Alex WellersteinVerified account

This isn't meant to be a naive statement. "War is hell." I know the causes of WWII, and the reasons why the atomic bombs were seen as an expedient and necessary action by those who were involved in dropping them. I do not absolve the Japanese militarists for their role in this.

In principle, if you think the bombings were necessary, you should still be able to accommodate that belief without ignoring any of the above. In reality, I find most defenders want to look the other way when it comes to the consequences. To do so is to take an incomplete view.

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.