Talk:Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki/Archive 2

message: On the actual order to execute and it coming from Tojo:
In the latter part of June 1945, a note was posted in our camp. It was signed by Hideki Tojo. And it said, 'The moment the first American soldier sets foot on the Japanese mainland, all prisoners of war will be shot.' And they meant it. I hadn't been a prisoner for fifteen minutes before they bayoneted a fifteen-year-old Filipino kid right next to me - a kid so innocent he scraped together this little dirt dam with his last bit of energy so he wouldn't bleed on my uniform while he died. That is why all of us who were prisoners in Japan, or were headed for it to probably die in the invasion, revere the Enola Gay. It saved our lives. 
- CW4 Grayford C. Payne, survivor of the Bataan Death March,
Washington Post September 26, 1994; pg. a.01
Soviet troops who liberated a POW camp in Mukden, Manchuria, found 3,000 Allied prisoners who, like prisoners in Japan, had thought they were about to be executed as the Soviets approached their camp. A Japanese directive described how prisoners were to be killed: "mass bombing, or poisonous smoke, poisons, decapitation... . In any case, it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces." 
Code-Name Downfall Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar
Primary Sources: Kill-All Policy 
 
Intercepted and decoded by the Allies, this message from the Japanese Vice Minister of War to the Commanding General of Military Police in Taiwan explains the conditions under which Japanese commanders could execute prisoners of war without formal orders from Tokyo.
Author Linda Goetz Holmes, author of Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs, points out that it was not a military order, but a policy clarification, since the author in the war ministry did not have the authority to issue orders. Still, according to Holmes, the message was "transmitted to every POW camp commander in Japanese-occupied territory as well as the home islands," and widely known among former Japanese soldiers and former POWs. This memo was introduced into evidence at the post-war trials of Japanese war criminals.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/filmmore/ps_order.html
When the battle situation becomes urgent the POWs will be concentrated and confined in their location and kept under heavy guard until preparations for the final disposition will be made. Although the basic aim is to act under superior orders, individual disposition may be made in certain circumstances. Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, and whether it is accomplished by means of mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, or decapitation, dispose of them as the situation dictates. It is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces. 
Japanese War Ministry, Tokyo August 1, 1944
Unjust Enrichment, Linda Goetz Holmes, the actual order is in chapter 12 
On the execution of Allied POW's bieng a factor in the use of the Atomic bomb:
In September 1943 the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to President Roosevelt that escaped prisoners had been providing accounts as early as April 1943 of malnutrition, cruel workloads, widespread torture, and murder of U.S. and other Allied prisoners of the Japanese. War planners worried about the fate of POWs in the event of a prolonged war or an invasion of the Japanese home islands.
TDC 04:53, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
: This is all interesting, but should then be linked to in the main article. On the other hand, it should be done in such a way as not to be too emotionally connotated (the story about the Filipano teenager is interesting on a personal level, but not really when discussing geo-political trends), and taking the appropriate reserves (validity of Tojo's order, etc). Also, a discution or reminder of both harms (number of civilian casualties, expected and actual, vs. number of expected executed prisoners). As such, the part about POWs seems less balanced than the previous version, which is a shame after all this documentation work. Rama 11:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: In earlier discussion, TDC had acquiesced in language that stated the order as an established fact (granting him that point over others' objections) but that noted it had come down some time earlier.  He's now removed the date.  I'm restoring it.  I commented earlier that anyone who wants to think that the date is immaterial is free to do so.  For my part, I regard the whole discussion as immaterial, because the most serious objection to the use of the bomb is that the U.S. could have accomplished all its goals vis-a-vis Japan without the bombings and without an invasion. JamesMLane 20:02, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, I see it's more complicated than that.  The earlier discussion attributed the order to Tojo, which is why his subsequent resignation was included.  What's the relationship between the earlier information and the revised claim that the order was some kind of post-Tojo clarification? JamesMLane 20:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think TDC was just providing supplemental supporting information.  I think his summary should be kept around rather than archived to reduce the chance of the issue being disputed again.--Silverback 22:33, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Tojo Order

message: I noticed some anomolies with the formatting of the opposition/support section.  I was going to do the following things:
1.  Move the support for the bombings above the opposition, because that seems to be the standard throughout Wikipedia.
2.  Remove the bullets from the opposition, because it seems weird to me that the opposition is in bulletted format but the support is not.
I didn't make the change because something tells me that because this is (for obvious reasons) a touchy subject, I might start an edit war.  So should I make the change? --Bletch 16:20, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As the one who initially came up with the idea of having a separate opposition/support section for this article, whatever you want to do formatting wise is fine by me. TDC 18:59, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
Spelling: please note that 'discretely' means "separately, or being one thing", while 'discreetly' means "with prudence, circumspectly" and so is correct here.  DJ Clayworth 18:49, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formatting? 

message: For the benefit of anyone just joining us from RfC, I'm inserting here the two versions of text being considered.
Silverback's latest version is to put the following at the beginning of the section on "Support for use of atomic bombs":
:In response to the argument that the large-scale killing of civilians was immoral and a war crime, supporters of the bombings have argued that, the Japanese government waged total war, including conscripting of women and children to work in factories. By waging total war. Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosphy at Tokyo's Catholic University, and an eye witness to the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima wrote:
::"We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good that might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?"' 
My preference is to put the following at the end of that section:
:In response to the argument that the large-scale killing of civilians was immoral and a war crime, supporters of the bombings have argued that the Japanese government waged total war, with the employment of civilians (including women and children) to work in factories. Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosphy at Tokyo's Catholic University, and an eyewitness to the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, wrote:
::We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians. 
Silverback and I each made some comments in edit summaries, but addressed the subject more fully in the discussion below. JamesMLane 10:14, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The two versions

message: ;It's more relevant to the invasion than to the bombing campaign, but from Downfall p.189:
:   On March 23, the cabinet order the formation of the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps across the whole nation. This corps constituted a mechanism for inducting the whole body of citizens. ...
:   What this sea of civilians lacked besides training were arms and even uniforms. A mobilized high-school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told: "Even killing one American soldier will do. You must aim at the enemy's abdomen." ... Japan lacked the cloth to put those civilians into uniforms--one senior general spoke of his hope to provide them with patches on their civilian clothes. ... At least one Fifth Air Force intelligence officer took the Japanese at their publicly broadcast word of total mobilization and declared in a July 21 report, "The entire population of Japan is a proper Military Target.... THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN."
;—wwoods 20:43, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for this quotation.  It suggests that the introduction to the quotation about the lost distinction between soldiers and civilians should include reference to resisting any invasion, so I've added it in that paragraph of the section about supporters' arguments.  JamesMLane 08:28, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Many personal accounts from the mobilization of students, mention that they had both uniforms and "orders", so apparently the lack of cloth was not universal.--Silverback 09:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  more discussion 

message: Shouldn't we have a section on expression of remorse or otherwise by those involved in the bombing? I read somewhere that Co-pilot of the Enola Gay Capt. Robert Lewis spontaneously exclaimed upon releasing that cargo, My God! What have we done!?. -- Sundar 10:44, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
: I heard this too, but as a urban legend. However it would certainly be very interesting to document this further. Lots of physicists expressed horror at the bombing, or remorse; quotes by Oppenheimer, Heisenberg or Einstein will probably be easy to find. Do you want to take care of this ? Interesting idea in any case ! Rama 12:39, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remorse? 

message: More quote : www.doug-long.com www.nuclearfiles.org
I didn't expect comments from Eistein and Heisenberg to be non-trivial not find. It seesm taht Einstein did't make any public comment for one year after the event. As for Heinsenberg, I'll have to re-check The Part and The Whole and Natural law and the structure of matter . Cheers ! Rama 14:50, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  More quotes 

message: The following section was added : 
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Somewhat neutral POV 
When governments decide among themselves to suspend the sixth commandment and civilians get caught in the middle, is one means of killing them more justified than another? Numbers of civilians were killed by conventional bombs in both Germany and Japan that equaled those killed by the nuclear bombs. This reduces the argument to whether it is more moral to kill large numbers of civilians with a large number of conventional bombs than a small number of nuclear bombs.
Justified or not, using nuclear bombs so terrified those upon whom they were used, those who watched and even those who actually used them that it changed the face of warfare forever. There will probably never again be a war where superpower is pitted directly against superpower because of the fear that it will escalate into a nuclear conflagration. Would this be true if the U.S. had not used nuclear bombs against real cities in a real war? It seems that whole peoples will hunker-down and watch thousands of their neighbors killed and maimed over time where they will not stand to see thousands vaporized in an instant. Through history there have been many weapons thought to be so terrible that they would make war unthinkable but wars continued. There are still skirmishes between potentate wanabes but there has not been a "real" war between civilized nations since actually dropping "the bomb" on Japan showed us what that will become next time. Would we have learned our lesson if the Sword Of Damocles had not actually been swung?
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I think that the question raised here is interesting, be hardly formulised in such a way as to be acceptable in the article. I suggest we discuss these issues here on the talk page, and commit the section when it will be ready. Rama 01:01, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Somewhat neutral POV