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news' chris wallace who provides a history of the lead up to the bombing of hiroshima in august of 19 a 45. 1945. ♪ ♪ >> like the authors they commemorate, presidential libraries are living institutions. finish certainly, it is my hope that the reagan library will become a dynamic intellectual forum where scholars interpret the past and policymakers debate the future. >> welcome to the ronald reagan presidential foundation and institute virtual event series. to fulfill president reagan's mission of making the library dynamic intellectual forum, our central of foreign affairs program presents perspectives on important public policy issues of the day. each year we bring you 20-30 events from politicians, authors, members of the media and more. since the march 2020 closure of in the businesses across our country, the reagan foundation

is now bringing events online to insure we are till delivering world class content even if you can't watch it in person. in this week's event, we bring you chris wallace, anchor of "fox news sunday." 2015 marked his 50th year in the broadcast industry. he has covered nearly every major political vent ands has secured important interviews with world leaders. he broadcast his show live from the reagan library in december of each year. chris wallace is with us to speak about his new book, "countdown 1945." an unforgettable account of the lives of the ordinary american and japanese civilians in wartime as well as the american soldiers fighting in the pacific, waiting in fear for the order to launch a possible --

[inaudible] , it's the story of how in 199 days harry truman suddenly became the president. it's not only his story, it's the story of scientists, the flight crew and others. we now invite you to enjoy our virtual program coming to us from our oval office with chris wallace and executive director helen highbush. >> chris wallace, congratulations. what a terrific book. as you may know, you know, we have a lot of guests come to the reagan library who wrote some good books, and i'm not able to read them all. i could not put this one down. this is a terrific book, chris. it really is a thriller. i just loved it. and congratulations on not just the first effort, but a great first effort.

>> thank you. that's awfully nice. i will say this idea of a historical thriller, it seems to be out there because my favorite review was one in "the washington post" that said i know what happened in 1945, but this book is a thriller. and a lot of people have said that it's a page-turner, they couldn't put it down. and i'm thrilled because, frankly, that's exactly what i wanted to do. i think so much history, you know, this is in the distant past, we know what happened, why did it happened, and that's not at all what i wanted to do. and in this case it's countdown 1945, the key moments in those 116 days from april 12th, '45, when trueman summoned to the white house -- truman is summoned to the white house, he thinks to talk to roosevelt, and then he finds out he's dead, and henry stimson takes the him aside and says i need to tell you about an immense project to

create the most devastating weapon in true which is the first inkling vice president, now-president truman has of the existence of the manhattan project. and to take you not just truman as he's struggling and making the decision, but the scientists at los alamos who don't know whether the gadget, as they call the atom bomb, would even work until 21 is days before the bombing. and the flight crew of the enola gay who, on the mission during their mission to hiroshima, the 1500 miles, don't know if the bomb, when they drop it -- because it's never been dropped out of a mane -- -- of a plane, whether the aftershocks will knock them out of the sky. that's what i was trying to do, and when i hear it's a page-turner and a thriller, i'm throughed. >> my father was a b-29 pilot in

the air force, so i was rivetted. but your father doesn't need to have been in the army air corps to like this book. really well done. you put us in the room where it happened on many occasions, and that's just a, you know, a masterful job, so well done. >> well, thank you. that's exactly what i was trying to do, and there are so many dramatic moments. truman, he has a meeting with his war cabinet on june 18th, and henry stimson, the secretary of war there, george marshall, the general of the army there, all of the top brass. and their -- they're discussing now that the nazis have surrendered on may 8th, how they're going to finish and win the war against the japanese. and for about 45 minutes, there's a long discussion of the invasion of squaw pan; how many -- of japan; how many troops it will take, how many hundreds of thousands the of casualties there will be on both

sides. and at the end there's quite a junior man in the room, the assistant secretary of war, named john mccloy who ended up becoming a major figure in mud-century america -- mid-century america. he was a member of the warren commission, he was the held of the world bank. but he was a junior guy there, and truman says nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think. and mccloy asked henry timson his boss -- stimson, and he saws, go ahead. he says, i think we ought to have our heads examine if we don't at least discuss the bomb. and that was literally in his war cabinet the first time in this meeting. they'd been talking about the casualtieses and the length of the invasion and how blood duh, and nobody -- bloody it was going to be, but nobody said, yeah, but we might have the bomb until he said it x. basically it was dismissed largely because it had never been tested. wasn't tested until july 18th, just 21 days before the bomb was

used against hiroshima. and at that point back in june, truman viewed it as a science project. if it worked all right, if out didn't, you know, we had to go ahead. >> so many historical moments you wrote about, chris. i wonder, i know you're a student of history, what is it that made you choose this particular moment? >> well, it's a funny story. i had the idea of doing exactly what i talked at about, take a key moment in history and try to put you in it,, you know, at the time they didn't know all these things. they're faced with these momentous challenges. i was fortunate enough to cover six years of reagan including the reagan/gorbachev summits. but, you know, having covered it in real life, the drama of reykjavik and these enormous

discussions expect possibility that they might ban -- and the possibility that they might ban all nuclear weapons and then fit all -- then it all falls awe awe part. they went there with these hopes, and they had this meeting, and, you know, out creates a tremendous sense of suspense. so i wanted to do that, but you have a subject. in february of 2019, it was the day that president trump was going to deliver his state of the union address, and nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, invited several tv anchors over to her hideaway in the capitol. and this is a hideaway that a lot of speakers have, and this is a tradition in washington that the speaker and the president who are of opposing parties -- this is true for a republican president, democratic speaker and vice versa -- that the speaker will deliver a prebuttal to tell you all the

reasons that it's bad. so we're sutting in this room -- sitting in this room, and nancy pelosi says this is the board of education. i don't think the other folks in the room knew, but i knew that the board of education had been sam rayburn's hideaway x. this is where he would have people come after hours to gossip or to plot strategy the or to have a bourbon and ranch water. and vice president truman was a regular there. so on april 12th after he finished presiding over the senate, he went over. pelosi's telling us this story, she said it was in this room that truman called the white house, he was told they wanted to speak to him, and he calls and speaks to a white house official who says you need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible. and truman puts down the phone and says to the room, jesus and general jackson. [laughter] which i had never heard before. but i thought to myself, that's it. that's my, that's my story.

that's the one i'm going the delve into and try to create a historical througher. and as it turns out, i didn't know then -- thriller. i didn't know then that 116 days until the bomb is dropped on hiroshima. >> yeah. you know, in your first book, chris, some writers report after their first book today just had a fabulous time, they loved the experience, and some found it miserable. are -- how did you find your first book? >> yes. [laughter] you know, it is a are odd experience. it's a roller coaster. there are times when you get a delicious fact. that's really what is so exciting, is is, you know, i didn't know that when truman, you know, i knew the story of jesus christ and general jackson is, so that's a good start. but i didn't know when i started the project that when truman gets to the white house and is sworn is, he is alerted for the first time about the manhattan

project. and there's so many juicy little details like that. one of the details is the fact that they only had tested the bomb once on july 21st. i'm sorry, july 1 is 6th. 16th. and 21 is days before they ended up using it. is so now they're at the launch pad for the flight to hi e roche ma, about 1500 miles. and somebody says, look, if we put this 10,000-pound bomb, which was very inappropriately called little boy, in the front of the plane and then we have to put a bunch of extra bass in the back of -- gas in the back of the plane, it'll be with more weight than we've ever carried. and the plane might crash on takeoff. and if, an atom bomb, we could are an atomic explosion at the u.s. base on the island which will destroy all of us and won't do anything to the japanese. so they suddenly say -- this is

only about two draws before the mission -- we can't take off with a live bomb. we're going to have to arm the bomb on the plane during the mission. and thaw say, can you do that? and he says, well, i never have, but i guess i'll learn. so in the plane on the ground in sweltering heat working on out, trying to do it it. and then when they finally do take off with an unarmed bomb, get off safely and they're on the way to hiroshima, he gets down, crazings in the bomb -- cradles in the bombay, and he has to do some of the rewiring. then they have to talk off the safety plugs and put in the arming plugs, and it is only then, midway through the flight, that they say the plane -- the bomb is actually armed and ready to go. that's a detail that, you know, is just a joy. so to go back to your question.

so moments like that it's a joy. and then there are times when you're just trying to how do i tell the story, and how do i put all of these disparate elements together, and you think, man, this is hard work. my daughter's in publishing, and at one point -- she's been in publishing for ten years. not at my publisher. there's no reverse nepotism here. i said to her, boy, writing a book is hard work, and she rolled her eyes and said, gee, dad, i'm glad you discovered that. [laughter] >> it's tough to make a living. chris, did it surprise you -- it did me -- that truman didn't know the first thing about the building of this bomb. and then i read you have written that he and roosevelt had only spoken a couple of times during this fourth term of the presidency. but it's, it just seems as the vice president, he should have been read into something as important as this, but i guess

that was the case. >> yeah. a lot of people have asked me about that, and it does seem uncredible. he'd been vice president for 82 draws x. he had met privately with roosevelt twice in those 82 days. and the fact was that, you've got to remember, this was roosevelt's fourth them. he had -- this wasn't his first or even his second vice president. so he had gotten pretty good at ignoring vice presidents, and i think he thought, you know, vice presidents come and go, i've got my war cabinet, and those are the people that i count on to make these decisions. and he had just sort of shunted truman off to the side. so i mentioned the fact that stimson takes him aside on the day he's sworn in and says i'm going to tell you about this project, but he doesn't -- he knows that truman is overwhelmed. he's just become the president. so he says i'm going to give you some time to settle in, and then i'll come back. on april 25th, 13 days later, he

comes into the to oval office to brief president truman now that he's settled in not even quite two weeks. and meanwhile, general leslie rose who is the real military commander of the manhattan project, is snuck in through underground tunnels. they thought if the two of them came through the front door together, people were going to wonder what groves and stimson were doing together. and so he snuck in, and they gave truman a detailed document to read which which really explained the manhattan project in historical detail and technical detail. and truman complained, he said i don't like reading long documents like this. and grove said, mr. president, i can't -- we can't say it any more briefly or succinctly. it's a complicated project.

and he, uni, -- you know, that's how out of touch he was with it. but at the time it counted when he made the decision, he knew he had mastered all of it. >> yeah. and another remarkable fact i found from reading your book, chris, is 125,000 people, americans, working on this manhattan prompt and not a word -- project and not a word gets occupant. that's just amazing. >> well, you're exactly right. it's one of the things that astonished me too. and, you know, people say to me what was it you covered, the ups and downs, the ins and outs in washington today, you know, what was the, what was it like writing this book, and i said one of the things i enjoyed most about writing, researching and writing and now talking about this book is it has absolutely nothing to do with donald trump. [laughter] it's not a knock on the president, it's just to say that it took me away from all the

stuff we're in, and it goes precisely to your point because you're exactly right. they had been working on this project for almost three years, two plus years, 125,000 people at oak ridge, tennessee, uranium enrichment, los alamos working on the bomb, in washington, flight crews in wednesdayover, utah -- wendover, utah, and not one word leaks about the project. and i thought to myself if you had 125,000 people today working on a secret project to bake apple pie, by day two somebody would tweet this is outrageous, i'm going to blow the whistle on this thing. [laughter] john, it was a simpler time, it was a time when all the country was unified, everybody pulled together in common cause to win the war against the nazis and the japanese. and, you know, boy, could we use that now. >> yeah, you're not kidding. you're not kidding.

another, i thought, fascinating thing, of course you covered the major, mayor figures involved in the project there from truman to nimitz and believe groves, but you also chose to focus in on hawaii deco that mar rah. you know, tell us, tell the listeners about those two, which i thought was a great youngs tata position -- juxtaposition throughout the book. >> well, one of the things that we wanted to do with this book is i very much wanted, you know, it's not just to be on the top level because, of course, the war wasn't just on the top level of the scientists. it engaged all of america, and one of the stories i wanted to tell was the home front. and we found -- the. [inaudible] there are web sites where, you know, there is commentary about

various people, and amazingly, we found two people who are still alive. obviously, all of the big players are long gone. ruth simpson was a 19-year-old girl. he had volunteered to work at oak ridge, at the uranium enrichment fundamental. he didn't know what it was. she just -- she didn't know what it was. she just knew it was a giant factory, and the women, they basically just had a bunch of knobs that they had to keep the meter in the right place, not go into the red. they had no idea, they were just told keep the meter in the red, and you'll help win the war. they had no idea what they were doing was enriching uranium, creating u-235 and plutonium to fuel the at atom bomb. she had a boyfriend, later her husband, lawrence huddleston, who was in europe, had been an army medic anded had survived

all the fighting. on may 8th the war in europe ends, the nazis surrender and like a lot of other people, she's delighted because her boyfriend had gotten through this, but she's terrified because he's not going to come home. the expectation he's now going to be shipped to an even bloodier conflict. so what she didn't realize was, you know, the kind of dramatic irony of this, is she is creating or helping create the weapon that, if it is used, could save her boyfriend's life x. that's exactly what happened. hideko tamura, an even more dramatic story. often times history there are plot lines that you would never dream of inventing yourself if you were going to write a novel or do a movie. she was a 10-year-old girl who came from quite a wealthy family in hiroshima. and like a lot of the families

all throughout the country, they didn't have any expectation of an atom bomb, but they certainly expected -- they hadn't been bombed at all. so the parents would send their children out to the countryside so that if there were a bombing, they'd be safe. they sent hideko, her parents did, to what they thought was a school that ended up really being a work camp. hideko was a very willful 10-year-old, hated it. well, she couldn't send a letter home because the school censored it, i think because a lot of the students were telling their parents get me out of there. so she mailed a letter in the local post office saying get me out of here. her mother shows up on august 4th to rescue her, and hideko is thrilled, runs and, oh, thank you, mom. the mother say, hideko, look, there's a lot of fear in the cities, let's stay out here in the countryside for a few days x

she says, absolutely not, i want to go home. to they spend the night and they go home on august 5th. and, of course, that means they're in hiroshima when the bomb is dropped on august 6th. >> just amazing. and, in fact, chris, i had the great chance to see a club of you and hid -- a clip of you and hideko going into the smithsonian to be see the presence of that massive i knoll la georgia -- e knoll that bay right there in front of her. what a moment that must have been. >> so we did a documentary for fox news, if anybody out there and i assume a lot of you do subscribe e to fox nation, you can find it there, and i said to her -- we had just talked on the phone up to that point. i said, would you consider coming to washington for an interview. and she said i will under one

condition. what's that in i want to go see the enola gay. i would never have dreamt or even -- of asking her to do something like that, but she wanted to do it. so we drove out one day, and we got permissioning to go there before the museum opened. and we went to see the i knoll la bay, and i didn't know what her reaction would be, and she was kind of stunned. as you well know from your dad and b-29s, they're nor mouse, really big -- can i enormous, really big planes. and big bright silver, all shiny. and we walked up to it and i, and she was just taking it in, and i said do you feel anger? and she said, no, i just feel grief. i feel deeply grief-strike then. she thought for a while, and schoen she she said i want to say a prayer for peace, which she did. and then he said i think that this plane is an old man, and i

think he needs to leave this museum and go to sleep. and, which i thought was interesting. and then she went sayonara, and that was that. and i think on some level it provided some closure. >> that's great. it was such a great moment, chris. let's go back to truman for a second. i know it's not easy, but summarize for me the dilemma that truman faced with the dropping of the bomb, his rationale. because, as you describe so well in your book, it was going to save a lot of lives but take a lot of lives as well. >> well, i think there are a couple of points i would make and, obviously, this has been one of the great moral questions for the last 75 years. this, of course, the summer, the 75th anniversary of all these events, the dropping of the bomb on huh roche ma. should we have dropped the bomb or not. and i guess i hadn't really

studied and thought about it. it wasn't a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing. it was a choice between dropping the bomb and invading -- or invading. and if we invaded, as i said, the top experts -- general marshall, secretary of war stimson, all of the top people at the pentagon said this was in the summer of '45, you can expect the war to go on at least another year and a half, until the end of 1946, and you can expect a million japanese casualtieses and a half a million american casual the cities because -- casualties because as they got closer and closer to the japanese homeland, instead of the japanese soldiers beginning to lose spirit, they, in fact, got more fear many. when they went to okinawa, they thought they were going to talk it over in two days. it took them three months, and they ended up having to kill 100,000 japanese, and the 20,000 that were left, one of them

surrendered. some of them committed suicide, some kept fighting, some were taken prisoner, but they didn't surrender. they knew they were going to have a terrible battle on their hands if they did invade. now, only people say, well, okay, so, you know, but they would have surrendered anyway, to which my response is we dropped the bomb on hi e roche ma -- hiroshima on august 6th. and the japanese military government does not surrender for three days. so the u.s. then drops a second bomb on nagasaki. and the japanese military government still does not surrender. and it is only then that emperor here here toe decide -- hirohito decides to go over the japanese government directly to the people, and he gets on the radio, and it's literally the first time the vast majority of japanese have ever heard the voice of their emperor, and he basically says we have to

surrender and that was out. but it took two bombs and an emperor going over the heads of the government to get the japanese to surrender. you know, i think one issue for truman -- and, honestly, i don't know that any president would have made any other decision -- you know, if you had invaded and if you had lost and thousands or hundreds of thousands of americans to their death or to grievous injury and later it were to come out that you had, as a president you had access to a weapon that conceivably could have ended the war in a flash and you had said i'm not going to use it, i don't know that any president could have faced that or would have wanted to face that. so, you know, i i leave it to others as to whether it was the moral thing to do or not, but i think as a realistic, practical matter i don't think truman had any choice. >> yeah. i think you're right. it was such a catch 22 at the

time. chris, one of the ways that it feels like you take -- [inaudible] the material you got was just terrific. i wonder, what were your core sources particularly as it represents to -- [inaudible] >> after i read all of the histories and there's a lot of histories out there that are very, very good, you want more. and so where did i go? i went to the truman library in independence, missouri, and i spent a few days there with an archivist, as i'm sure so many scholars have with reagan, going through these. and the treasure-trove was the diaries. because, you know, i often think to myself, you know, as i covered reagan in the '80s, i

spent six years in the white house press corps, but as i cover trump now, you know, what are they thinking at that moment? what's really going on in their mind? not the press release, but what's really going on? well, now we have access to reagan's diaries and we have a much better sense of that. well, truman's diaries were terrific. he was a diary keeper, as was president reagan, and also a very good writer, as was reagan. he said a lot of things in those diaries. and it's different because he famously was i thought of as this very decisive man, the buck stops here. he made a decision and he never looked back on it. well, he never looked back on this. he always defended it and said i'd do it again. but as he's making the decision in germany at a summit

conference with churchill and stalin in july of '45, he was really struggling with this decision. he was having trouble sleeping at night. he complained of fierce a makes which he add had whenever he was under stress in his career. and in his diary he keeps talking about this terrible weapon. and he described it in a apocalyptic terms. he describes it as the fire destruction prof seed in the bible. so he made the decision and, as i say, he never looked back. but this was an enormous decision, and he gave it all of the weight and all of the inner turmoil and struggling that i think he should have. he wrestled with it. >> yeah. tough job, to be a president. [laughter] oppenheimer, robert oppenheimer. talk to us about him. there are extensive books written about him. what a man. i'm just -- i think as you

described him, a renaissance figure and a genius really. >> absolutely. spoke, i think the, a half dozen languages, learned sanskrit so he could read the buddhist writings. fabulously brilliant as a physicist but also -- and people had no question about whether he would have any executive skills at all -- but he was a very skilled administrator. he was scientific director at los alamos. and one of the things that he had to juggle was he had general groves, who i mentioned before, this bulldozer of a man and a military man, and then he had all of these, frankly, prima donna scientists who rebelled at the idea of deadlines and military order. and he kind of had to keep both of those things going. you know, we talk about second thoughts. one of my -- another one of these great nuggets in the book is after the bombing and after the war ends, truman never

looked back on it. he says, you know, he's asked about it for the rest of his life, and he keeps sayiing you know, i had to make the decision, it ended the war, and i'd do it again. all of the people on the flight crusade the same thing, all of them. you know in it ended the war, we're military men, and this was the way to defeat the enemy. the people who did have second thoughts were the scientists. albert einstein really started the whole manhattan project in 1939 when he writes a letter to roosevelt. and what his concern is and the concern of a lot of their man refugees who'd left nazi germany and are now in the west, either in england or the u.s., they were concerned the nazis were going to get the atomic weapon before the u.s. did. and, lord, you know, god forbid that a adolf hutler had a monopoly -- hitler had a monopoly on the first true weapon of mass destruction. in any case, about a month after

the explosion, oppenheimer comes to the white house x he sits down with truman. and by this point he's just wracked with second thoughts. and he says, mr. president, i, you know, i have these the terrible regrets. i feel that i have blood on my hands x. truman says don't worry about it, i gave the order, i've got the blood on my hands. and they finish the conversation. open heymer leaves -- open humor leaves, and truman says to husband taffe, i never want to see that son of a bitch again. >> such a moment. you also tell a story in the book that i had not heard before x i want you to tell the whole story of the part about the pulitzer, and it's with respect to this fellow, william lawrence with "the new york times," and how all that turned out. >> well, again, this is one, the

you. you know, you talk about good draws and bad a days, right. this was a very good day. william leonard lawrence was a science reporter, a very distinguished science reporter, for "the new york times" and he had won a plusser prize with a group of -- pulitzer prize with a group of other people, i think in '37, for writing an article on a sign terrific project. and groves -- sign terrific project. and groves, this military man, but he also thinks to himself this is going to be, if it all works out, an immense story. and i want the story told right. and this is another example of the difference between the unity of that time and what we have today. so this military general walks into the new york times and goes to see the editor, and he says i would like -- because he knows about lawrence -- i would like to get william lawrence, and i'd like you to detach him, and ill like him to -- and i would like

him to, basically, disappear off the face of the earth, and i want him to go inside. he's going to get the greatests story of all -- i'm trying to remember, i don't think he told the editor what the story was. i'm almost sure he didn't. or lawrence. but he basically -- and the editor said, okay. can you imagine that today? if a general went to editor of the times? [laughter] and lawrence is told, and he's basically told you're going to have the greatest story of all time, but you're not going to be able to tell it until, you know, we tell you you can. well, of course, any newsman, you know, worth a sense would rebel at that. but the idea of this great story, he was intrigued, is so he did out. so he then was brought inside, and he hung out at los alamos, and he was part of it all. and he was there when they tested the bomb on july 16th, and he had a genius -- and we quote at great length from some of the dispatches he wrote, none

of which awe poored until after the bomb -- appeared until after of the bomb exploded and truman announced the whole project to the world, but his writing was fantastic. he came up with a phrase, maybe you've heard of it before, the atomic age. that was written by william lawrence. so he's there for all of the testing, and, you know, i wish few writing were as good as william lawrence's is -- [laughter] but you get to read some of his in the book. and then he's brought to the island, so he is there with the crews. he's not allowed on the first the flight because it's, obviously, the first flight, and they just had 12 men, and they weren't going to spare an extra seat. but he does end up going on the second flight, the nagasaki flight. so he is there and describes as a first person witness the detonation of the second atom you can bomb in warfare. he's a great character and it's

a delight to read, you know, think about the how do you describe the first atomic bomb, which is the test? how do you describe a bomb to take out a city? he does a masterful job with. >> he does. the surprising thing, it's almost like a postscript. i guess there was a movement -- [inaudible] >> well, yeah. what happened was during that period of time that he was behind the scenes, he was on the government payroll. and, again, you know, there was just a different sort of relationship in terms of people,

the media, the country. it was much more of a sense of we're all in this together. that, obviously, has ended. and so at a certain point, i think in the '50s -- maybe it was the '60s -- they went to the times and said, look, he was basically writing government releases. he should give back the pulitzer, and william lawrence did not. >> yeah. there's a bit player

a russian translator. and truman says i just want to

let you know that we have an enormous, indescribably powerful weapon that we have developed, and sawallen says something -- stalin says something, basically, well, i hope you'll put it to good use with the enemy, and that's it. he turns away. and truman is dumb founded. he doesn't ask a question? and churchill comes up to him and says, he can see that it's a very short conversation. what happened? and he said, i don't know, i told him, and he didn't seem interested. [laughter] and even truman's russian translater -- not the russian, but the american who served as a translator -- is wondering when the translator had translated it properly. well, the story, the truth is that stalin was interested, he

just wasn't surprised goes back. and the postscript to the story is so later that night stalin and molotov, the foreign minister, end up back in the russian compound together, and somebody overhears them having a conversation in which they're discussing the fact that truman has now told them that they've got the bomb, the bomb works, and stalin says i guess we need

to get going. and a historian would later say that at 7:25 p.m. on that night is when the nuclear arms race between russia and the u.s. official lu began. officially began.