>> like the office they commemorate presidential libraries are living institutions. certainly it is my hope the reagan library will become a dynamic intellectual forum where scholars interpret the past and policymakers debate the future.

to fulfill the mission of making the reagan library a dynamic intellect one - - intellectual forum our programming offers lectures with perspectives on important public policy issues of the day we bring between 20 and 30 events each year business and military leaders and media since the closure across the country the reagan foundation now host bends on line to make sure we are delivering world-class content even if you cannot get to the hilltop to watch in person. this week we bring you chris wallace anchor of fox news sunday marking his 50th year in the broadcasting industry he has participated in coverage of nearly every major political event and secured high profile interviews the dignitaries and us leaders. the past three years he has broadcast the sunday morning show live from the reagan

national defense form is held each year he is with us today to speak of his new book countdown 1945 the extraordinary story of the atomic bomb in the 116 days that change the world which is an unforgettable account of japanese civilians in wartime and american soldiers fighting in the pacific waiting to launch a possible invasion of japan and how in 116 days truman goes from being a vice president completely cut out of the fdr white house to becoming president. coming from air force one civilian leadership academy with chris wallace and reagan foundation executive director. >> chris wallace, congratulations, what a terrific book. you may know we have a lot of guests come to the reagan library with good books i'm not able to read them all but i could not put this down.

this is a terrific book really a historical thriller. congratulations on not just the first effort but a great first effort. >> thank you. that's nice. the idea of historical thriller seems to be out there because my favorite review was the "washington post" that said i know what happened in 1945 but this book is a thriller. a lot of people said it's a page turner and i am thrilled because that's exactly what i wanted to do so much history has been written in the distant past but that's not what i wanted to do. i wanted to take you into the moment of countdown 1945 is a key moment from april 12th 1945 when truman is summoned

to the white house that he finds out roosevelt's dad and is sworn in in the secretary of war takes him aside and says i need to tell you about an immense project creating the most devastating weapon in history the first time vice president hears of the manhattan project. not just as he struggles but even the scientist at los alamos they don't even know if this would work until 21 days before and the flight crew of the enola gay who was on a mission to hiroshima don't know when they drop it if the aftershock will knock them out of the sky.

so that's what i was trying to do in the fact that you say it is a page turner and a thriller, i am thrilled's. >> my father was a b-29 bomber so i was riveted but you have to be in the army air corps to like the book. it is very well done. you put us right where it happens on many occasions. >> there are dramatic moments he has a meeting with his were cabinet on june 18 and george marshall as they are. all the top brass discussing the nazi that surrendered on may 8 how they will finish the war against the japanese.

for 45 minutes there is a long discussion how long it will prolong the war, hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides than the assistant secretary of war who ended up becoming a major figure and a member of the warren commissio commission, that he was a junior guy and he says nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think. and he says go ahead he says i think we ought to have our heads examined if we don't at least discuss the bomb. in the were cabinet this was the first time in this meeting. they were talk about the casualties and link of the invasion that nobody said we had a bomb and then basically

it was dismissed at that point largely because it was never tested it was tested just 21 days before it was used it was treated like a science project. >> i know you are a student of history but what made you choose this particular moment? >> it's a funny story. i have the idea of doing exactly what i talked about a key moment in history because at the time they didn't know these momentous challenges and i don't know what will happen and what ended up happening i

was fortunate enough to cover six years of reagan and the gorbachev summit that having cover that and real life, the drama of reykjavík and the possibility to be an all nuclear weapons and then it falls apart. but you say that it fell apart but they go there with the hopes it creates a tremendous sense of suspense. i wanted to do that but didn't have a subject in february 2019 the day president trump would deliver the state of the union and nancy pelosi invited several tv anchors to her hideaway in the capital. this is where a lot of speakers have a tradition in washington if the speaker and

the president are of opposing parties the speaker will deliver a speech before to tell you all the reasons it is bad. so we're sitting in the room she says this is the board of education. i don't think anybody else knew but i knew that was the sam rayburn hideaway and this is where people would come after hours to gossip or have a bourbon and vice president truman was a regular so on april 12th he went over and policy is telling us the story that in this room truman called the white house and speaks to a white house official and says you need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible. truman puts down the phone and says jesus christ and the

general jackson. which i had never heard before. [laughter] but i thought that is it. that's my story that's the one i will try to create a historical thriller. 116 days from when he has been alerted roosevelt died until the bombs dropped on hiroshima. >> your first book some writers report they had a fabulous time and love the experience and some find it miserable. how did you find writing the first book? >> yes. [laughter] it is a very odd experience. it is a roller coaster. there are times you get a delicious fact. i didn't know but when i

started the project that when truman gets to the white house and is sworn in he is alerted for the first time of the existence of the manhattan project and there are so many details like that. one is the fact they only tested the bomb once on july 21t i'm sorry july 16. twenty-one days before they ended up using it. so now they are at the launchpad of the flight of hiroshima and somebody says if we put a 10000-pound bomb which was called little boy in the front of the plane and then a bunch of extra gas in the back of the plane, it's more weight we have ever carried and the plane might crash on takeoff and if an adam bomb has an atomic

explosion at the us base it will do anything to the japanese. this is only two days before the mission. we cannot take off with a life bomb. we have to arm it on the plane during the mission and they turn to the officer and said can you do that? he said i never have but i guess i will learn. so the plane on the ground in sweltering heat working on it and they finally do take off with the unarmed bomb and get away safely on their way to hiroshima he gets in the bomb they and has to take off some of the casing only then midway through the flight that they

say the bond is armed and ready to go. >> it's a lot of detail but so the moments like that are a joy and then there are times you think how do i tell the story and put all the elements together and think this is hard work. my daughter is in publishing for ten years. not at my publisher that i said to her writing a book is hard work and she rolled her eyes and said i'm glad you discovered that. [laughter] it's tough to make a living. >> did it surprise you, it did me, that truman didn't know the first thing? and then i read him and roosevelt had spoken only a

couple of times during the fourth term of the presidency but not being read in a something as important as the. >> a lot of people have asked me about that he was vice president 82 days he was in some big meetings that met privately with roosevelt twice and those 82 days. remember this was roosevelt's fourth term not even his first or second vice president. he got good at ignoring vice presidents he thought they come and go. i have my were cabinet that's why trust to make these decisions and he shoved truman off to the side. to mention the fact that stimson takes him aside and says i will tell you about this project but he knows

truman is overwhelmed and has just become the president i will let you settle in and then come back but then 13 days later he comes into the oval office to brief president truman and meanwhile the real military commander of the manhattan project snuck into an underground tunnel because they thought that they come to the front door together people will wonder the big mission man and what they were doing together. so he snuck in and gave truman a detailed document to read which explained the manhattan project in historical and

technical detail. he said i don't like reading long documents like this. they said mr. president, we cannot say they were briefly it is a complicated project. that is how out of touch he was with it. but when it counted he had mastered all of it. >> 125,000 americans were working on the manhattan project and not a word gets out. that is amazing. >> exactly. people say you covered trump and up stand downs and ins and outs what was it like writing the book? one of the things i enjoyed most about researching and

writing is that has absolutely nothing to do with donald trump. [laughter] not a knock on the president but to get away from all the stuff we are in and precisely the point you are right they were working on those projects for almost three years 125,000 people in oak ridge tennessee and los altos and in washington and cruise in utah and not one word leaks about the project. i thought to myself if you have 125,000 people today working on a secret project to bake apple pies somebody would tweet this is outrageous it was a simple time and all the country was more unified

everybody pulled together in a common cause against the nazis and the japanese and we could use that now. >> i thought it was fascinating the way he wrote the book of course you covered major involvement from truman and oppenheimer and the rest but then you chose to focus so tell the listeners that i thought was a great juxtaposition. >> one of the things we wanted to do is the war wasn't just on the top level it engaged all of america and one of the stories i wanted to tell was

the home front. there are websites and commentary about various people and amazingly we found two people who are still alive all the big players are gone she had volunteered she just knew it was a big factory they were these two machines called cala tron machines and they were called the cala tron girls they were just told them

to keep it in the red and you will help to win the war. they didn't know they were enriching uranium and plutonium to fuel the adam bomb. what made the story especially interesting as she had a boyfriend who was later her husband who was an army medic so the nazis surrender and like a lot of other people she is delighted that she is terrified because he will not come home now he will be shipped another bloodier conflict in japan so the dramatic irony helping to create the weapon could save her boyfriend's life and that's what happens but it's

one of the great things as a student of has on - - as a student of history there are plot lines you would never guess. 112 -year-old girl from a wealthy family and hiroshima they didn't have the expectation of the adam bomb so the parents would send their children out to the countryside's of there was a bombing they would be safe so they thought her on - - sent

her to what they thought was a camp that she hated it the school censored the mail so she snuck into the town and mailed a letter to the local post office get me out of here. her father shows up to rescue her. that her mother says there is a lot of fear and she says no i want to go home. they spend the night on augus ah that means they are in here oshima when the bomb is dropped august 6th. >> i had a great chance to see a clip of the two of you going into the smithsonian to see the presence of the massive enola gay. >> this is something you never would have imagined we did a documentary for fox news i assume many of you subscribe to fox nation it's called

countdown to in a time - - 1945. i said would you consider coming to washington for an interview? she sat on one condition. i want to see the enola gay. i never would have dreamt of asking her but she wanted to. we drove out and got permission to go before it opened. i didn't know what her reaction would be. she was stunned and as you know with the b-29 they are enormous. big bright silver and shiny she was just taking it in and i said do you feel anger? she says i feel grief and grief stricken and she said i

want to say a prayer for peace. she did. and said this plane is an old man and needs to leave the museum and go to sleep. and she went sayonara and that was that. i think on some level it provided closure. >> yes. let's go back to truman. it's not easy but summarize the dilemma that schumer fate on - - truman faced with his rationale. as you describe in the book it would save a lot of lives but take a lot of lives as well. >> there is a couple of points i would make this is one of the great moral questions over the last 75 years with the 75th

anniversary of all of these events dropping the bomb on hiroshima should we drop it or not? i thought about it but it wasn't a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing but dropping the bomb or invading and if we invaded the top experts marshall, stimson, all the top people at the pentagon said in the summer of 45 you can expect the war to go on another year and a half through 46 and expect 1 million japanese casualties in half a million american casualties. because as they got closer to the homeland instead of the soldiers losing spirit they

got fought harder it took them three days and then they had to kill 100,000 japanese of the 20000 left none surrenders some committed suicide but they didn't surrender. they knew they would have a terrible battle if they did invade so some people say okay they would have surrendered anyway but my response is we dropped the bomb on hiroshima august 6 and the government does not surrender. so then the us drops a second bomb on nagasaki. the government still does not surrender. only then the emperor decides

to go over the japanese government and directly to the people and gets on the radio literally the first time the vast majority had ever heard the voice of their emperor and he basically says we have to surrender. and that was it but it took two bombs and the emperor to go over the heads of the government to get the japanese to surrender. i don't know if any other president would have made any other decision but if you invaded and had hundreds of thousands of americans and later it would, you had access to a weapon that could have ended the war in a flash and you said i won't use it i don't know if any president could have face that or would have wanted to. i leave it to others of that

was a moral thing i don't think truman had any choice. >> you are right. it was a catch 22. one of the ways it feels you take the reader right into the room the material is just excellent what were your core sources relating to truman? >> i wonder if you do this as a commercial. [laughter] after i read the histories out there. they were very good and then you want more so i went to the truman library in independence missouri and spent a few days there with an archivist going

through these and the treasure trove was the diaries. because i think to myself covering reagan in the eighties not directly because i was six years in the white house press corps but covering trump now what are they thinking? what's really going on? know we have access to reagan's diaries at the better sense that truman's diaries were terrific he was a very good read diary keeper and also a very good writer as was reagan. he said a lot of things to give you the inner conversation and it's different than most people's perception because he is thought of as a very decisive man he makes a decision and

never looks back he always said i could do it again but as a conference in july and 45 he was really struggling. he was having trouble sleeping, fears headaches he had whenever he was under stress. and he talks about this terrible weapon and describes the in apocalyptic terms, fire destruction and prophecy in the bible. he made a decision and never look back but he gave it all of the weight and turmoil and struggle that he should have. he wrestled with it. >> it's tough to be president. robert oppenheimer.

there have been extensive books written about him. what a man. you describe him as a renaissance figure and a genius. >> half a dozen languages. sanskrit so he could read the buddhist writings, fabulously brilliant as a physicist and people didn't know if you would have any executive skills at all he was the scientific director at los alamos and one of the things he had to juggle that i mentioned before was this military man and then frankly all these. >> don scientist who rebelled at the idea of military order

and deadlines. another nugget in the book is after the bombing in the war ends truman never looks back he's asked about it for the rest of his life and he says i had to make the decision to end the war and i would do it again all the people on the flight crew said the same thing. it ended the war. we are military men this was the way to defeat the enemy. those who didn't have the second thoughts for the scientist. einstein started the manhattan project in 1939 when he writes a letter to roosevelt and his concern with the german refugees they were concerned the nazis would get the atomic

weapon before the us did and god forbid hitler had a monopoly on the first weapon of mass destruction so one month after the explosion oppenheimer comes to the white house and sits down with truman and now is wracked with second thoughts and says i have the's terrible regrets and i feel i have blood on my hands and truman says don't worry about i it. i gave the order i have the blood on my hands. oppenheimer leaves and truman says to his staff, i never want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again. >> tell the story of the

pulitzer and the new york times in the opportunity with this project and how that turned out. >> again, talk about the days and bad days, william leonard lawrence was a distinguished science reporter for "the new york times". he won a pulitzer prize for writing an article on the scientific project. so he thinks to himself if this all works out this will be an immense story and i wanted told right. this is another example between the unity of that time and what we have today. so a military general walks into "the new york times" to

see the editor because he knows about lawrence, detach him and i want him to disappear. i don't think he told the editor what the story was nor lawrence that the editor said okay. can you imagine today? and is basically told you have the greatest story of all time but you cannot tell it and tell you one - - until we tell you that you can. but the idea of this great story he did it so then he was brought inside and he hung out

and was a part of it all. he was there when they tested the bomb on july 16 and we quote at great length some of his dispatches some that appear after the bomb exploded and truman announced the project to the world he came up at the phrase the atomic age. he is there for all of the testing. i wish my writing were as good but you can read some of his in the book so then he's there with the crew he's not allowed on the first flight because it's the first fight and they have 12 men and they wouldn't

spare the extra seat but he does end up going on the second flight to nagasaki and is a first-person witness of the second atomic bomb and warfare he is a great character and a delight. how do you describe the bomb? or the tester to see it take out a city? >> it's almost like the postscript that i guess there was of movement to pull the pulitzer prize from him because of the arrangement.

>> what happened is he was on the government payroll. i was just a different relationship with the media and the country and the people saying we are in this together. basically the writing government press releases you should give it back but he did not. >> rightly so. >> there was a bit player i didn't know about this history about the seller named clouse and it turned out to be a russian spy. >> yes. one of the issues for churchill and truman is the

british and the words were involved so when the bomb explodes truman gets word almost at the same time as churchill but when do we tell stalin? he doesn't know anything. or so they think so the decision is we don't want to tell him too early or too much but if we don't tell him anything and we are allies he will resent that and there are already major problems between russia and us and britain so late in the conference after one of the sessions truman goes over to stalin to tell him he doesn't even bring a

translator he uses the russian translator and truman says i want to let you know we have a powerful weapon we have developed an stalin says something like i hope you put it to good use with the enemy and that's it. truman is dumbfounded. then churchill comes up that he can see it's very short. what happened? he said i know. he didn't seem interested. even the russian translato translator, even the american is wondering if the translator translated properly. the truth is stalin was

interested but wasn't surprised because there was a german scientist who was a refugee that was a member of the german communist party because he saw them that was resistant to hitler so he's working with the manhattan project but his loyalty is to communism so he gets of information that goes back to the russians and the postscript is later that night stalin and the foreign minister and up in the compound together and somebody overhears them having that conversation that truman says they have the bomb and it works in stalin says we have

to get going. the historian says at 7:25 p.m. that night is when the nuclear arms race officially began between us and russia. >> what a moment. do you have another book and you? it seems like you really enjoyed this so what is your next one? do you have wine in mind? >> one of the thoughts that i had not just a historical thriller but to replicate. so i came up with that countdown idea i thought that thought about countdown whatever. i have a couple of ideas that

writing a history book but i think there are enough ups and getting a chance to talk to you that there will be another countdown. >> i can't wait to read it. it's just wonderful to see the work you have done thank you for joining us. best of luck with your book tour around the world spirit the virus will and and it will be one of my favorite places in the world the reagan library i've been there many times including when she was there alive with mrs. reagan. >> you are welcome anytime. >> the key for joining us for

the virtual programming event. share what you have learned and join us again for an upcoming event. >> all great change in america begins at the dinner table so tomorrow night at the kitchen i hope the talking begins and children if your parents have been teaching you what it means to be an american let them know. that would be a very american thing to do

>> hello and welcome thank you for joining us from harlem and chicago and albuquerque in the bronx we are so pleased to have you here.