Just going to drop in the fact that people should've done time for dropping the atom bombs.
Nuking Japanese cities was a war crime by any definition.
wew so this is late but i'm gonna explain what ACTUALLY happened in hiroshima and nagasaki, incoming wall of word
hiroshima in 1945 contained the military headquarters of field marshal shunroku hata's 2nd general army in hiroshima castle, which coordinated the defense for the entire southern portion of japan. it also contained the HQs of the 59th army and 5th division of the japanese military. over 40,000 military personnel were stationed in the city at the time. it had large amounts of military supplies and was a general communications center, and was also untouched by the US air campaign
while the bombing did claim the lives of tens of thousands of civilians, it also eliminated the southern half of japan's military coordination. this was the sloppier of the two strikes, honestly, but i'll get into that later
nagasaki was quite possibly the largest shipping port not extensively bombed during the air campaign. this was due to its location; its industrial quarter was located in a valley and was difficult to locate via radar at night. it contained extensive dockyards and factories, including that of mitsubishi. it, too, contained large amounts of military and industrial supplies
fat man, the more powerful of the two bombs, was dropped here. its blast was contained entirely by the valley, ergo, the overwhelming majority of the damage was exclusive to the industrial area. it is estimated that the immediate death toll here was actually less than in hiroshima, even though fat man was far more potent
with these facts considered, i'd like to discuss why the atomic bombs, while an atrocity, were not necessarily as extreme of a war crime as people seem to suddenly believe these days. no, we did not drop them because we like genocide. no, we did not drop them out of spite or revenge for pearl harbor. the atomic bombs were the far more humane option out of the two harry truman faced towards the end of the war. by no means was it an easy decision; both would cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and both would conclude the deadliest war ever fought. in the end, though, this was the wisest choice; the alternative was a full ground invasion of japan, which would have tacked on additional time to the war and resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions more in casualties. okinawa was an excellent example of the resolve the japanese army and civilians had in regards to the war. every inch of japan would have to be fought for and paid with in far too much blood.
the major problem with thinking of it as a unique atrocity in the war is that is wasnt. while it was, in a single direct strike, the two most devastating bombings ever conducted, the casualties suffered (especially in demographics and targets) pale in comparison to actions during the rest of the war. the firebombing of tokyo, the siege of stalingrad, the bombing of dresden and the blitz, german sweeps through poland and the soviet union along with the soviet union's sweep back through poland and into germany are just a very small number of the questionable and downright criminal actions during the second world war. the list doesnt even include the pacific theatre or japan's invasion of china. the point in all of this is that when "war crimes" are the norm during this war, are they really war crimes? or are they just a part of war, then?
the unfortunate truth is that the western view of war as a clean conflict between just combatants with the occasional condemnable civilian casualty is purely false, and has been since the great war. hell, it could be argued that as soon as sherman swept through the south in his march to the sea, old world values and morality in regards to civilian wellbeing in conflict were thrown out the window. modern war is dirty, bloody thing in which the civilian populace of the embattled country suffers just as much as the soldiers do. the US as well as france and britain did not suffer the same degree of horror that germany, russia, china and japan did during the second world war and have not since, either, which is why you seldom see any of them regarding the atomic bombs as a special atrocity.
is this view right? i'd love to say no, but who are we to decide that? is it the truth of the world that we've created for ourselves and our children to live in? Yes
