My point wasnât necessarily that I believe that most people worldwide think the bombing was wrong, but rather that itâs unlikely JackM has access to what âmost peopleâ think worldwide, and that it is plausible for obvious reasons that insofar as he does have a sense of what most Americans think about this, itâs at least very plausible for standard reasons of nationalism and in-group bias that Americans have a more favourable view of the bombings than the world as whole. But âplausibleâ just means that, not definitely true.
As for the fact that they had few bombs: that is true, and I did briefly think it might enable the utilitarian defence you are giving, but if you think things through carefully, I donât think it really works all that well. The reason that the bombings pushed Japan towards surrender* is not, primarily, that it was much harder for Japan to fight on once Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gone, but rather the fear that US could drop more bombs. In other words, the Japanese werenât prepared to risk the US having more bombs ready, or being able to manufacture them quickly. That fear could certainly also have been generated simply by proof that the US had the bomb. I guess you could try and argue a warning shot would have had less psychological impact, but that seems speculative to me.
*There is, I believe, some level of historical debate about how much longer they would have held out anyway, so I am not sure whether the bombings alone were decisive.
My point wasnât necessarily that I believe that most people worldwide think the bombing was wrong, but rather that itâs unlikely JackM has access to what âmost peopleâ think worldwide, and that it is plausible for obvious reasons that insofar as he does have a sense of what most Americans think about this, itâs at least very plausible for standard reasons of nationalism and in-group bias that Americans have a more favourable view of the bombings than the world as whole. But âplausibleâ just means that, not definitely true.
As for the fact that they had few bombs: that is true, and I did briefly think it might enable the utilitarian defence you are giving, but if you think things through carefully, I donât think it really works all that well. The reason that the bombings pushed Japan towards surrender* is not, primarily, that it was much harder for Japan to fight on once Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gone, but rather the fear that US could drop more bombs. In other words, the Japanese werenât prepared to risk the US having more bombs ready, or being able to manufacture them quickly. That fear could certainly also have been generated simply by proof that the US had the bomb. I guess you could try and argue a warning shot would have had less psychological impact, but that seems speculative to me.
*There is, I believe, some level of historical debate about how much longer they would have held out anyway, so I am not sure whether the bombings alone were decisive.