Al Mohler wrestles here with the ethics of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WW2, appealing to Just War theory. He concludes,

“I believe the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified, in so far as the use of nuclear weapons can ever be justified. My Christian worldview is shaped by the horrible recognition that this kind of knowledge, the design of nuclear weapons, cannot be unlearned by humanity. It’s a permanent threat now. I have to hope for the United States and our allies to strike the right balance in keeping the nuclear threat at bay. We can only hope that the true horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be enough to restrain the impulse to use “the bomb” once again. There are now thousands of them. This should drive us to prayer, and it must inform our understanding of the world around us and our place in it. Human nature didn’t change on Aug. 6, 1945, but human warfare did. That should be worth at least a few moments of your interest today. God help us.”

I grew up in the Philippines less than 20 years after WW2 when the devastating effects of Japanese rule over the Philippines were still visible. When the United States liberated the Philippines, fulfilling MacArthur’s vow to return, the Japanese resisted to the extent that the capital of Manila was leveled with many, many civilian casualties. I heard eyewitness stories of Japanese atrocities durng the war. I knew American expats who had been interred by the Japanese in Philippine prison camps during WW2; those who survived suffered tremendously.

The Los Baños raid, conducted on February 23, 1945, was a successful military operation during World War II that liberated 2,147 Allied civilian and military internees from a Japanese internment camp in the Philippines. This operation involved a coordinated attack by U.S. paratroopers and Filipino guerrillas, making it one of the most celebrated rescue missions in military history. The Americans feared that the Japanese were planning mass executions of the Los Banos prisoners as the Americans advanced, and the U.S. military was forced to act quickly with an extremely risky operation to rescue tbe prisoners. They expected significant casualties among the prisoners. Astonishingly, not one prisoner was killed. Six members of the rescue force were killed. To this day, it is considered the most successful military rescue raid in history. You can read details of the raid here. After the raid, the infuriated Japanese killed 1500 Filipino civilians, including many women and children.

Some forms of evil require drastic action; left unchecked, evil destroys everything.

To understand the horror of war, read here about the 1000 Japanese civilians who committed suicide to the horror of the Americans during the battle of Saipan in the Pacific. This evil would have been unimagineably magnified had the U.S. been forced to invade Japan.

I agree with Al Mohler.

I am thankful for the friendly relationship the U.S. has with Japan today. I suspect that many of those born well after WW2 would have a different perspective regarding the use of nuclear weapons in WW2. Many of today’s young generation have a problem recognizing evil and the means it must be dealt with. Many live in some sort of fantasy Utopia . . . until real evil intrudes into their life, destroying everything. As Al Mohler says, “God help us.”

Those who are forced to confront real evil (i.e., the military and police) often suffer as a result. The movie “The Thin Red Line” is a powerful film about the battle for Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during WW2. There is an extraordinary scene in the movie where one of the participants is horrified by the evil he is experiencing and asks the right questions – questions that Christianity alone can answer.