1944-1945, the third book in the trilogy, if you have come this far you've got to read the final third volume. we have to get you back under conditions, normal conditions reassert themselves but it is a relative concept in new orleans. and good night to everyone from the national museum in new orleans. have a great night. >> the u.s. senate will be back in session at noon eastern. the nomination of james knapp to the us district court judge for the northern district of ohio. confirmation vote is expected it to:15 p.m. eastern time. watch live coverage of the senate right here on c-span2. >> booktv continues with

investigative journalist leslie -- lesley blume who looks at john hershey's failure to report on the federal impact of hiroshima. and a conversation about the soviet union's role in the nuremberg trials. >> good evening. welcome to the ninth virtual program. we will be discussing the true impact of the atomic bomb. we are honored to host speaker lesley blume who is the author of the new book "fallout: the hiroshima cover-up and the reporter who revealed it to the world" joined in conversation by writer adam gopnik. i am bo mendez, manager of programming at the historical society. welcome to our physical location. i'm honored to our virtual programs, and look forward to having you join us for more.

the things we have coming up, things we look forward to, interested in joining us. hosting next week to teach out, anticorruption expert in new york state attorney general candidate sharing her new book break them up. they will be exploring the connection between big money and its impact on our democracy on august 11th. the following week, we will be having a conversation with jeffrey toobin discussing the new book that continues the exploration we have been doing of the recent history of the republican party and modern american conservatives on august 19th.

we are proud to partner on an upcoming season in title women in power, 100 years after the nineteenth amendment. kicking off on august 18th, the nineteenth amendment, the discussion of body power, opening -- moderator racquel lewis to discuss issues pertaining to bodies of men throughout time and how we continue to cite contention. we look forward to hosting many more as they come together. in just a moment i will be welcoming speakers to the virtual space. a powerful conversation, the 70 fifth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on hiroshima and tonight is the anniversary of the same thing happening in nagasaki.

these are events that shaped much of the twentieth century and when discussing the events and their immediate impacts, and the role of journalism, sharing a story to truly understand the potential, the human cost and the danger it poses reflecting today on the passing of the legendary journalists pete hamill who we had the pleasure of hosting two years ago, the work of a journalist to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. today in the landscape of fake news such a narrative of the potential danger of misinformation and propaganda, how we can cut through and see the truth is all the more important. without further a do i would like to welcome tonight's speakers.

we are honored and glad to have them joining us. we will be joined by lesley blume, the author of "fallout: the hiroshima cover-up and the reporter who revealed it to the world," an award-winning journalist, historian, and best-selling author whose work appeared in vanity fair, the new york times, wall street journal, the paris review daily and the hollywood reporter, joined in conversation by adam gopnik, and 30 years at the magazine, with hundreds of essays and personal memoirs for profiles and much reporting along with fiction, humor and art criticism. as the conversation unfolds i want to remind you we will be taking questions. if you have questions for our speakers admit them via the q

and a box, and the subject of this discussion of "fallout: the hiroshima cover-up and the reporter who revealed it to the world" we teamed with our friends at community bookstore in brooklyn, if you would like to learn more and purchase your copy you can do so. please welcome lesley blume and adam gopnik. can you hear me? thank you for look forward to this conversation. >> thank you for hosting. >> congratulations on a next ordinary book. the hiroshima cover-up, should it be hiroshima or hiroshima? >> i mixed them up and i shouldn't. it is hiroshima. please forgive me. >> a lovely small moment when the editor of the new yorker

says when i was publishing this i learned a new way i have to pronounce it. you got to say here shima, not here shima. it is an extraordinary book. and catastrophic events but even more about the coverage of that event. we call it the hiroshima cover-up. i have a very particular and parochial interest in this book, very much about the history of the new yorker and the evolution of the development of the new yorker but before we get to the new yorker and the dynamics of "the new yorker" shaped this book in many ways, what do you mean by the cover-up? what was the state of play when

john hershey went to japan to do the reporting that produced his legendary booklet felt an entire issue of the new yorker, first time that ever happened the year after the bombing? >> the audience should know you were a sounding board for me since the beginning and when i started researching the project i didn't realize the extent to which a cover-up played a role in this narrative. i was -- i always approach the story of journalist covering other journalists. it has always been -- nobody looked at how we got the story in the first place. and the story comes down entirely to logistics and whoever controls the ground controls the story. when i started looking at how much general macarthur's occupation was total domination

of japan, as an independent reporter and will come across for macarthur, and pressing the foreign press and the japanese in particular. the magnitude of the cover-up previously, but never is so much that it should have been and central. to expose that. >> interestingly the government is ecstatically advertising the bomb, that they dropped this experimental weapon on hiroshima which is equivalent

to 20,000 tons of tnt, the biggest bomb in the history of warfare. the picture of the mushroom cloud, pictures of the landscape devastation. john hershey and his editors were quick to pick up on this weirdly no reporting on the human toll. human beings - >> to this day. that is the environment in which john hershey began recording this piece. the new yorker was in transition when john hershey began reporting for this piece.

it changed in the course of four years from 1941 to the end of the war. in the 90 year history, if you vote beautifully, it is still he sensually, not entirely a humor and reporting magazine noted for its fiction and elegance, is still very much in the imprint of the inspiration. when editor in particular played an outsized role in making the magazine take on a magisterial role, william junk. >> william sean and harold ross were news men in disguise, 20

years earlier in humor magazines and harold ross never at that point had any aspiration for the magazine to be a big news operation, but for that, when pearl harbor happened, harold ross, one of his coeditors, couldn't be a humor magazine because nothing feels funny anymore. >> many went off to war, found themselves as writers, a j liebling above all, went off and -- to report the war in north africa, the normandie invasion and the rest of it and a generation who made that trip. >> they dispatched

correspondence all over the world in many theaters of war and got a deep relationship with the war department and public relation operations. >> mcelway was working for curtis lemay throughout the war. events pin of the new york operation. >> the correspondence and artists in the armed forces. the new yorker ran profiles, commission stories from military military figures and public relations men and for the most part the reporting was

serious but they were in the mix very much so. the correspondence into the field, that there would be one and that is the message. >> he believed in his writers. why john hershey? kirsty was born and bred as a new yorker. what made the hardest of all hard stories? >> could have been less from the new yorker and writing for time magazine and henry lewis, harold ross, head of the new yorker, and full of chillingly hated each other.

from 1939, really grooming him to be the air apparent -- >> to interrupt. he was not like a j liebling, an elegant - >> also from yale -- hodgkins - when you read the time and dispatches a far cry for what he was writing for. >> as someone who cares only about literary style, hugely

important point. >> you run from it. >> a hugely significant piece in historical terms from the new yorker for that. >> back to you in a second. he did come to the new yorker but chauvinistic, patriotically chauvinistic for him and he says thanks but no thanks but instead of being arab parents, this burgeoning media empire, a freelancer in 1945, he managed somehow to do, william sean released to bring hershey, that life had rejected to come this

way. it was the story of john f. kennedy, pt 109. john hershey's life was a former paramore of jfk. >> significant class of people. >> i am sorry, he race that, he is in new york, he had a nightclub. jfk is telling the story of what happened, jfk had a pt boat slashed in half by a japanese destroyer and he's like i want that story.

it was - william sean is excited to have that. that story helped make kennedy's political career tried out by the kennedy campaign team. and to the magazine, >> in the new yorker. life has been great, the new yorker, badgered harold ross to have it syndicated.

another magazine, i don't know how kennedy twisted his arm but joe kennedy got his publication of the story. >> speaking of reader's digest, in those four years, appeared in a small addition, driving up its circulation, more important for all the guys coming home in 1946 that came out. on pt 109, then what happened? how does it get to japan and break through the cover-up? >> guest: i assume, one should never assume, the first lesson of not just journalism but life. >> in the movie the deficit she said never assume.

>> guest: i did. i was a very bad journalist, fact checked myself publicly. but hiroshima has the story, the feeling of an expose. i assumed it was him getting in is getting out somehow because of the reporters hadn't made a run at the story that way and went crazy lengths in hiroshima and nagasaki. john hershey in august of 1945 when the bomb explodes, mixed feelings about hiroshima but mostly horrified. he will cover the bomb with some capacity but doesn't know how yet. then he had lunch with william sean and talk about the

coverage and realize what had been missing again was stories about the human toll, what happened to the human beings under those mushroom clouds. nobody was reporting on that. it is likely they knew the extent or some of the extent of the restrictions on foreign and japanese reporters because the journalism link was very close knit at them. a lot of john hershey's former colleagues were referred to -- they probably knew the only way in was a paddleboat from guam, head to get military serums to get in, doing a major reporting trick that starts first in china, the country he was born in, credited in china and reestablished himself and applied for clearance to get

into tokyo and it works, he gets clearance and - >> host: one of the interesting things about your book is in a certain sense they have less freedom because everyone expects you to conform to the needs of the military, patriotic reflex but at the same time more because the whole business of post-vietnam of the military wanting to keep reporters as far away as human possible wasn't in place yet. they expected to be traveling. >> it was a buddy system throughout the war. that is one of the things that gave john hershey the advantage, because he had been a buddy to the military during war, and he had written glowing profiles including jfk.

he helped evacuate wounded marines, covering a battle between us and japanese forces. most significantly he had written a glowing biography of general douglas macarthur and his forces which he later thought he wanted to take out of circulation but that definitely helps the cause when you are applying to general macarthur to come to the country so even though hiroshima and nagasaki were topics and they were betting journalists coming and going to japan, john hershey was seen as a relatively innocuous - >> host: liable man. >> guest: a company man. >> host: he gets to china, he gets to japan and when he gets

to hiroshima, tell us how he does that, the story is he talked to people rather than reporting on events. how does he find the people who form the spine of the great pc rights? >> guest: it was an important departure. it may seem obvious right now to focus on a few individuals to bring out the human a lot of the story but it was pretty revolutionary then but what he was proposing to do was humanize japanese victims and japanese were enemy number 2 after the nancy's because they attack us directly. when john hershey is admitted to tokyo, he did not have free reign just because he the company man, being monitored by staff which is macarthur's operation, they notify fbi,

they are surveying but at the same time you don't want to read much into it, how many cigarettes you smoked every day but they gave john hershey clearance to go to hiroshima for two weeks which might sound pretty substantial, 24 to 36 hours of travel to get there at that time and when he gets there he has the help of a german priest who had been living there it had returned and spoke english. one other japanese minister educated at marie university. these two gentlemen not only gave john hershey their own testimony but they made the introduction for john hershey

among the survivors who had been returning to hiroshima to rebuild their lives among the ashes. later on what john hershey didn't remember was how many he had interviewed. several dozen, probably. "the letter q: queer writers' notes to their younger selves" back to something that preoccupies me. one of the things that makes hiroshima such an important work of journalism and literature is john hershey size subject in a novelistic way and as you reveal had a specific novelistic pattern and template he was applying to his material. >> guest: it wasn't enough to show events from an individual point of view, he decided to talk about individuals whose lives intersected and also

their lives and where they were at that moment of detonation and how their pants crossed in the hours and days of the aftermath in shocking ways and it was like he was weaving a neighborhood narrative in a way and people who pick the profile whose testimony picked the profile were regular folks creating empathy for them and american readers, not -- the specifics of how the bomb works or be able to fathom all out nuclear war looks like they would be able to relate to the story of a young mother. and getting on the bus to work

for a catastrophe strikes. >> host: i was thinking specifically, and gave him an organizing principle for the story of how 6 able strangers share a moment of common disaster. >> guest: that inspiration, covered in china -- china flu. the precursor of china flu. >> he read by other's great novel in china and saw when he began as we were reporting something of any ambition that is the way to tell the story of intersecting lives.

>> guest: gave a cohesive structure. he never -- he wanted to be novel. it was going to be graphic, confront people with the fact that one person called the fourth of july attitude, any incentive to hot potato it out of their hands but if he could make it novelistic and defendant falling enough for people not to put it down, he was a trojan horse reporter getting into japan in this is the way the trojan horse worked in people's homes and lives. >> host: one step, what if anything did the occupying force think he was going to be doing in hiroshima doing a

follow-up piece about that. >> guest: there's evidence, the military police in hiroshima asking about and talking about, letting other reporters, on the aftermath of he regime a, with stories up to that point. but reporters were admitted to more fluffy stories if you can believe that. >> host: it is a-year-old, going into the book. >> guest: talking of the gardens what hiroshima was like so this is he regime a coming back. >> the military has something in mind. >> it wasn't so bad. >> the story they imagined, you

and i supported things on a more provincial -- it is hard when reporting something not to be altered by the people you meet. do we know john hershey's state of mind? it shrivels the hard to read, people not only losing family but using their entire assistance, how does it affect kirsty -- john hershey psychologically? >> guest: a hardened war correspondent. and reported in europe, with combat concentration camps, seeing tokyo raised. one of his contemporary reporters looking like an

ashtray. his frame of reference, he was tough-minded but when he got to hear a shema he was horrified by what he had seen, the worst of human nature in healthy doses but because it was a single bomb that had done this. rushing the -- hiroshima was levels. i don't want to be graphic in this broadcast. they are still finding remains today, there were flattened graveyards. when he got there he was so disturbed by what he was finding that -- there was a

regrowth of flora, but things had been unnaturally stimulated to grow back. everything was horrible and unnatural so he vowed to get the reporting dennis quickly as possible and get out because it was traumatizing. >> host: where did he do his writing? >> guest: he very smartly, they decided to do his reporting and bring it back to new york. and follows 1945, officially at war in the occupation for censorship and he got out of hiroshima -- >> host: this is the kind of detail, he had his notebooks. >> guest: something else i looked at, we knew that his

protagonists leader had taken notes in little notebooks. they remember that. he learned shorthand from sinclair lewis, it is possible to do it that way. all of his protagonists know about the extreme accuracy of his memory. you have to have to get everything. i don't know, i would give anything to know. he did make it from .80 point be with material enough to create an accurate -- >> host: it is mind-boggling.

>> guest: no apparatus. >> host: alex wilkinson, that very idea in mind, to do it. always cuts back to new york city and starts the process of writing, what would seem to us given the scale of the ambition in very short order. >> guest: there is the anniversary, was there in early june, half eight weeks to turn it over. i wouldn't think they knew how huge the story was going to be in terms of 31,000 monster.

what anybody called the white heat and the previous books have been written that way. the wartime pressure of a deadline under enormous pressure, he knows what he is writing will really embarrass us government and show the truth about mega weapons. >> host: he produces it, submit it to william sean, howard roth did something very ballsy and unparalleled and that is to make it an issue of the new yorker. >> guest: it was unprecedented splurge.

a year later, a sense of normalcy, and -- >> part of the continuity of their lives and we need to disrupt that continuity. >> that is the question. it was a central question and fearless reporting and -- >> tell us something that was unforgettable which is the way ross persuaded himself to do what william sean, admired and trusted him to do was not to think about the future of the magazine, it's very dna. >> guest: he looked at his original statement from 1925

and a perspective he had created in 1924 to back the new yorker and was in a moment of gravitas. it was serious process. hands without favor, harold ross true inspiration for himself. hands and championed it to run at full length.

would have lost interest and impact. >> lost in potential form, the intersection of those stories, not just chronologically one after the other. >> it only works if it is one long piece. so ross is convinced to do it. and peacetime mode. and there's a feeling of normalcy. they were confronted with the past. >> it is like the what the story is about.

and writing with great intention to structure and sentences. and john hershey's work demonstrates that. one of the points is john hershey had written about the bomb. but it was always in terms of the generalizations about the fate of man and the promise of science. impossibly high level of rhetorical abstraction. and when john hershey was doing anywhere. >> guest: when you were talking about him writing for time, his time writing was stylish and had a swagger to it.

john hershey -- it was entirely about laying out the facts of people who had given their testimony. it smacked of outrage, the more effective it is going to be. and it really worked. by dialing it down to the human bandage point put himself into the shoes of the people in a spare sort of way that he was recounting. >> host: the piece comes out through ross. still astounding considering

the twisted quality of the writing and the testimony. it comes out and what happens? >> guest: john hershey uses the word explosives to describe the reaction. that's not a word i use in my book. the sentiment created an international furor. >> host: nothing on the issue indicates the content of the issue. >> guest: you know better than i do, at that end they decided on that. so this one, the cover slated for the artist 30 first issue for the stringy park landscape, people horseback riding and playing tennis, the new yorker then had no writing on the

cover or the table of contents to indicate where the contents of the magazine were so the editors decided to keep this cover on their, i couldn't find anything on the record why they decided to keep this except to speculate. it does symbolize back at leisure after the war, the more gruesome interpretation is it looks like the park that was described in hiroshima where people are enjoying themselves and it later becomes a refuge for many of the black survivors. >> >> the week after 9/11. the cover nearly spoke to the events.

it becomes -- >> contraband new yorkers. i interrupted you. >> guest: it is all anybody talks about. >> guest: one of hershey's contemporary reporters the report, guarantee you if we don't read it it is going to be talking about and it is true. not just in its entirety across the country but around the world. >> we believe this booktv program to take you to capitol hill for remarks by senate republicans on the 2020 election. >> good afternoon. we just had our leadership elections for the leadership team for the