons for the host of defensive bastions being constructed throughout Japan. Special units were trained to conduct a guerilla war behind American lines as the invasion progressed. The Japanese were proceeding forward with these plans with their usual efficiency, and by the planned invasion time of November 1945 the Volunteer Fighting Corps would have been a formidable force multiplier for the Japanese Army, albeit at the cost of hideous casualties among the impressed civilians.
Richard Frank, in his magisterial Downfall, estimates that the fatalities among these civilian soldiers opposing Operation Olympic would have been in the range of 380,000.
What about these 3,401 Hiroshima children — were they part of the mobilization scheme?
http://ampp3d.mirror.co.uk/2014/08/06/the-3401-hiroshima-children-who-went-to-school-and-didnt-come-back/
Doubtless they would have been if American troops had had to fight their way through Hiroshima block by bloody block in Operation Olympic in November ’45. (One hundred thousand civilians died in block to block fighting in Manila at the beginning of ’45 and that is with MacArthur going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.) That of course assumes that they hadn’t died in the famine that historically MacArthur barely averted with massive shipments of food from the States following the surrender after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course they might well have died prior to November in the carpet bombing of cities that would have ramped up as the invasion date neared.
The persons morally responsible for every death in the Pacific War are the same people who led the nation during World War II that embraces pretended victimhood at this time each year.
Yes, this would truly be a fearsome force that would inflict most of the 50k American casualties planners expected upon invasion of Japan. Of course, no such invasion was even really needed, given that the Jap navy was gone, we had total air superiority, and could have simply strangled them into submission.
But this laughable paper “army” does not in any way take away from the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was full of civilians, American and Allied prisoners, and a few hundred garrison troops. When they were incinerated, they were in so sense of the word combatants.
Because starving civilians to death is less immoral.
Sorry for the non-sequitur. Wrong thread.
Glad to read Donald biting the bullet (so to speak) and having us bomb Japanese school children (as young as first grade — seven and eight years old?) as they might pose a threat during our hypothetical invasion. What about the Japanese babies? Did they have a role as part of the mobilization force?
Meanwhile, I think it would help everyone to get out your Veritatis Splendor and do some serious study:
Why you apologizing, Ernst? your statement:
“Because starving civilians to death is less immoral.”
Was actually entirely relevant to Tom’s “plan”
Because apparently starving to death nearly ALL of the babies in Japan is a better outcome. Near genocide is apparently to be preferred to horrible consequentialism.
So you don’t think children are a threat? Wish someone would tell… pretty much every nation in the world (as they all have a history of using kids in battle). But wait! Here comes Jeffrey to tell us how all of history and human experience is wrong and guns won’t work if someone under the age of fifteen pulls the trigger.
I guess Jefferey S. would have had it that we would have surrendered after Pearl Harbor.
I was confused because I was doing too many things at once and none of them well.
You know, multi-tasking.
“Glad to read Donald biting the bullet (so to speak) and having us bomb Japanese school children (as young as first grade — seven and eight years old?) as they might pose a threat during our hypothetical invasion.”
Jeff, please try not to act more ignorant than you are. You know precisely what I was saying and you have no good response, so you bloviate. The dropping of the atomic bombs spared a great many more people in Japan, than the lives they took. All the bleating by you won’t alter that hard fact. Critics of Truman have no solutions to the problem he confronted so they engage in hand waving and useless emotimg. I thank God that you were not at the helm of this nation in ’45 for us to have incurred an additional one million casualties, several million more dead Japanese and who knows how many more dead Chinese and the other occupied people living under the Rising Sun.
“Yes, this would truly be a fearsome force that would inflict most of the 50k American casualties planners expected upon invasion of Japan.”
Where do you get that rubbish Tom? The Joint Chiefs predicted in April of ’45 456,000 casualties for Operation Olympic. Throw in Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu, and estimated casualties were 1,200,000, of which KIAs would have been 267,000. For comparison, taking Okinawa alone cost in excess of 100,000 American casualties, 20,0000 of them fatalities.
“simply strangled them into submission.”
Pretty words for starving to death several million Japanese. All the while on the Asian mainland at least 300,000 people a month in occupied territories, assuming no major military operations, would have been been killed by the Japanese occupation. Bravo, for such a “moral” alternative.
“The dropping of the atomic bombs spared a great many more people in Japan, than the lives they took.”
(1) This is an educated guess — no one here has a time machine and gets to replay the past. But you do highlight…
(2) The chief moral problem outlined in Veritatis Splendor — that as Catholics (you do consider yourself a Catholic, correct?) we cannot, ever, use the consequences of an action as the guide to whether or not the action is moral. If it is wrong to incinerate innocent Japanese babies, then we cannot do it — period, end of story. Or to put it in John Paul the II’s words:
Once you accept what is moral and not moral, we can figure out what would have been an appropriate course of action. But our first job should be to say, “this action [incinerating hundreds of Japanese babies/little children] is unacceptable.”
Yes, this would truly be a fearsome force that would inflict most of the 50k American casualties planners expected upon invasion of Japan.
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Why not invent a fictional surrender offer?
Once you accept what is moral and not moral, we can figure out what would have been an appropriate course of action. But our first job should be to say, “this action [incinerating hundreds of Japanese babies/little children] is unacceptable.”
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Jeffrey, you’ve got three tools in your kit and two possible objects. What are your objects, what are your tools, and what does the state of the world look like in each circumstance? Get back to us when you have an answer and quit striking attitudes.
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“[that] is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.” -William F. Buckley Jr.
If your morals logically lead to the conclusion that it is best to let old ladies be hit by buses, there is a huge error in program or definitions that needs to be corrected.
Where do you get that rubbish Tom?
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It’s a meme I first saw in print around about 1981. IIRC it usually hits the letters-to-the-editor column in the exchange of brickbats the week after the surrender-offer meme has been floated.
If your morals logically lead to the conclusion that it is best to let old ladies be hit by buses, there is a huge error in program or definitions that needs to be corrected.
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Which is by way of saying those invoking ‘consequentialism’ are making use of what would be a reductio ad absurdam in some other circumstance.
“(1) This is an educated guess — no one here has a time machine and gets to replay the past. But you do highlight…”
It is a dead certainty considering that the Japanese were unwilling to surrender after Hiroshima, and a military coup was attempted when Hirohito finally decided to surrender after Nagasaki. He, of course, in his surrender message indicated that the bomb was the reason why Japan was surrendering.
“The chief moral problem outlined in Veritatis Splendor”
Veritatis Splendor was not the best work of John Paul II, especially when he included this laundry list of intrinsic evils from Vatican II:
“The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator”.132 ”
Some of those items are intrinsically evil and some are dependent upon the facts of the case. For example, a Dad captures the kidnapper of his child. He pummels the kidnapper until he reveals the hiding place of the child. That is “coercing the spirit” of the kidnapper, but it is most certainly not intrinsically evil. Deporting illegal aliens is not intrinsically evil. “Subhuman living conditions”, well that is pretty subjective isn’t it? Like most moral questions, if the Pope had been asked about such issues, I assume he would have used phrases like, “this is what I meant”, “it depends”, etc. Especially in wartime moral issues arise that do not have one size fits all answers. Any morality which will lead to a great many more deaths needs to be examined closely and not simply followed blindly. What may seem reasonable in a papal Encyclical or a combox discussion may need a good deal of caveats when it comes to real world application, lest in an attempt to follow the angels in theory, we unleash devils in reality.
Pretty sure the only blameless thing (morally speaking) to do in war is to lose it.
I mean, if we’re going to adopt an absolutist position.
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Maybe I’m wrong. I’m still waiting for Jeffery or Tom to expound on the moral alternatives to the intrinsic evil of
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of…
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of….
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What exactly is the objective evil we’re rejecting out of hand?
Why are some people so fanatical about people dying under a nuclear explosion in Japan 70 years ago, at the expense of no fanaticism over other means of death?
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Because above all they fear it will happen to them someday. This is not really about Japan at all.
As Jeffry S points out, Veritatis Splendor points out the features of a moral act – that is the moral object, circumstances and intention. This is not a novel construct of John Paul II but rather goes back to Aquinas. All three must be good or at least neutral for a person to pursue the act. For example, giving alms is good. But doing so if one’s intention was to increase one’s prestige would be vain and thus immoral. Also, if one gave alms when one’s own children would suffer due to one’s own constrained circumstances, then this would be immoral
He is also right in that consequentialism is wrong. For example, Obama’s executive order (and the USCCB’s support of this) was a consequentialist act in that he pursued a perceived good (aiding illegal immigrants) through a immoral means (an illegal executive order.) Of course if could also be immoral if he did it for the intention to increase Democratic voters (thus reducing the immigrants to means for his ends) or for cheap labor, rather than for then own good. It would also be immoral if the circumstances were such that our society could not accept a continued increase in immigrants.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be immoral if done merely for the intention of “killing Japs” or if the circumstances that the Japanese were about to surrender. Deliberately targeting civilians would also be immoral and if it was argued that it was done to end the war or reduce casualties would be consequentialist and immoral.
The problem becomes if, as posted, the Japanese were conscripting large numbers of civilians as combatants. Thus, one may be able to argue that such cities were actually large numbers of combatants and thus legitimate targets.
But what of those few non-combatants present (babies etc. ) Now we would get into the question of double effect. I will not go into the details of this but point to the example of the hysterectomy of a gravid, cancerous uterus. On can in fact licitly perform the hysterectomy even though it results in the death of the baby. This, as long at there is proportionate reason (no other treatment possible and delay not advisable) and the intention was good (one intended only the removal of the uterus and not the death of the baby. The same reasoning has been used in the bombing of cities. If there was a sufficiently important target (some industry vital to the war effort of the enemy) then collateral damage (the death of babies) was seen as acceptable.
Hiroshima served as the base of the Second General Army, which commanded the defense of Southern Japan and was garrisoned by 43,000 troops, approximately 20,000 of whom died in the bomb blast. Nagasaki was an industrial powerhouse for the Japanese military:
“The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest seaports in southern Japan, and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The four largest companies in the city were Mitsubishi Shipyards, Electrical Shipyards, Arms Plant, and Steel and Arms Works, which employed about 90% of the city’s labor force, and accounted for 90% of the city’s industry.[169] Although an important industrial city, Nagasaki had been spared from firebombing because its geography made it difficult to locate at night with AN/APQ-13 radar.”
Why are some people so fanatical about people dying under a nuclear explosion in Japan 70 years ago, at the expense of no fanaticism over other means of death?
Ignorance, I think.
They believe roughly that an innocent population was chosen for malicious reasons and killed in a way that couldn’t be replicated in terms of damage.
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Some have simply never been taught the inconvenient facts. I hadn’t heard of the firebombing, and we were told that blackout curtains were to keep pilots from mistaking houses for military targets. As Donald has pointed out, Nagasaki wasn’t a purely civilian town– or just a well known religious spot.
Some choose to ignore those facts, call people names, go to another spot and repeat the same false information.
Donald McClarey: Even though we regularly disagree about the Civil War times, we are in full agreement regarding the historical facts you have listed on this post. Bravo!
“Jeff, please try not to act more ignorant than you are. You know precisely what I was saying and you have no good response, so you bloviate. The dropping of the atomic bombs spared a great many more people in Japan, than the lives they took. All the bleating by you won’t alter that hard fact. Critics of Truman have no solutions to the problem he confronted so they engage in hand waving and useless emotimg. I thank God that you were not at the helm of this nation in ’45 for us to have incurred an additional one million casualties, several million more dead Japanese and who knows how many more dead Chinese and the other occupied people living under the Rising Sun.”
I am currently reading “Truman” by David McCollough. It along with the biography of Truman written by his daughter, which both quote original source documents extensively, are two of my favorite books. A reading the section of the McCollough’s book entitled “To The Best Of My Ability” will yield implicit & explicit reasoning (Truman’s & several of his close advisors) re: dropping the atomic bombs as well as the attempts made to get the Japenese to surrender before the dropping of the bombs. Unfortunately, the Japanese built their private homes in near proximity to the war industrial factories in which they worked. Japanese civilians were being slaughtered by basically carpet bombing by B-29s. “On May 14, five hundred B-29s hit Nagoya, Japan’s third largest industrial city, in what the New York Times called the greatest concentration of fire bombs in the history of aerial warfare.” “On May 23, five square miles of Tokyo were obliterated. Thirty-six hours later, 16 square miles were destroyed.” the purpose of developing the bomb as quickly as possible by the US govt was to use the bomb to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible–period.
A memo, dated 6-4-1945, by Gen. Thomas Handy said that by achieving peace, the US wud be saving at least 500,000 US lives up to 1,000,000 US lives.
Truman fought in WW 1 and led men into battle. He dealt with and interacted with the men whose live he was responsible for during battle for the rest of his life. Actually having to face war as a leader who is responsible to protect lives of people under your authority (dependent on your every decision for their safety–knowing you would get to see their dead, mangled body & bury it (maybe) if they died) would probably greatly clarify the reasoning of these self righteous, bovine feces, pychobable laden, pseudo-moralizing idiots.
On page 400-401, it lists exactly the info Truman asked for in order to make the dreaded decision.
As I understand it, Truman saw his responsibilty as the US Commander-in-Chief, a role he never wanted to have by the way, as being to end the war as quickly as possible in orde to save as many American lives as possible.
Would, that every US commande-in-chief since his time would have seen their responsibility as being primarily to guard & save American lives!!!!
It is very clear that those who criticize Truman’s actions offer no real exchangeable solutions that would have brought about the quick end of the war & the saving of American lives.
As a girl, I sat many times and listened to my father cry & grieve over loss of life in battle during WW 2. He only spoke about it to me, in private, during very quiet, solemn times. A daughter, who adores her father, seeing him son years after the war,because he was still trying to process the thousands of dead in individual locations/battles, has an incredible impact on her. Because my father cried every time the national anthem was played and he taught me the price it cost to hear it, I cried & still cry every time the national anthem is played. Daddy said that during the war so many young men had been killed in the war that younger women were marrying older men–because there were such few young men to marry. His brother was drafted into the army near the end of the war. His brother was 45 years old, married, & had 5 kids at the time he was drafted & sent to Germany. Dad said that the draft had started with single 18 year olds with no children.
” Of course, no such invasion was even really needed, given that the Jap navy was gone, we had total air superiority, and could have simply strangled them into submission.”
The British blockade of Greece killed 40,000 civilians (and Greece is not an island). How many Japanese civilians (certainly all food would go to the army) would you be willing to let starve to death?
“The chief moral problem outlined in Veritatis Splendor — that as Catholics (you do consider yourself a Catholic, correct?)”
The chief problem with your continued reliance on Veritatis Splendor is that it was issued 48 years after the bombs were dropped, making it very unlikely that Truman had a copy available.
“Yes, this would truly be a fearsome force that would inflict most of the 50k American casualties planners expected upon invasion of Japan”
David McCollough’s book, “Truman,” mentions on page 400 the following projected numbers of American deaths related to THE FIRST 30 DAYS OF THE FIRST PHASE of a two phase invasion: 41,000 by an Admiral King; 49,000 by an Admiral Nimitz; 50,000 by Gen. MacArthur’s staff. It is stated that McArthur considered 50,000 deaths to be too high for the first 30 days of the first phase of the invasion–however, MacArthur was completely in favor of the invasion taking place (which was his nature.)