The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have marked the anniversary of its destruction by the world's first atomic bomb 60 years ago.

Yes the bombing ended the war but many innocent civilian were killed so it is War Crime.

Nobody was charged for this crime. Why?

Why the last Chinese Emperor with others charged with War Crime. and who bombing innocent people with nuclear bomb hadn't blame.

Now days Slovan Milosevic of former Yugoslavia curren still on trial for War Crime. and Saddam Husein of Iraq will face trial for the same reason.

It is double standard. and political immorality.

Because Japan deserve to get it!
They're the first made the problem, with attacking pearl harbour!
They colonize Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea they rape woman, they servitude the citizen, they stole all natural resources from the colonized country!
and now what they do? nothing... except Trying to hide their sin by change their history text book and tell fairy-tale to their new generation about how good they are, how brave their soldier, etc
When I was primary 5 and my teacher tought me about the history of world war 2, I realized how evil japanese people. and I was so thankfull to US who made and drop that atomic bomb. Right after that some of colonized country realized it's good time to get their independence.

well history shows that if you attack expect to get something back, eye for an eye, but thing is though who would be charged for the war crime everyone that had to do with it is dead. except for th pilots and the crew.

kasm: The bombings did not end the war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two of the few cities left which hadn't been destroyed yet by a firestorm like in the german city of Dresden in late February of 1945 (test run, in the middle of march the same tactic began to be used against japanese cities). The japanese government was about to surrender even without the bombs being dropped...

To quote President Truman [the maniac who gave the order to use those bombs]:

Actually, this was the Manhattan Project's ultimate goal, developing _and_ using a nuclear bomb. There was no other way to justify employing about 100,000 people and spending billions of tax dollars.

That Truman said the bombs have to be used as a means of war according to the "Haager Landkriegsordnung" [sorry, I don't know the english name of this document ... it's about regulating warfare...] but there are two points which show that they were not used like that:
a) together with the bombs, some probes were dropped to measure the amount of radiation etc around the cities (which might have been meant to give useful information to doctors after the war but since the american scientist/medic teams which were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki only documentated the destruction and suffering but refused to help, this was obviously not the reason), the US military put pressure on the japanese government to refuse medical aid by the Red Cross and, most interesting when talking about this aspect of the nuclear bombings, it took the US about 7 years to grant japanese medics and scientists access to information about radiational effects to the human body;

B) just like before in other cities, the US military leadership definitely did not mean to spare civilians because once again, two cities were nearly completely destroyed; both nukes together killed about 150,000 people immediately, another 75,000 within the following months and even now the number of diseases related to radiation is very high compared to the rest of the world [except places like Chernobyl; areas around nuclear power plants or areas where some army used depleted uranium ammunition]...

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I did not mean to justify any nations war crimes here, there's just one little difference: After WWII, most nation's populations were forced to face the crimes done by their armies and sometimes themselves (and were rightfully forced); the US people however did not realize the crime done on their behalf but swallowed the justifications...

This post has been edited by OpaQue: Aug 11 2005, 12:32 PM

Both cities were warned of the attack, and there were military instalations in both cities. The Americans flew over both cities in bombers droping flyers warning the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that they were going to bomb the city and to evacuate while they could. They gave them plenty of time. The Japanese did not take them seriously, obviously they were mistaked about the US's fortitude in this matter.

Was the bombing of these cities a bad thing, most definately. Was it a war crime, I doubt it. People die in war, and often these people are not soldiers, it is called collateral damage. It is unfortunate, but it happens, sometimes it is even necessary. I think the bombing had many positive affects on the world, it was the "straw that broke the camels back" as far as convincing the Japanese to surrender saving many more months of battle, it showed the world just how dangerous these bombs were. Although they had been tested at the Trinity test site, the politicians and lay folk never quite understood the magnitude of the destruction atomic weaponry was capable of, if that was not understood and the technology got into more than one countries hands and an atomic or nuclear war was started think of the distruction that could have caused.

Skynet, to say the Japanese were evil is an extremely narrow view. Sure some of what they did was evil, and some of what USA did was evil, some of what Britain did was evil, some of what the French resistance fighters did was evil, definately much of what the Germans were doing was evil, heck it has even come out that some of what the Swiss (who remained neutral) could be considered evil. It was an evil time, and many evil deeds were done by many people from many nations, it does not mean that Japan of the time was evil.

I also disagree on the charge that the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki constitute a war crime. I won’t say the Japanese deserve it and I don’t think we are in the position to judge who deserves what. Say, we won’t put a man to death even if he has stolen a magazine from a supermarket. The Japanese invasion is, of course, wrong, but I really doubt whether other countries in the region are that innocent. Russia is one of those countries invading China during the early 1900s, and the US took the Philippines and China has a long history of annexation of the Korea peninsula and Tibet, while it is still threatening to invade Taiwan. Military expansion has been a major theme in history and none of the involved countries are “punished” justly by a tribunal or alike. The Americans took the land from the Indians and the Australian took the continent from the Aboriginals, can we say they are also guilty of invasion and deserve the A-Bomb?

I have been to Hiroshima. You must visit the museum there if you plan to stop at the city. Although I was not impressed with the deliberate downplaying of invasion in the museum, I would agree that the A-Bomb was a tragedy, if not an atrocity. The bombs, though, saved Japan from being attacked by the Soviet from the north and thus luckily avoided the evil Communists (look at Poland and N. Korea). This is, perhaps, the only good thing that the A-Bomb has brought about the country.

When you attack someone what do they do? Retaliate. When they attacked pearl harbor what did we do? Retaliate. What did they expect, us to back off and let them take over the contry? The japaneese were relentless and that is why we used the A-Bomb. Besides if the japaneese were smart they would run when they see papers falling from the sky telling them they are about to be bombed. Truman made an example of japan, so nobody would think the usa is weak.