Reference no: EM133885283

Question

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the eighth largest city in Japan, with a population of 245,000. The bomb immediately killed 100,000 people and critically injured another 100,000, who died later-mostly civilians, including children and the elderly.

The goal was to demoralize and break the Japanese resistance in order to avoid the necessity of an Allied invasion of the main islands, which it was estimated would involve up to a million Allied casualties, and perhaps more than ten million Japanese casualties (i.e., combatants plus unintended civilian casualties). The civilians of Hiroshima were not of any direct military significance (just as your little brothers and sisters, for example, were of no military significance during the war in Afghanistan), but their destruction was strategically used by the U.S. as an indirect way of pressuring the Japanese government to surrender, to avoid the need for a costly Allied invasion.

(Again: assume for the sake of argument that an Allied land invasion would indeed have been necessary if the U.S. had not used the bomb, and that the invasion would have been as costly as predicted.)

(a) Carefully discuss what you think Mill would say about this example (was it morally right, or was it morally wrong?), being sure to explain carefully the reasoning behind your answer (in other words, why do you think Mill would say what you thought he would?).

[Hint: Mill's answer may not be as straight-forward as it first seems; try to think about every relevant consideration (i.e. future consequences, etc.).]