>> next, tran talks about the city and people of nagasaki in the morning of his bond until today. august 9th, 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the bombing of nagasaki. >> susan southard is one of this community. that is what makes this event very special. susan southard holds an mfa in

writing from antioch university, los angeles was a nonfiction at the norman mailer and private con massachusetts she lives and works in tempe. were she is the founder and artistic sure of essential theater. she has taught nonfiction classes at arizona state university's studio and has directed creative writing programs for incarcerated youth and at a federal prison for women outside phoenix. she's also raise your family here. as a matter of fact, her daughter was once a junior staffer in arcade section. let me tell you, she was the darling of the kids book department not only for her love of votes, but also for her personal grace and charm winning smile much like her mother's.

so, you can see susan and her family have been one of our regular patron and readers for many years now, one of her dearest friend. for many years we've known about the book she's been working on diligently, quietly. the topic so big and important, yet sensitive than heavy hearted enough that it had not been properly dealt with until now upon the 70th year anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the nagasaki. the story had been untold. in "nagasaki: life after nuclear war," susan southard takes readers from the morning of the bombing should not miss hockey today, telling the first-hand experience of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the bombing.

the book was a finalist for the work in progress towards monster by harvard university's nieman foundation at columbia university school of journalism. the very book is now out with reviewers rightly recognizing his tremendous importance to merit. we are so very moved by the publication at last of this tremendous work and by its reception. take a look at the reviews. rich escorted a few of them on the table of books and we are so very fortunate and happy to welcome our dear friend, susan southard, to this stage. [applause]

>> i don't know if those of you who don't know me well her giggles in the audience when she mentioned the people -- i don't know how you worded it, but people have been waiting for the book to come out. it has been a challenger process and am grateful for anyone i know who didn't doubt me or didn't say out loud that they doubted me. first of all, thank you so much for the beautiful introduction and for allowing me to have made a launch event here at changing hands, which has been an integral part of my life for the last 25 years. it's an honor. good evening to all of you. i see many friends, colleagues and family here tonight and many of you i don't know what i look

forward to getting to know you as well if we have time. before i begin, a few people here tonight i would like to acknowledge. first, my family who have come across the country to commemorate this day with me. my parents, and gary and sue southard. my brother. where are you? my brother rise and his partner, wendy bowen. my younger brother jonathan tran alive in his surprise me to hours ago by showing up at my house from l.a. and my absolutely beautiful daughter, forgive me for saying that out loud. even who accompanied me on my very first trip to nagasaki in

2003 when she was 10 years old and grew up with this book. over the past 12 years i heard a wonderful team of seven native japanese speakers to help veterans late historical documents, correspondence and hours and hours of survivor interviews. three translators are here tonight. toshio jones, medical studio sheet. thank you. i'd also like to express -- yes, let's give them a hand. [applause] there others who couldn't be here tonight and i'd like to express my deep gratitude to the plate so i'll brag who worked side-by-side with me for eight years helping me translate survivors were into the most nuanced english we could find. excellent administrative support for the book was provided and you can tell me where you are from a charlie brown, jeannie

callahan, marine should avoid a quiz night here tonight and my daughter, eva. ken black earned -- blackbird. thank you for reagan at the various stages of development and providing valuable feedback. and finally robyn. this is robyn lavoie, an extraordinary historical researcher, thinker, colleague and friend whose deep intelligent and dedication helped me create and shape this book into its final form. [applause] i'm going to read several ex-parrot -- experts and postnuclear survival and after the rating there will be time for questions. the first segment -- can everyone hear me, first of all? the first segment alongside the

vacuum at the bomb was dropped over non-masaki from a modified t. 29 bombers six miles above the city. by this time in the story readers have been introduced to the five survivors whose stories are woven throughout the book. all of them teenagers at the time of the bombing. materialism port and also difficult. i hope you'll be able to bear it. it's about eight minutes long. the five-time plutonium bomb plunge towards the city of 640 miles per hour. 47 seconds later a powerful implosion force the bombs account import to compress from the sides of the grapefruit tree tennis ball generating an instantaneous chain reaction of nuclear fission with colossal force and energy the bomb detonated a third of a mile above the 30,000 residents and workers. at 11:02 a.m. a super brilliant

flash flood up the sky from as far away as the hospital more than 10 miles over the mountain bit equal to the power of 21,000 tons of tnt. the entire city come. the center of the explosion reach temperatures higher than the center of the son of velocity of shockwave exceeded the speed of sound good attempt of a millisecond later all the materials that is made up the bottom compartment to an ionized gas and waves were released into the air. thermal heat of an internal temperature of 540,000 degrees fahrenheit. within one second the blazing fireball expanded from 52 feet to it maximum size of 700 feet in diameter.

within three seconds to grab the low reached an estimated 547200 degrees fahrenheit directly beneath the bomb infrared heat blazed instantly carbonized human and animal flesh and vaporized internal organs. as the atomic cloud two miles overhead eclipse the sun, the bombs |-vertical-bar sure crashed much of that commie valley. horizontal blast tour through the region at two and a half times the speed of a category five hurricane pulverizing buildings, trees, plants, animals and thousands of men, women and children. every direction people were blown out of shelters, houses, schools and hospital beds. or flattened beneath collapsed buildings. those working in the field writing streetcars and standing in line for loan off their feet are hit by plummeting debris and

press to discarding her. an iron bridge move 28 inches downstream as their buildings began to implode, patients and staff jumped out of the window said that not a sake medical college in the west high school girls like from the third story of the elementary school half mile from the blast. the blazing heat melted iron and other metals scorched bricks and concrete building, ignited clothing, disintegrated vegetation can cause severe and fatal flash burns on people's exposed faces and bodies. a mile from the detonation the blast caused nine-inch brick walls to crack and blast fragments are looking into people's arms, legs, back from faces often punctured their muscles and organs. two miles away people suffering flash burns for tragedy partially demolished buildings.

i'd distance is that to five miles, but in class printers ripped into their flash. window shattered as far as 11 miles away. larger doses of radiation than any human had ever received deep into the bodies of people and animals. the fireball section massive amount of dust and debris into it turning stem. a deafening roar erupted at buildings throughout the city shattered and crashed to the ground. it all happened in an dead. he bear this in the blinding light half a mile away before a powerful force hit powerful force hit him on his right side and hurled him in to the air. the heat was so intense i curled up like pseudo mag, dried squid he said in what felt like dreamlike slow-motion, yoshida was on back 130 feet across a

field, wrote an irrigation channel had plunged to the ground with any non-is back in a rice paddy flooded the shallow water. inside the weapons factory they had been wiping perspiration from her face and concentrating on her work one enormous blue white flash of light verse into the building followed by an earsplitting explosion in a torpedo had detonated inside the plant to herself on the ground and covered her head with their arms just as the fact tree came crashing down on top of her. finishers laid share, taniguchi had been writing as bicycle through the hills in the northwest corner of the valley when a sudden burning wind rushed towards him from behind propelling him into the air in claiming him facedown on the road. they are through shaking so hard

that i hung on as hard as i could so i wouldn't get blown away again. 15-year-old noggin i was standing in my fact we protect and to some degree by distance and the weather not that stood between her and the bomb. the light flashed she remembered . a bomb had hit her building. she fell to the ground covering her ears and eyes with her thumbs and fingers according to her training as soon as crashed and all around her. she could hear pieces of 10 swirling and colliding in the air out my. two miles southeast yelped streetcar driver was sitting in the lounge talking with his friends. the train cable/. the whole city of nagasaki was indescribable. an unbelievably massive light lit up the whole city.

a valid explosion rocked the station. they'd dove for cover and in the next instant he felt like he was floating in the air before being slapped down before. something of a landed on his back in a file unconscious. beneath the mushroom cloud a huge portion of not a sake had vanished. tens of thousands throughout the city were dead or injured. on the floor of the terminal, sawdust lay beneath a dream i was curled up on the airport and back to her mouth filled with glass slivers injured in the wreckage of the mitsubishi factory engulfed his mouth. yoshino was barely conscious. his body and face brutally scorched.

taniguchi's on, not yet realizing his back was burned off. he lifted his eyes just long enough to see a child swept away like a flick of dust. 60 seconds had passed. most americans know little about the acute and long-term effects of radiation on the survivor's body. since it's such a critical part of their post on lives because of the nation america has diverted its for 70 years i selected a short excerpt to give you a sense of what happened early on. you hear the name.iraqis do key in this segment.

within a week of the bombings come up thousands of men, women and children in the surrounding region began to experience -- i'm going to bring us a little closer. thank you. within a week of the bombing, thousands of men, women and children in the surrounding region began to experience inexplicable combinations of symptoms. high fever, dizziness, loss of appetite, nausea, headaches,, whole body weakness and fatigue. their hair fell out in large clumps. burns and lynn secreted extreme amounts of pass on their gums swell became given blood. purple spots appeared on their bodies at first about the size of a pin one doctor recalled for growing in a few days to the size of a grain of rice story p.

the spots were signs of hemorrhaging beneath the skin. infection throughout the body were rampant including a large intention, esophagus, lungs and. in a few days of the appearance appearance of their initials and many people lost consciousness, mumbled deliriously and died in extreme pain. others languish for weeks before either dying or slowly recovering. even those who suffered no external injuries fell sick and died. some workers and victims families who came into the area after the bombing also suffered serious illness. fear grips the city as a pattern of symptoms, illness and death became clear come to some people polled on their hair every morning to see if the time had come. many families turn where relatives and guests staying after the bombing and some

farmers outside refused food to hungry refugees from the city. at first.there authors do key to some form of liver disease. others that the illness is due to poisonous gas released by the bomb. august 15th when scientists confirmed a bomb had been dropped in nagasaki, what appeared to be an epidemic killing their city was related to radiation contamination. this is really not diseases and conditions but did nothing to minimize the terrifying truth about the invisible power of the bomb. people died one after another. the doctor likened the situation to the black death pandemic but devastated europe in the 1300s

observing cremations taking place in his hospital yard he wondered if his body to make soon be burned. life or death was a matter of chance, a state he said and the dividing line between the top are cremating him a slight. a second wave of radiation illness and death swept through the city in late august and early september and continue through early october. dr. rp stookey in his whole staff can do with nausea, and fatigue which he remembered made me feel as if i'd been beaten all over my body. from his perspective from his burnout hospital on top of the geographical past the first people suffered and died from radiation related illness lived inside a shelter at the bottom of the hill. fiona killed people in relative order according to distance or the atomic last.

in the next year people grew sick they were carried to the hospital grounds by their neighbors who lived further up the hill in the distance between homes for the sake and his hospital became shorter and shorter. the families were attacked by radiation sickness. i remember this widening at dance -- i named this widening advance of the disease the concentric circle of death. he watched as his neighbor mr. yamaguchi plus 13 family members from atomic bomb sickness. after reached at mr. yamaguchi carried the body to the cemetery, double grave and called for the priest. a church ceremony to return home to care for the remaining family members all of whom had fallen ill. they are dying when i won he told the doctor. who will send for the priest

when i am dying? who will dig my grave when i am gone. this is just a short note about what was going on in the united states at the same time. high-level officials adamantly and publicly refuted the news reports i have here a shame he nagasaki of large numbers of people are suffering and dying from radiation exposure. in late august and september general leslie groves, director ready atomic arms were developed try to deflect public discussion about the radiation effects by insisting upon its use in their decisive role in ending the war. the atomic amistad inhuman weapon. our best answer to anyone who doubts this is we did not start the war and if they don't like the way we ended it to remember who started it. later that year they testified

before the u.s. senate from radiation exposure is without undue suffering and a very pleasant way to dying. i'm going to skip ahead 10 years now and take you to a new place. i will tell you about dolman nico. the first time i met 10 wives in 2003 in nagasaki and i was in a column and serve waiting for her at one end of a very large table enchanter from the far end. when i first set eyes on her, she took my breath away. she stood there so tall and with a presence unlike anyone i've ever met before. i learned later as a child die

with athletic and strong willed and sometimes broke the rules to for fido in my book shows her in street clothes on the day she should have been wearing her school uniform. she liked to look nice. you will hear the word in this segment. it means a topic bomb come they were created to identify that it is in survivors of the atomic bombs. doe was 15 at the time of the bomb. she was inside the mitsubishi weapons factory then imploded on top of her and thousands of men, women and didn't workers. to catch you up, she barely escaped the factory ruins before she fell unconscious unconscious so she waited for someone to find her. she is a wide gash on the back of her head running from one ear to the other. the first few months purple spots appeared on her body and

she ran a high fever. her poems were inflamed and she lost all of her hair. her doctor told her parents she was dying and it was time to let her go. still made it. eventually move to radiation related symptoms disappear in her injuries for the most part healed that year after year her hair would not grow back. no hidden cider house staring at herself in the mirror. instead of hair, soft raggedy fuzz grew on her scalp so thin entrance. the she let almost bald and even that would fall out and grow women followed again. why me she fumed. why do i have to say so ugly? i didn't do anything. she asked herself over and over what she should do if only she'd been given. eight years after the bombing she came to relation to do to find a way to transcend her atomic bomb experiment and create a new life for herself.

desperate to overcome her shame and reclaim her life, don't put on a black kerchief her mother made for her and stepped outside her house. she stayed close to home taken short walks in her immediate neighborhood. later she heard that people call her a girl with a triangle cloth. does father decided she should go to dressmaking school so she could eventually support herself and have a good life. the commute to school required her to venture further from home. one day on her way home she saw fatigue middle-age woman on a straw mat on the ground with a young child strapped to her back. could you give me something the moment they everything is fine. go drop some coins in her box and was overwhelmed by the thought of him only sound they make. what kind of life has this woman had she wondered. did she lose her husband in the war or the atomic bomb?

under way home, don't imagine what it was like to live like this woman is awakened to the necessity of her own independence. she found a part-time job has a kitchen maker. some of the later she was hired as a nagasaki representative. for the first time since the bombing, doe felt alive again and began envisioning the future for herself. she decided she wanted to live an authentic and full life for herself and for her friends who had died. reconnect to her love of fashion, doe focused on cosmetics as a way to help women whose faces were scarred and burned. halftime when not she wanted to test her potential. she wanted to leave her hometown to move to a bigger city make in a rare choice for a single

japanese women covered to a requested a transfer to her company's office in tokyo, the place for fashion, the place for anything. her application was accepted but those parents adamantly object to relieving. your body is injured they said. at some point you may become ill again. we can see you're experiencing hardships there experiencing hardships there. joe was furious and then another act of social defined told her. she was going to tokyo despite their wishes. before she left she rented a room to practice on around had worked at the cosmetics companies local shop and took odd jobs to save money. at night team -- her hair grew back and not for her to remove the black kerchief from her head. she was free. on the day of her departure, it does now 26 raptor clothes into

the doe state, said goodbye to her family and boarded a train for tokyo. the trip took a day and a half. her goal was to use the life she'd been given. i felt like a dirty dad once you remember so if it didn't work out it would not lost anything. inside the coal burning train, doe watched the city from her childhood and atomic bomb experiences disappear in the distance. going to tokyo was the true starting line of my life she said. i bet against myself that i would when. -- that i would win. this is the closing segment i will read tonight. i'm going to skip way ahead to the early and mid-2000 tell you about yoshida, an absolute amazing, charming, kind and

hilarious man who i met when he was in his 70s. yoshida was a 13-year-old boy bought back 130 feet into a rice paddy by the bombs blast. his face was severely burned and disfigured. like doe, for years to yoshida remained in hiding afraid of people stairs. he eventually needed to work and found a job in the warehouse of the grocery wholesaler. each of the five survivors whose tories et al. experience personal numbers of awareness of transformation that led to speaking publicly to do everything possible. here's the story of yoshida's first public telling of his story and how he speaks to children about his experiences. a note about his appearance. yoshida wears a large black patch to cover the place where his right ear used to be. the patch is secured via black

elastic that runs underneath this chance of the other side of his face and across the top of his nearly bald head. scar tissue covers his face and neck and his lefty or a shriveled. when he smiles his mouth is crooked revealing the shaping tea behind large framed glasses, yoshida's eyes are running thin, one higher than the other. although yoshida admired who chose to speak publicly about of them as pioneers, he himself remained silent. i wish i do speak in front of people, especially women. ever looked at me like this. i didn't like it. one day, yamaguchi approached yoshida to ask if he could take place on a talk he was scheduled to get to junior high school students visiting nagasaki. yoshida agreed to when they

arrived at the site and saw the students staring at him, he immediately regretted it. unraveled by the students fear of making eye contact and what he thought was their repulsion, yoshida stood before them and told his story. .. the nagasaki atomic bomb museum

in 2007. crowds, he locates a group of students that is scheduled to hear his story that day, greets the headteacher that races to the head of the line to hold the museum door open for the class, urging them them inside for the last child has entered. now he says, 9.5.10 out of ten children don't cry, to help the students feel comfortable, for years he joked that he was as good-looking as a handsome popstar from the 1990s. now however still an act handsome actor in his 40s note longer evokes that. a colleague suggested he update the actor he compared the actor he relates to he had never done

so except for once in chicago when he likened his good looks to leonardo dicaprio. even if children don't fully understand the reference, yoshida's yoshida's life hearted twist on his appearance still gets children to smile. when children ask him for his autograph afterwards, he signs it grandpa yoshida and ads in parentheses grandpa. this is what i say to children he explained have you ever looked up piece in the dictionary? they never have. they never have because they don't have to know what pieces during peace time. let's look it up together he says to the children. he pauses and ads, our greatest enemy is carelessness, we need to pay attention to peace. thank you [applause].

>> that was my father's. [laughter] >> i'm going to take a breath for a moment and allow you all to take a breath for a moment. and open the house for questions to any think occurs to you that you would like to ask or discuss. >> how did you decide upon those five? >> it started with one of the survivors i met in 1986 in washington d.c. where he was out of speaking to her. i was unexpectedly invited to be

his interpreter for two days and i'd not only read the english translation of the speeches but i was the only one who spoke japanese and he spoke no english so we s.> how did you learn japanese? [laughter] like you don't know. how did i happen to learn

japanese. i lived in japan as an international exchange students it when i was in high school for 13 months. no one in my japanese host family or school spoke english so i learned a lot then and then i studied it in college. >> why do you suppose nagasaki is so ignored, all the books are about iwo jima and almost nothing about nagasaki. >> that's a great question, it's a complex question i think. over the years your jima as the first city bombed became an iconic symbol of the bombs and

even nagasaki even became became confused at take your oshima as it became confused as typically it became and i think i would've said it as well as the bomb ended the war or when we dropped the bomb. either people don't know about the second atomic bombing or they're just referring to in it as a singular event and i think it's a dreadful oversight. >> what seems dreadful to me is they dropped the second bomb. i just don't understand why they couldn't have waited a while and seen the reaction to the first, why they had to do the second. do you have any comments on

that. >> she said what seems triple for her is that they dropped the second atomic bombs and they didn't wait to see what the reaction would be to the first. i have a couple of things i would like to say. one is that my book starts after the bomb has dropped and deals with the survivors eyes and i have studied the question that you have asked and it is really complex. i have found two historians who i respect profoundly because they analyze the fact without bias compared to other historians. even they, i think they lean toward the fact that nagasaki bombing did not impact the surrender or if it did, not very significantly. even they even they will not draw that concrete conclusion, it's very complex

and one interesting little fact is that the nagasaki bombing did not have a second or separate military directive. the bombs pres. truman signed in order to deliver each atomic bomb as it was ready. there was no specific analysis for the need of the second bomb. >> what was your experience as a next exchange student question mark. >> that was a long time ago. [laughter] they were great, they're very hard as well be in in an environment where i had no one to speak to comfortably for a long time was hard. it was fascinating and it completely opened up my life to a sense of global experiences

that i had not known before. >> i'm curious about the willingness of the participants to be exposed through your writing and whether you encountered any problems. i know some other people probably did not want so much exposure because you said you'd they deny what their name use. >> it's not that they didn't want their names used is that i had to limit the number of names being used for readers to follow the book. basically, most people, i believe it's true in your jima too but definitely nagasaki, most people do not speak publicly about their experiences most do not speak privately about their experiences they remain pretty private among their family.

it's an incredibly traumatic experience and they kept their identities hidden because of discrimination, for their own prospects for marriage and children and for their children's prospect for marriage and children and it goes on. and so the ones i interviewed were part of a small group of survivors who for variate personal reasons made a choice to speak out, so they are very glad their stories are being told. they do it with a strong, passionate commitment to nagasaki. their dream would be that nagasaki is the last atomic bomb on a city in history. >> i'm curious being someone who is younger and graduated from high school less than a decade

ago, how did the history book read when it comes to world war ii from the japan side. i can remember in our history books that they're kinda biased, i feel like there be a lot of animosity. >> so you're asking what the history books are like and what they said because about in japan about world war ii? >> yeah how that choice the united states made to make take that action. >> that's a complex situation because there are those who want to remove all mention of the atomic bomb in japanese history books, they are the more right-wing core of the government because they want to honor the militaristic aggression of japan. there are those who want the history books to reflect the atomic bomb as well.

it's kind of complicated and there are cycles of trying to insert the points of view into the textbook. japan, at least my experience, i don't know in detail i have them in thousands of people in japan, but my experience being in japan is that the survivors who speak publicly about their experiences are very open and direct and deeply respectful of those who suffered at the hands of the japanese military. at pearl harbor, and across asia with the atrocities and the allied pows that were tortured and killed. i don't know if there is that sensibility across the nation, i haven't experienced it let's put it that way. i can't speak for sure, we have similarities.

>> is the book being published in japan and if so have you had reaction? >> the book is not yet been published in japan, it is just released today. [laughter] it is being published so far in the united kingdom and in denmark. and being translated into danish , it is on sure yet whether it will be published in japan. i will have to wait and see, the survivors so story in japan are very well acknowledged every year around the time of the two anniversaries. a lot of their stories are familiar to the japanese so that's why i'm not sure. >> what was your most interesting or profound, surprising discovery during your experience question marks. >> what was my most interest during or profound experience?

almost everything. there was nothing, most of what i was researching and trying to write about was new to me and new to american readers. but i would say one thing that i could say and maybe it would be surprising, when i first went into thousand three it was a really big jump to try to start interviewing survivors and trying to grasp and understands the foundations and the beginnings of what had happened in that city. i think i could have never imagined how much i would have adored the survivors and others i had met and got to know, they

really became very deeply meaningful to me as a person. >> what about the long-term genetic effects and things like that. is that something you deal with in the book? >> i do. >> and to talk about that when they speak publicly? >> so the question is what about the long-term genetic effects on survivors and do they speak about it publicly. so i haven't heard them speak publicly about it because they're mostly telling their personal stories, with me me they spoke about it some because i pressed about the circumstances of how they were able to get married. four out of the five married and

i think all four had children. so i pressed about how that happened because it was very difficult to marry a survivor and then what it was like when their children were born and as they were growing up. so they they spoke about it with me but i haven't heard them speak in their speeches because there are more telling about the personal experiences. so far, i did a reading about what happened in the first two months after the bombing, for decades afterwards the cancer rates skyrocketed in different cycles. many different, leukemia and many different kinds of cancers, really high rate in children and adults and now as survivors are reaching their older age, they they are now in a new region of high risk and no one can

pinpoint any individuals occurrence of cancer as being connected to the bombing at this point. they only know by statistical analysis that the rates are much higher so it is a very confusing and frustrating part of their lives and as far as genetic effects go, in the second generation there has been no evidence. they have been study, and study, and studied. the survivors, many of them have volunteered to be subjects of lifelong studies and there are no indication of genetic defects in the second generation scientists are not declaring that to be definitive because they don't know if it might have skipped a generation. >> are all of your survivors still alive? >> i hesitate to answer that question because it might be a little bit of a spoiler in the

book so man leave it at that? with that purée? laughter thank you. >> any final question. >> i'm curious about you, you are in high school when you went to nagasaki. what was your historical perspective of the history of the war at that point and this idea that the bombing brought about the surrender? >> a friend of mine andy who must've read the preface all he read the l.a. times review he said. he's asking what my experience was when i was in high school and i afraid i forgot the last half. >> and just.

>> oh yeah and was my historical perspective. nothing. so i was living in yokohama and i was a junior in high school but i was invited because i was the only america to go with the senior class in their week long field trip and the school took their seniors to the southern island and as part of going around the island we stopped at nagasaki and went to the atomic bomb museum there. it was amazing, it was a life-changing experience for me at a young age because number 1i had not learned about the atomic bomb yet in high school. i should have, but we moved around a lot and i missed american history in every school, i never got american history in high school. it was always taught, it had always been taught the year before whenever i moved to a different school.

so i didn't know anything about it and it was shocking to me and it was terrifying to me. i was standing there in japan at the time with my school mates, japanese girls were always hand-in-hand or arm in arm, it was always physical contact so there i am in front of the glass cases where a helmet with charred flesh inside from someone scalp or different horrifying artifacts, and i was just devastated. it was an intense experience for me to understand the impact of war. frankly a war of any kind at that time. i had no learning yet, and i don't think many that high school and my age, even if they did learn it was just like a line in the history book. and then going on to explain

whatever that textbooks perspective on the impact of that was. >> the firebombing i believe killed more people than either one or both combined did any of the survivors mention anything about that? >> know but but i didn't ask them about that because there's so so much to learn about the atomic bombing itself and what it takes to survive nuclear war. but you're right, that happened. >> it actually before the two atomic bombs were dropped 64 cities in japan have been devastated by either conventional or firearm bombing.

it was a complicated situation in japan at that time. thank you. >> you hear a lot it stories that are traumatizing to people how has this book changed you as a person and what is the impact it had on you? >> i could make a joke, i could. he said writing a book like this would have a very traumatic dealing with a lot of traumatic experiences and what kind of emotional impact of it have on me? i think it varied for me. the thing that kept me grounded, and happy during the process was

knowing the survivors and growing to care about them so much, and trying to really understand their experiences. they became a big part of my life, they didn't know that, but that was what was going inside of me here, that me me going. they are strong, courageous, they are idiosyncratic and most of them were pretty intimate with me about their experiences. that meant a lot, that helped me a lot. there are times when the content was really overpowering and i had to stop sometimes. all in all, i know i i will be representing this book, hopefully across the country, i'm glad i'm not writing it anymore. it was a hard, long process not

only from a writing point of view but also an emotional point of view. it will be a good thing for me to have a breather from the intensity of the interior of the story. thank you. >> everybody take a collective breath here. i would like to thank you so very much for calming and for your interest in the topic, for your really fascinating questions and for those of you who stay, i look forward to staying on meeting you. thank you. [applause].

what happens next is that she'll be appear signing books, if you haven't purchased your book yet we still have plenty. please take it to their register before you ask her to sign it. we also asked that if you would help us clear the area so we can have a nice organized signing line, will be more of a challenge with cameras but we always ask our to help just bolger own chair. you don't have don't have to do more than that, just you can put it up against history, or or romance, and will clear the space. thank you so much.

>> book tv is on facebook, like us to get publishing news, scheduling, scheduling update and behind the scenes pictures and videos. author information facebook.com/book tv. presidential candidates often release books to introduce themselves to voters and to promote their views on issues. here's a look at books written by declare candidates for president. in his book immigration wars, former governor jeb bush, neurosurgeon ben carson calls for greater individual responsibility to preserve america's future in one nation. in against the type of our road out island governor chafee. former secretary of state hillary clinton look back on her time in the alabama and the obama administration.

ted cruz recounts his journey from a cuban immigrant sent the u.s. senate. in rising to the challenge she's shares lessons challenge. south carolina lindsey graham released an e-book on his website, in my story he details his childhood and career in the air force. mike huckabee gives his take on politics and culture in gods guns grits and gravy. ohio governor john casey calls for what he sees traditional american values in stand for something. george pataki is also running for president, in 1998 he

released pataki where he look back on his path to the governorship. kentucky senator rand paul calls for smaller government in his book taking a stand. in american dreams, marco rubio outlines his plan to advance economic opportunity. bernie sanders, his book, the speeches composed of his eight hour long filibuster against tax cuts. in blue-collar conservatives rick santorum argues the republican party must focus on the working class in order to retake the white house. donald trump has written several trucks books and times get tough he criticizes the obama administration and outlines his vision.