The Lack of Time Between the 2nd Bomb Dropped on Nagasaki Was Against International Humanitarian Law

All wars see advancements in technology, and as such have driven much of human innovation, right down to canned foods. World War II was no different in this case, much technology came out of it, and much understanding, as a result of acts by both the Axis and the Allies. In fact full understanding of the harmful effects of radiation was brought about by these bombs, which created many cases of exposure. Prior to this period radiation "therapy" was being sold by the bottle by traveling snake oil salesmen. "The two bombs dropped were unnecessary and gratuitous displays of atomic power. They were not the only military option available to the Americans. The Japanese army already defeated, and US was waiting for Russia to declare war on Japan." Yes, as I addressed in my opening remarks, there were other military options, Operation Downfall being considered the best of them, was estimated to result in no fewer than 500,000 casualties just on the allied side. And waiting for Russia to enter the Japanese theatre would have resulted in a Japan that was divvied up among the powers, the same way Germany was. These are both less ideal results. The Japanese military may have known it was defeated but you are thinking from a Euro-central mentality, one the Japanese, and indeed much of East Asia, doesn"t have. The idea of giving up the fight simply because you lost was beyond unfathomable culturally. The soldiers of Imperial Japan, as quoted in source [1] in my above post, would never have simply surrendered. After the Soviet Union joined the war, a massive ground invasion would have been necessary, one that conservative estimates put at the above mentioned casualties. Likely it would have been worse, consider, for example, the invasion of Saipan or Okinawa. Had the casualties from a mainland invasion of Japan been on that scale, it would have been much worse. The total casualties, all dead from both atomic bombings was 220,000, as demonstrated earlier [1] conventional bombs can have the same impact. In addition the claims that the Americans were "inhumane" is contrary to known facts, the residents of both target cities were given warning via air drop campaign on August 1, 1945, and daily every 15 minutes from August 1 through both bombings. Had residents payed heed to the American campaign, they would have survived. More fault can be laid at the hands of the Japanese government, which was warned via the Potsdam declaration on July 26, 1945 about the impending attacks. The Japanese government was asked by its media to reply to it, and said "mokusatsu" which roughly translates as "no comment", however there was another translation of this phrase, and it is essentially " this is beneath me to comment on " or to "kill with silence".[10] Instead of issuing a response, they chose silence. The League of Nations was a treaty organization that the United States did not belong to, it in no way had any power to legislate, or impress upon the US, how to carry out its war. In addition, the League of Nations is not the Source from which International Humanitarian Laws derive. Those sources, the Conventions in Geneva and the Hague, had made no provisions against bombing cities. Given the limited technology at the time, precision bombing meant hitting the right city more often than not. Failing to bomb factories, shipyards, and other places where war materiel is handled, which by and large are populated by civilians, would indefinitely prolong any war. The atomic device, as such it was new, at the time was thought to be little more than a powerful incendiary bomb, the true scale of the horrors it could inflict were not understood at the time, and it wasn"t categorized as a WMD until well after WWII. "While all the bombs used at Pearl Harbor combined was equal to 3,533 pounds the two atomic bombs combined (Little Boy and Fat Man) were 20,500 pounds which is equal to SIX times greater than Pearl Harbor bombs. That just goes to show how much power these two bombs have. The ratio for the death toll was 90:1, that means for every 1 American dying in the Pearl Harbor attack, 90 Japanese died in the atomic bomb droppings." The same number of civilians died during the Tokyo bombings, this is hardly relevant. The individual power of each bomb plays no part, nor does the particular rate of deaths, the Japanese were losing the war, naturally they were suffering more casualties, because at the end of the day, a war can only be won either Politically, by making the population think war is unbearable; Militarily, by causing more casualties to the enemy than they cause to you, or; Economically, by making the war too expensive. The atomic bomb achieves all three of these, by demoralizing the civilian population and government officials, destroying vast sectors of the economy, and destroying both active and potential reserve troops. "International Humanitarian Law (IHL), also known as the laws of war and the law of armed conflict, is the legal framework applicable to situations of armed conflict and occupation. As a set of rules and principles it aims, for humanitarian reasons, to limit the effects of armed conflict. Fundamental to IHL are the following two principles: 1). The protection of persons who are not, or are no longer, participating in hostilities; and 2). The right of parties to an armed conflict to choose methods and means of warfare is not unlimited. Principle number two states that means of welfare is not unlimited. That means that certain methods, such as dropping atomic bombs, is uncalled for and unnecessary because the citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima could not have fended for themselves and did not know of an impending attack like this. Which is against IHL Law." Firstly, prior to and during the entirety of World War 2, there was no provision in IHL that prohibited the bombing of cities, secondly the civilians of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in fact warned, meaning that even if such a prohibition were in effect, the US did meet all moral requirements by not only dropping leaflets but broadcasting a continuous warning every 15 minutes for nearly a week before both bombings. As such, by your own requirements, IHL is satisfied. Given the outcome of the war, and the tensions building between the Allies early on, it was unlikely the intent was to gain any type of friendship with the Soviet Union. And the fact that these bombs were bigger and more powerful is entirely irrelevant, the firearm is more powerful than the dagger, is it a war crime to use firearms? Section 921 is US law, not international law. In international law, WMDs are defined strictly as any NBC weapon, that is Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical. The definition above is irrelevant to the topic at hand. As a note about sources, much of the information I have posted is public knowledge available from multiple academic sources and doesn"t need to be sourced at all, it was provided as a courtesy to you, my opponent, and to the reader who may not be familiar with the subject matter, engaging in Ad-hominem attacks on well documented sources is again irrelevant. To the topic of the blog, the author of the blog has 1st person experience with the subject matter at hand, and as such is a direct from an expert.