Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> >
> > "J. R. Molloy" wrote:
> > >
> > > From: <CurtAdams@aol.com>
> > >
> > > > Are you saying terrorism is OK if it works?
> > > > Or if it's done in a "good cause"?
> > >
> > > If it ends a World War, as the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki did, it ain't
> > > that bad.
> > > ...are you saying that you oppose good causes?
> > > How lame.
> >
> > The logical fallacy here is the assumption that the inhabitants of
> > Hiroshima and Nagasaki are to be considered 'non-combatants' under the
> > Geneva Conventions.
>
> I have not seen a good argument that they were combatants under
> the terms of the Geneva Convention.
Fair enough:
a) Japan never signed the Geneva Conventions, as it's military felt they
were too restrictive.
b) Therefore, we are left to determine what Japan's own society felt was
the proper delineation between combatant and non-combatant. From the:
i) treatment of POWs to the killing, raping, and imprisoning of
civilian westerners by Japan,
ii) treatment of Chinese civilians (killing tens of thousands in
retribution for aiding the escape of the Doolittle Raid crewmen),
iii) treatment of Korean civilians (enslavement of women to serve as
prostitutes for Japanese soldiers),
we see that Japan saw that there was no real difference between enemy
soldiers and civilians in how they should be treated.
c) Holding them to their own standard, and given that the US-Japanese
conflict fell outside of the Geneva Conventions, since Japan never
signed them, the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as
firebomb attacks on other Japanese cities, were entirely legal.
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