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One can invoke, of course, the hypothetical lives the bomb saved. Because they are hypothetical, they can be nearly as many as you want them to be (and the defenders of the bombings revised that number upwards and upwards over the years), and whomever you want them to be.
But I can't help but feel that the actual dead deserve a bit more attention, versus the hypothetical dead. I know: your grandfather was slated to be in the invasion, you might not be here, etc. (Assuming the war didn't end prior to November 1945, which it may well have.)
But even in that situation you've still got to reconcile with the costs. You've got to say, "I am OK with all of those children having died, so that I may live." I find that a defensible statement. But I rarely hear people say it — because it's hard.
I guess that's my argument, here: if you want to defend the bombings, that's fine with me. There are certainly arguments to that end. But you can't ignore the consequences of them. To do that puts us in a dangerous place; an "ends justify the means" that overlooks the "means."
Truman managed to defend the bombings, while being very open about the horror, once he learned of it. He turned that into a desire not to have nuclear weapons be used ever again, if it was possible. He's a more complex figure on this than his detractors or defenders tend to know.
What if your grandfather weighed 90 pounds after surviving the Bataan Death March, hellship to Japan, multiple beatings, 41 months in 6 brutal camps as a slave laborer for the Emporer? A few weeks more and he would have died. Or is that too hypothetical?
I appreciate your points, by the way. But this tweet in your thread seems too dismissive.
Pretty much whenever I talk to Americans about the bombings, I get the "my grandpa was about to be shipped out, so I have an obligation to defend the bombings" — that's what this is meant to address.
In any case, I find it bad form to justify some mass action on the basis of a personal connection. One can feel what one feels, I won't contest that. But to say, "these thousands of people had to die, so that someone close to me may have lived" — it's a not a great argument.
But it's still an argument that acknowledges the costs, which is what I'm really advocating here. Defend them if you want — that's OK by me. But just be aware of the fullness of what you're saying, that's all.
Got it. Mostly I wanted to note in some cases the them-or-us scenario wasn't so hypothetical. It would be silly for me to favor the bomb just because it worked out in my favor. It's also hard for me to view it any other way. Agree human cost is often ignored in these discussions.
How about the actual dead of the victims of the pacific front in China, Korea, South East Asia, and the American GIs?
It's not just American deaths it prevented. An invasion would likely have killed lots of Japanese including civilians. Maybe more than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And would have probably also destroyed a lot of buildings and cultural artifacts that had not yet been damaged.
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