I stumbled upon this site – Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum: Individual Artifacts
Hiroshima was a city with a population of 300,000 – about the same population in 1945 as Atlanta or Dallas.
The argument that stands, in defending the use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction against Hiroshima, is that it ended the war and saved lives.
Even if that is true, are we really a society that accepts detonating an atomic bomb over a dense population center of mostly civilians, the size of Atlanta or Dallas, at an altitude chosen to exact maximum death and destruction? Even if the net gain is to save lives? Is that really what we believe, and think is ethical? LINK
i think they meant to “save america lives”….
Yes, you are correct in stating Save American Lives – my problem is that is it ever ethical to sacrifice one innocent life for another? Regardless of the possibility that cancer rates have killed millions more people since the initial blast – is it every ok to sacrifice one innocent group of people to save another?
My question might be different if they weapon had been used against a Japanese fleet somewhere as a demonstration of power. My problem is that they detonated the thing over a City of innocent people.
Stated another way – suppose the United States came under the influence of a Hitler or Hirohito? Would it be OK for Canada to drop an atomic weapon on downtown Manhattan and instantly vaporize a million people – because it would stop the war? What if Canada showed us that within five year’s time span an additional five million innocent people would die at the hands of the US. Would it still be OK to kill all those innocent people? Is it ever just to kill one innocent person to save 5?
Is it ever ethical to kill anyone for any reason? Protecting the innocent and weak from the guilty and powerful are noble causes.