Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There was no military reason to drop atomic bombs on Japan. They were used as terrorist weapons - killing innocent people to influence other people.
We had news this morning of another successful atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki. These two heavy blows have fallen in quick succession upon the Japanese and there will be quite a little space before we intend to drop another.
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.
If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.
The atom bomb was no 'great decision.' It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.
As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide.
Hiroshima has become a metaphor not just for nuclear war but for war and destruction and violence toward civilians. It's not just the idea we should not use nuclear arms. We should not start another war because it's madness.
I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are 'among the most unspeakable crimes in history.' I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.
How do we prevent Iran developing an atomic bomb, when, on the American side, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not recognised as a war crime?