Alex WellersteinVerified account

Even Truman, the endless defender of the bombings, seemed to harbor deep unhappiness about their collateral damage. In Dec. 1945 he referred to the bomb as "the most terrible of all destructive forces for the wholesale slaughter of human beings" — he didn't whitewash it.

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.

I find it notable that this whole thread makes zero reference to the tens of millions of Asians that Imperial Japan has slaughtered up to that point.

I do make a reference to the Japanese militarists; I certainly do not absolve Japan for their role in the war, or the horror they wrought on their neighbors. In the US educational context, this is heavily emphasized. It doesn't make killing Japanese children any better, IMO.