Q&A: The Morality of Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Morality of Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Question
Have a good week, Rabbi,
I wanted to ask about the issue of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945). On the one hand, the American decision led to Japan’s rapid surrender and the end of a war that had claimed millions of lives; on the other hand, this was a deliberate bombing of a civilian population—an act that by the standards commonly accepted today (for example, in relation to Iranian missile fire at population centers) is defined as a war crime.
- In your opinion, were these bombings moral?
- How does one reconcile the basic principle of distinguishing between combatants and civilians with the claim that the entire population was considered a “collective pursuer” because of its contribution to the war effort?
- Was this a departure from the rule of “he can be saved by injuring one of his limbs”?
- As applied to our own day: how is the justification offered then different from the arguments made today by regimes that deliberately harm civilians in order to achieve their political/strategic goals?
Thank you in advance for your response,
Answer
I don’t have enough information about this. If this was the only way to win the war, then obviously it was moral. If it was possible to win without this but at very heavy cost, then there is room to deliberate in light of how heavy those costs were. But in general, victory takes precedence over preserving the lives of uninvolved civilians belonging to the pursuing collective.
I don’t see what there is to reconcile. There is no distinction between combatants and civilians. There is a distinction between whether there is a need to strike one or the other in order to win. One may do what is necessary in order to win. Combatants obviously have to be harmed, since that is the meaning of victory. Civilians may be harmed to the extent that this is required.
Each case has to be judged on its own merits. If the war is justified and this is needed in order to win, then harming civilians is permitted. If the war is not justified, or if harming civilians is not required in order to win, then it is not.
Discussion on Answer
No, because their war is not justified. What did we do to them? I said there are two conditions for harming civilians: that the war be justified (you are being unjustly threatened and need to defend yourself), and that harming civilians be necessary for victory.
I mean according to the Iranians’ view that the war is justified. Was their deliberate harm to civilians justified?
According to the Nazis’ view, killing Jews was justified. Obviously, according to someone who thinks x is justified, x is justified. The Iranians think their war is justified, and they also think harming civilians is justified. So are you asking me for my opinion while assuming A but not assuming B? What is the point of such a discussion?
There are two separate questions here: whether the war is justified, and also, assuming the war is justified, whether it is justified to fire missiles at civilians in order to make the other side stop the fighting.
I’ll say it again. In my view the war is certainly not justified, but in their view it is. Except that in their view there is also no problem at all with bombing enemy civilians, so what is the point of the discussion?!
Let me ask it the other way around: if in the future we are at war against an enemy that has air, technological, and intelligence military superiority over us, would it be moral to bomb its civilians indiscriminately in order to pressure it to stop fighting us?
If it is threatening us unjustly, and we have no other way to eliminate the threat, then yes. That is exactly what I wrote.
If we take the last war with Iran as a test case and try to judge the Iranians by their own method: the Iranians fired at civilian concentrations in order to hit the Israeli home front so as to pressure the Israeli leadership to stop the fighting, on the assumption that harming the Israeli home front would create maximum pressure on the leadership. Is such fire at civilians justified?