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| The aftermath of the firebombing of Tokyo is the left picture and the aftermath of Hiroshima is the right picture. Not much of a difference between the two. |
Monday, November 21, 2016
Journal 8- Kenzie
I thought that the Logical Insanity podcast was very interesting. I liked that it gave us more of the Americans perspective on the bombing whereas we got the Japanese Perspective from the book Hiroshima. I loved that he dug in to the morality of bombs and the morality behind war. How now we basically have rules where we have decided we would not use certain kinds of weapons on the enemy. Not everything is fair game, even in war. One of my favorite quotes from this podcast is "when is it permissible to kill 100,000 civilians in a Japanese city when you're going to save 10 times or 15 times or 20 times that number. When did it become okay to make these sorts of calculations." He talked about how the atomic bomb was proposed to only be banned for five years at first because they may be able to make it more precise (so they wouldn't harm as large of an area or as many civilians) and that could be a gift to mankind because it would make war much shorter and easier. I found this idea interesting, but I don't necessarily agree with it. In war we have enemies, but a life is still a life and I don't think it is okay to wipe out an entire army group when there may have been other ways to end the war with less casualties. On the other hand, it is not very humane to have things like firebombings, which he also discussed, that were also going on in Japan during WWII. He talked about how eye witnesses from Hiroshima and the firebombings had very similar descriptions of the events. In a lot of ways these were similar and it caused the Japanese to just want an end to it all. Overall this podcast brought up some ideas that I had never thought of before and I learned a lot more about the Americans perspective and why we ended up dropping the atomic bomb.
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I absolutely agree with you about how the podcast gave us a different perspective on the bombing that occurred at the end of World War II. It's interesting your opinion of how you disagree with dropping the atomic bomb. I disagree with your opinion but I liked your side of the issue in saying that you believe a life is a life and it is not right, morality wise, to wipe out an entire army group when there are other ways to do this that offer less casualties. I believe though that the atomic bomb as a new and innovative technology for the United States. The atomic bomb allowed the U.S. to advance themselves further.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there should be another way, but if atomic bombs became the new norm for war then the whole military structure would change because you wouldn't need as many ground troops if you are just going to nuke your enemies so the entire army would be significantly smaller to keep the number of casualties down when the enemy is inevitably going to try and bomb them. most of the military would then become workers to make more bombs, fly them, and create countermeasures for the bombs themselves.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed hearing an American's view point on the use of nuclear warfare, because hearing both sides is very important. In this case, the bombed and the people using the bombs are the different view points. Reading Hiroshima definitely caused me to think, but this did as well. The quote that you mentioned stood out to me as well. How do we decide who lives and who dies, or the methods of defense? Moral is one of the only ways in which we can decide important questions such as these, which is very scary.
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