Thread by @PhillipsPOBrien

A thread on ethical choices and the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My two cents as it seems to be an endlessly debated subject on twitter.

One of the tricky questions is that the debate is based around hypotheticals. Pro-Bomb people believe that Japan would not have surrendered without the bomb unless invaded. Anti-Bomb believe the Japanese would have surrendered regardless of the bomb

Starting with the Pro-Bomb. Certainly if the bomb had not been used and the US chosen to invade Kyushu, the results would have been very bloody. Though some like to argue casualty rates would have been less, I would argue the evidence is that the opposite is far more likely.

Japanese resistance to any attack would have cost extreme casualties (look at Okinawa and multiply a few times) with many many more Japanese dying than Americans. Overall the death toll would have been far greater (imho) than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks.

One point to the pro-bomb group. However one hypothetical that this ignores (one of the difficulties of this whole endeavor) is that it wasn’t definite that the US would have invaded had the atom bomb not been used.

Yes Truman ok'd planning for a Kyushu invasion, but the closer that operation came to being, the more he seemed to get cold feet. And there were powerful voices including his Chief of Staff Adm Leahy who were arguing against an invasion even if the bomb didn’t work.

Would Truman have been convinced? Hard to say, but certainly those who say using the bomb definitely saved American lives in any invasion need to confront the possibility that any invasion might actually not have happened and the US tried to drive out Japan with air and sea power

Now the anti-bomb hypothetical. Probably the trickiest here is the argument that the Japanese were going to surrender soon, with or without the bomb. There are passionate arguments on both sides on this—but it seems to me even more difficult than the pro-bomb hypothetical

Would Japanese civilians have tried to end the war. Almost certainly—indeed they had been trying. However, would the Army have agreed? And even if the senior command of the army agreed—would the lower ranks have followed orders?

Certainly there were very strong elements in the Army that, even after the bombs were dropped and even after the Emperor told the Army he wanted to end the war, that tried to keep fighting. Again, its really tricky.

So the ethical arguments based on hypotheticals are both interesting, but rest of powerful indefinites. This brings up the non-hypothetical case. This is one that often gets overlooked. Should the US have used the bomb at all?

Returning to Leahy again, the greatest opponent of using the Bomb in the US government, we have a rather unexpected argument from the senior military officer in the US.

Leahy said the US should never use the bomb first in any situation—because it was a weapon ethically more questionable than poison gas. The US had refused to use poison gas on Japanese targets (when they could have) and therefore they should not have used the bomb.

I find this quite powerful. And I ask those who support using the bomb this. Had the bombs not worked—would you have supported the use of mass poison gas attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war.

The answer to that question might be the most important in my ethical calculus about the use of atomic weapons.