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Was President Harry Truman guilty of war crimes?

Coronado said:
Operation Downfall would have commenced, there would have been tens of millions of casualties on both sides, and the war would have gone on for up to two more years.
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Yep, that is was the way war was before the A bomb.. Looks like we'll keep fighting countries who don't have nukes that way today (war in Iraq has gone on longer than WWII already), since bombing civilian cities like that is internationally condemned today. As for other countries with nukes, we want to avoid actual war now..
 
MaggieD said:
Approximately 103,000 deaths. Bombs dropped intentionally on civilian targets.

Why was he not tried at Nuremburg?

Would we lose that war today?

Further, if dropping atomic bombs is a war crime, why do we have a nuclear arsenal?

I say he was a hero. Made the toughest decsion a President has ever had to make. And he chose victory.
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More than 65 Japanese cities were strategically bombed and destroyed killing over 500,000 people and leaving many millions homeless, but nobody seems to think of these as war crimes, just the two atomic bombs that killed 100,000 people. Why is that?

Personally, Truman made the correct decision and not only chose victory, as you said, but chose to save lives... and that is equally important.
 
Deuce said:
Other options:

Nuke an empty island
Nuke a military base
Nuke the whales

Wait. Maybe not that last one.
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the japanese didn't surrender when we nuked a city. those who focus on the type of munition used often fail to place the amount of damage in the context of the war. WWII was killing a million people a month at this time; the A-Bombs weren't even the most damaging bombing runs over Japan (more people died when we firebombed Tokyo).

heck, they didn't even surrender when we nuked two cities. it wasn't until they became convinced (we bluffed) that we had another 100 Atom bombs, and would systematically turn every square inch of the Home Islands into ash that they had a vote - and the vote was split! - the Emperor had to intervene and break the tie.

and even then parts of the military rebelled, siezed the emperor, and tried to quell the decision of the council (military control of the emperor having a fairly long history in the Japanese monarchy). if it hadn't been for the actions of a particularly brave palace servant stealing the recording of the Emperor announcing his decision, avoiding military patrols, and getting it to the radio station half an hour ahead of the troops, they could have very likely succeeded; and then our bluff would have been called and we would have had to starve the Japanese Island to death before invading (Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Home Islands, was scheduled for November 1945).

remember, even Okinawans committed mass suicide rather than face occupation.


and you think that somehow magically if we had nuked an empty island that would have had a greater effect on them than one of their own cities?
 
You left out that the soviets also declared war on them after we nuked hiroshima.
 
cpwill said:
the japanese didn't surrender when we nuked a city. those who focus on the type of munition used often fail to place the amount of damage in the context of the war. WWII was killing a million people a month at this time; the A-Bombs weren't even the most damaging bombing runs over Japan (more people died when we firebombed Tokyo).

heck, they didn't even surrender when we nuked two cities. it wasn't until they became convinced (we bluffed) that we had another 100 Atom bombs, and would systematically turn every square inch of the Home Islands into ash that they had a vote - and the vote was split! - the Emperor had to intervene and break the tie.

and even then parts of the military rebelled, siezed the emperor, and tried to quell the decision of the council (military control of the emperor having a fairly long history in the Japanese monarchy). if it hadn't been for the actions of a particularly brave palace servant stealing the recording of the Emperor announcing his decision, avoiding military patrols, and getting it to the radio station half an hour ahead of the troops, they could have very likely succeeded; and then our bluff would have been called and we would have had to starve the Japanese Island to death before invading (Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Home Islands, was scheduled for November 1945).

remember, even Okinawans committed mass suicide rather than face occupation.


and you think that somehow magically if we had nuked an empty island that would have had a greater effect on them than one of their own cities?
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And how much of this information did Truman have?

Before the bombing.
 
After reading this post, I realize how happy I am that I wasn't alive during that time... I can't imagine the fear people woke up everyday in.
 
Deuce said:
Yes, top military brass thought the Japanese would never surrender. Whether they were right, we'll never know. We thought a lot of crazy things about the Japanese back then. It's entirely possible that a nuke hitting an uninhabited island near Japan would have made them realize this war was no longer winnable. Failing that, hitting a military base instead of a civilian population may have very well done the trick. We don't really have a way of knowing that.

Dropping nukes on civilian cities was a horrible thing to do. So was fireboming Tokyo. The Japanese did some heinous ****. So did the Germans. And the Russians. And guess what? Us too. It was a horrible time in history and we need to realize that doing horrible things for the "right" reasons is still doing horrible things.

Of course, you know what they say about hindsight.
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In the real world you have to work with what you have. Look at cpwill's post. No matter what, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of civillians were going to die before war's end.

Deuce said:
And how much of this information did Truman have?

Before the bombing.
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Okinawa, Saipan, Tarawa, Iwo Jima. Hell, pick virtually any battle in the Pacific. A lot of things were made up about the Japanese by American propagandists, but a lot of other things were true, including the Japanese will to fight. Ask any Allied fighting man who saw combat in that theater, the Japanese were relentless. Compare the casualty percentages after each battle. You'll notice that there were almost always very few Japanese left. Thousands of Japanese died in mass suicides, banzai charges, kamikzee attacks, and fighting until the finish if it meant killing just a few Americans. One didn't have to be in the Japanese government to know that the Japanese were in no mood to surrender.
 
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Imagine how it felt to be the pilot of the Enola Gay knowing you were dropping a bomb that you were not even sure would not kill you in the process. I'm a pilot, and I feel power just flying in a single engine aircraft knowing I am higher in elevation than 99% of the world at that moment. Knowing I had a bomb that would kill 100.000 people or more in the belly of my airplane would have made me giddy.

Wanna see if you'd survive a nuclear attack?

http://www.ki4u.com/webpal/d_resources/list.htm
 
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