Collateral Murder (merged)

[tater]

Originally Posted by Fader_Berg

WTF?! Are you trying to justify the A-bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a paranthesis?

I have no problem with either of those attacks, actually. never had, never will. They without question saved more lives—even just Japanese lives—than they took. Had we not used the 2 devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we certainly would have used them in advance of the invasion. Had the war lasted a couple weeks longer, the UK would have invaded Malaya, and there was a standing order for all POWs to then be executed. That totaled about the number killed by the bombs just counting POWs in the Malaya area. Similar orders were followed through with everywhere else, there is no reason to expect they would not have in Malaya on September 1st.

I was, however, actually thinking more of LeMay's firebombing campaign, which killed more people than both atomic weapons combined. The 2d fire raid on Tokyo killed 102,000 alone, for example.

Technically speaking—which is all that matters legally—all men 15-65, and all women 17-47 in Japan were soldiers by Imperial Edict. While that certainly leaves many kids and old people as non-combatants, they were if anything outnumbered by combatants. If you mix combatants and noncombatants intentionally, you cannot complain when the latter are killed.

That's just a statement of reality.