you could buy them a house per year. but that money is just poured down a hole, because what happens is, we allow the political forces that are going on in our country to come up and say, lock 'em up! three strikes, you're out! and then wonder why they're vague abonds when they come out and can't get a job. can't get a student loan. can barely even get access to their own children. and then we wonder why the kids don't have anybody in their life. you see it. you see how this thing happens. it's a couple of small decisions that become big. >> wednesday, a look at the impact of social workers in improving the lives in minority and impoverished communities. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span.

this weekend on the c-span networks, friday night on c-span, native american history. then on saturday, live all-day coverage from the national book festival science pavilion. saturday evening, from bbc scotland, a debate on scotland's upcoming decision on whether to end its political union. sunday, q & a with judge robert catsman, chief justice of the second circuit court of appeals. he shares his approach to interpreting laws passed by congress. on c-span 2, friday at 8:00 p.m., in depth with former congressman, ron paul. then on saturday, all day live coverage of the national book festival from the history and biograp biography pavelions. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, afterwards with william burrows, talking about his book "the asteroid threat." on american history tv on c-span3 friday, a nasa documentary about the 1969

apollo 11 moon landing. saturday, on the civil war, general william tecumseh sherman's atlanta campaign. sunday night, a look at election laws and supreme court case of bush versus gore. find our television schedule at c-span.org, and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. on twitter, use the hash ta tag c123. or e-mail us at comments@c-span.org. join the c-span organization. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. next, president sherman's grandson, clifton truman daniel joins survivors from hiroshimao to discuss the lasting legacy of the nuclear attacks that ended world war ii. this event hosted by the japan society, is an hour and ten minutes.

the top new sorry of the entire 20th century, beating out the landing on the moon, the attack on pearl harbor, the wright brothers first flight and other very prominent stories and events that occurred in the last century. along with the morns of the story of the atomic bombs of japan has comp over the last five decades or so enormous and often highly acrimonious controversy, both among scholars and public. i think it's safe to say the issue of the atomic bombings is arguably, and i would say a strong argument, the issue of the atomic bombings of japan is the most contentious debate in all of american history. i don't think we're going to settle it today. but i hope we will advance our

knowledge of the subject, shed some light on some important issues and perhaps lower the volume of ill will that all too often has been a prominent part of this controversy. controversy over truman's decision to use the atomic bomb arises from two fiercely interpretations of why the bomb was used. the fundamental question at the heart of the debate, was the use of the bomb necessary to force a japanese surrender, and end the war as quickly as possible on terms that were acceptable to the united states and its allies. this say basic question, and from this basic question, had arisen a whole host of other interesting and important questions. there are two basic interpretations. the first is the traditional interpretation, the one that most of us, at least most of us of a certain age, grew up with. and that is the theory that

truman's decision to use the atomic bomb as absolutely necessary. and so the answer to the question is arousing yes. it was necessary. and it was necessary because truman faced a stark choice between on the one hand authorizing the use of the bomb, and on the other hand, authorizing an invasion of the japanese mainland that was going to cost hundreds of thousands of american lives. so in this interpretation, truman made the only reasonable choice. he chose the least abhorrent option, and that was to use the atomic bomb as a means of avoiding an invasion of japan, which was not only going to be enormously costly, but also without the use of the bomb, was inevitab inevitable. this interpretation is contested by the so-called revisionist interpretation. and revisionists give the opposite answer to the question of was the bomb necessary. and their answer is absolutely

not. the bomb was absolutely not necessary. and it was not necessary, because japan was defeated. japan was trying to surrender. and the revisionist interpretation, japan had decided to surrender, was trying to surrender on the sole condition that the emperor be allowed to remain on his throne, and an unstated part of this interpretation is that the emperor would remain on his throne as a benign, kindly constitutional monarch. so in this interpretation, the bomb was not necessary to defeat japan. and because it was not necessary to defeat japan and force a japanese surrender and end the war, the revisionists have come up with other ideas about why the bomb was used and different scholars have proposed different solutions for this question. but the one that is most common is, it was used to impress and intimidate the soviet union in the emerging cold war. by the summer of 1945, tensions

were growing between the united states and the soviet union. and therefore, truman and his advisers elected to use a bomb, not to defeat japan, because japan was already trying to surrender. but to impress, intimidate the soviet union in the emerging cold war. so it was used not for military reasons, but for diplomatic political reasons. well, you can see that these two positions are diametrically imposed. and these are the two polar views on this entire issue. and it's between the poles that this controversy has been fought out. there are still a few partisans at the polls who continue to fight the same battles and in fact often read the same quotations but most scholars now have moved beyond or perhaps i should say have moved in between the two poles and found the answer to the question of whether or not the use of the bomb was necessary somewhere in

a broad, sprawling, ill-defined middle ground. and there's still lots of room for disagreement, and there's lots of room for debate within the middle ground. and you might hear some of that today. but in terms of where we are with recent scholarship, the two polar positions are pretty much discredited. and let me give you a couple of examples. the revisionist view has been discredited, largely because we know now from japanese sources that have opened within the last 15 or 20 years that japan had not decided to surrender. that the japanese government, the japanese emperor, had not decided to surrender until after hiroshima. so a lot of debate about what happened after the bomb was used. but the fact remains, and i think it's clear, and i think you'll hear more about this today, japan had not decided to

surrender before hiroshima and this knocks out a major support for the revisionist's interpretation. the traditional interpretation, and i think it's safe to say that most scholars now agree truman used a bomb primarily to end the war as quickly as possible. but the traditional interpretation is weakened by the fact that we know and we have known for a long time, there were other ways to end the war besides the bomb and besides an invasion. and that -- an invasion, even in the minds of people in the summer of 1945, was certainly not inevitable. i think we have reached a point where we can now conduct our arguments in a civil manner, and with respect to the views of others. i say that cautiously, because it seems like every time i make that statement at a conference or in print, we have a new

eruption. i don't think we're going to have any eruptions today. but i am certain that we will hear some of the latest and the best scholarship that we have today, and i hope that you all will find it as enlightening as i have. our second panel today will also discuss complex issues of great importance. the origins of nuclear arms race, the benefits and hazards of ionizing radiation, especially isotopes and the development of nuclear power. these issues have not received as much attention from scholars or the public as have the atomic bombs of japan, and i don't think that any of them were strong candidates to have been the top news story of the 20th century. but they are vital components of truman's atomic energy legacy, and this legacy, perhaps even more directly than the use of atomic bombs, extends down to the present day. they have also been topics of

much controversy, and misunderstanding. and once again, in our second panel today, you will hear from leading scholars in the field who have by any standard done a ground-breaking, outstanding work on these topics. i'm going to introduce our first speaker today. our first speaker today is richard b. frank. who is the author of "downfall" published in 1999 and 15 years later is still perhaps the standard among books, the many, many books on the end of the war in the pacific. he is also the author of other books on world war ii. he has not trained as a historian. he has trained as a lawyer. he is a graduate of georgetown law school, and he worked for many years as an administrative judge in the federal government. although not trained as a

historian, richard frank demonstrates his skills as a historian in everything that he has written. and it's a great pleasure to have him here today with us. thank you for those very kind remarks. and i want to thank this entire institution for the wonderful opportunity to be here in key west. and to speak on behalf of harry s. truman. it's my job to provide i think an overall summary of where we were in 1945. and to do that, we have to go back first of all to 1943 when president franklin roosevelt articulated the american allied aim for the war as the unconditional surrender of the axis powers. now, when that policy was first articulated, it was with a mind towards germany, and not japan.

but in the policymaking process that extended from basically that moment to 1945 that resulted in the plans for the occupation of germany and japan, unconditional surrender became the fundamental foundation as the state department lawyers pointed out, because it gave the u.s. and its allies authority to do things in the occupation reforms in both germany and japan that would not have been able to do under the normal international law of military occupation. so unconditional surrender, my first message is, was not a dispensable aspect about the events in 1945. it is fundamental to what eventually transpired as a free, democratic and peaceful japan. now, the then new joint chiefs of staff are responsible for coming up with a military strategy that would implement and secure unconditional surrender. we know now that the joint chiefs achieve no more than an

unstable compromise. interestingly, they divided not so much over what you might call a military issue, but a political issue. and that was what was the factor they believed would be most likely to undermine the will of the american people to see the war through to unconditional surrender. the navy, under fleet admiral earnest j. king had studied war with japan for decades. one of the results of that study absolutely convinced that invading the japanese islands was a folly. that american casualties would be totally unsustainable because japan could muster greater forces. the terrain would negate moebltd and fire power. and therefore, the navy had derived the notion the only correct strategy to bring a war with japan to a close was one of blockade and bombardment. here i must interject and point out that when the navy talked about blockade and the context of world war ii, it was to fall along on the policy first employed by the british in world

war i. that was a blockade that would include a blockade of food supplies. at its basic level, a campaign of blockade was aimed to threaten or actually kill literally millions of japanese, mostly noncombatants, from starvation. that's what the blockade was about. the army under george c. marshal believed the critical issue was time. that you can't fight a seven-year war. the army advocated an invasion of the japanese home islands as the speediest way to bring the war to a conclusion. those two conflicting visions which were fought over intensely in 1945 resulted in an agreement in april/may of 1945 that resulted in orders that effectively continued the campaign of blockade and bombardment in november at which point a two-phase initial invasion of the japanese home islands would take place. the first phase would involve seizing the southern home island of key usually and second phase

operation core net set for march of '46 which was intended to land in the tokyo yokohama area. what we know now, however, is admiral king made it very clear in a written memorandum to his colleagues and joint chiefs of staff, he was not agreeing to actually invade japan. he only agreed they had to issue an order to have that option available come november. and he said he will come back and visit the question of whether we need to invade japan in august or september of this year. now, early 1945 was greeted in tokyo, not with resignation, but with resolution. the japanese had firm grasp of howdy tier rated their military situation wasp. however, they ultimately believed that modern morale was brittle and could be broken. and their strategy called operation decisive was a military political strategy that looked to do this. they would con frint and either defleet inflict enormous

casualties that the u.s. would negotiate a settlement they would find satisfactory to end the war. they moved vigorously to implement this plan. they correctly identified southern key usually as the american target. they moved a mass of forces down there. they moved to organize, reorganize, and conserve their air forces to cumulate over 10,000 aircraft, half of which were intended to be for a kamikaze mission to support this climatic armageddon battle. in addition to doing these varies military moves and mobilizing the economy, in the spring of 1945, the japanese government moved decisively to obliterate combatants and noncombatants in japan. they not only mobilized a large uniformed armed force but also declared that every japanese male age 15 to 60, every

japanese female age 17 to 40 was a member of a national militia, a combatant. a prototype of that program with horrendous effects on civilians. now in june 1945, on both sides in tokyo and washington, there were important meetings. mr. truman was very concerned about the issue of casualties and the invasion of japan, called a white house meeting, reviewed the plans, and interestingly, only authorized olympic -- the november '45 operation. he did not authorize cornette. he held an advance approval of that. in japan, there was an equally important meeting. an imperial conference, which is to say one held before the emperor. at this conference, which was essentially sort of a kabuki affair, because the emperor does not actually participate in such matters, they affirmed their policy of fighting to the end without thought of surrender. now, in the course of preparing for that, staff officers

prepared papers to review what the situation was. one of the aspects about those papers that i want to highlight to you was this. when i wrote down fall -- when i was reading those papers, i realized what they were really saying, even if kets go worked exactly as planned, as this horrendous battle in key usually. meanwhile, there is an air and sea blockade going on. and there's enormous casualties from all of these factors. even if they secure a negotiated end to the war, they realized their food situation as they got to the latter half of 1946, was going to be catastrophic. and that the leadership knew that in addition to all the horrendous casualties that would result from hostilities, a large number of japanese would be dying from starvation in 1946. now, edward drai recently published a wonderful book called "japan's imperial army" and pointed out that the soldiers clearly understood what the papers said. and if they understood it, the japanese leadership could not

have missed the implications of that. and maybe in the q & a, we can get into what happens during the occupation with respect to the food situation in japan. in the summer of 1945, particularly in july they detected this buildup. the result of this was a start of a controversy at the joint chiefs of staff level. general marshall sent a message to go ahead and do it. admiral king, however, took those communications and sent a letter to the senior naval officer and asked for his views. now at the moment king did this, which is following on with his memoir in april.

this is august of '45. king also knew this. he informed him privately that he could no longer support his invasion after the experience of the okinawa campaign. what we know for sure is there was going to be a major, major conflict over an invasion of japan. not because the operation was unnecessary but it had become unthinkable in terms of how it had been planned and ordered up to that point. general marshal was looking into using atomic bombs to support the invasion in order to keep that option open. in japan in june of 1945 and continuing on, there was some strings on the diplomatic front. there were a number of diplomats that became peace entrepreneurs. they advanced to various american and allied officials and notions about the war. the problem was not a single one

of them had any authority from japan. the only legitimate effort made to secure any type of diplomatic effort by the japanese government was conducted through the japanese ambassador through moscow. you have to understand the big six was the legal government of japan. there was literally not a millisecond prior to august 6th, 1945, in which that legal government of japan ever sat down and worked out what they would accept to end the war. the only occasion on which they had a meeting to even discuss that matter ended abruptly when it said the only basis to

discuss the end of the war was japan had not lost. when they attempted this negotiation through moscow back and forth and the foreign minist minister. it comes in an exchange that follows from the fact that he keeps saying if this is a serious effort to end the war, japan must define some terms. he comes back to that several times. terms, terms, terms. he can't get an answer because the big six have not discussed and not agreed upon terms to end the war. finally in exasperation he sends a message to tokyo, about the 17th of july, in which he says, look, the best you can possibly hope for at this point now is unconditional surrender modified to the extent that the imperial institution would be made. there in black and white is

essentially a center piece of the revisionist argument. if only we had had agreed to that set of terms, what's the response? it's not no, it's hell no. so basically reading those cables the american leaders said they knew basically in july 1945 even an offer to preserve the institution was not going to secure the surrender of japan. when the bomb is dropped on here shee ma, bear in mind a couple points. no japanese government had surrendered. which by calculation. the second thing is that an atomic bomb was an event totally unprecedented in human history. and third, you have to understand the japanese government and decision making process was highly dysfunctional based upon consensus it was difficult to reach an agreement.

when the first news that something horrendous is happening, the japanese army immediately responds that the americans have set an atomic bomb. they u say even if it is an atomic bomb, they can't have that many of them. they are not that powerful and maybe they will be desueded from using them. the reason the army and navy take the stance is because of japan's own atomic bomb program, which did give them insight into how difficult it was to make a bomb. the soviet union intervenes. the early report indicates the soviets have attacked and nebulous as to what it going on. the big six has its first formal meeting to discuss how to end the war and they split when advancing a condition of returning the imperial institution but three others want to have three other conditions including japan will

try its own war criminals. above all, it means the occupation reforms are not going to take place. the em porer intervenes that evening and orders that they accept the one term. except when japan sends its message to the u.s. saying it's accepting a declaration. the language used says provided it does not compromise the prerogatives of the em perrer. this is called magic language. what the japanese term is asking for is not preservation of a constitutional monarch. it is asking for the allies to agree as a condition pree see dent to a japanese surrender that they agree the em porer over the occupation authorities. again, no occupation reforms. this is rejected by the u.s. if you read like a lawyer would read those exchanges, there

never is a kbaguarantee that th u.s. will -- there is reaffirmation repeatedly of the declaration, which follows from the atlantic charter, which if it is the well of the japanese people to continue with imperial institution it will continue. now there are a lot of other things we can talk about concerning the end of the war. soviets, the food situation, japan, the dysfunction of japanese decisions and the japanese leadership either saw things clearly or did not. one thing i want to impress upon you is this. i have been doing work on the pacific war. this was a totally horrendous event from 1937 to 1945. by my best estimate, something on the order of 25 million human beings died. about 6 million of them were combatants. . 3 million chinese. 2 million, japanese. that means the other 19 million

were noncombatants. casualties among japanese, you can find various figures between in excess of 600,000. my highest is about 1.2 million. that means basically for every japanese noncombatant who died, 18 others died. about 12 of them were chinese. and we heard very appropriately last night from two survivors that it's important we always keep in mind the horrendous nature of those weapons that hangs over us today. but to me you have to understand just how utterly god awful the war was. over 5,000 chinese were dying every single day the war continued. it's been estimated a quarter million people were dying every month, mostly asian noncombatan noncombatants.

this was the context in which all this takes place. it's a context in which we can sit back and make judgments. thank you. [ applause ] >> our second speaker this morning is wilson -- the atomic bombs and the defeat of japan. also the author of two other prize-winning books on the -- bill was a native of australia. received from the history of notre dame. he returned to australia for a couple years and worked in the officer of the prime minister and then he came back and joined the faculty, the history department at notre dame. even while he was doing this, he earned a masters of divinity degree at notre dame and he is an ordained priest.

we're very pleased to have bill with us this morning. [ applause ] >> i'm very glad to participate in the conference and i think dr. walker, our conference convener and bob walsh, who has done such a splendid job organizing this event. i'm very glad to join my fellow panelists such important scholars whom i have learned so much over the years. of course, we also thank all of you for come iing and making an effort to understand some of these crucial areas of harry trum truman's presidency. let me clarify for you that i come to the issue of the use of

the atomic bombs from the perspective of a diplomatic and political historian, as sam mentioned. i wrote a book on george cannon and his contribution to the making of u.s. foreign policy. my first sort of exploration of the truman administration looking at the marshal plan and nato. then in 2007 i published a book that explored the impacts on american foreign policy more broadly understood of the transition from frankly roosevelt to harry truman. and that book explored true man's policymaking in his initial years in office and it led me to consider his u diplomacy as world war ii ended into what we now know was its final phase. so i want to first speak from a diplomatic historian's perspective to clarify truman's

initial approaches on foreign policy in a broad sense during 1945. then i will try to examine something of truman's motives for authorizing the use of the atomic bombs and finally some conclusions on the morality of the use of these terrible weapons, an issue which i have tried to give some considered thought. friends, please appreciate that when trueman came to office in april of 1945 he had neither the interest nor the desire to author franklin roosevelt's policies. he sincerely wanted to implement the plans of his revered predecessor and to assure continuity in foreign policy. crucially truman hoped to continue cooperative relations

with the wartime allies, especially the other members of the big three, the soviet union and great britain. secure their cooperation in securing final victory over hitler and the nazis and then over the japanese militaryists. and secure their cooperation further more in building a peaceful post war world. please keep that in mind. my study from roosevelt to truman, which dr. walker mentioned briefly, clarifies that the broad sweep of american foreign policy from april '45 to july of 1945 consisted of an effort to maintain cooperationive relations with the soviet union. there were bumps along the road, but i'm suggesting the broad sweep is one of maintaining

cooperation. truman aimed to be even handed in his dealings with winston churchill's britain and joseph stalin's soviet union. he worked to avoid any hint of angelo american conclusion against the soviets. even truman's appointment of burns as secretary of state in july of 1945 did not alter this fundamentally cause. burns, an important player in the events we're discussing, favored the diplomatic practice of bargaining and negotiation. but he still wanted to maintain decent relations with the soviets by reaching practical settlements of the issues they faced. at potsdam he accepted a spear of influenced peace, which

largely accepted the soviet's domination of eastern europe and harry truman endorsed this approach. they hoped that this would secure a workable and stable post war settlement. now burns assuredly hoped that america's possession of the atomic bomb might add some weight to his side in future diplomatic bargaining in the post pottsdam period. but truman authorized the actual use of the bomb to defeat the japanese. it was not a part of some anti-soviet strategy. truman had gone to potsdam and

wanted that participation. it's very important to appreciate this point because fanciful notions of atomic diplomacy pushed by those who have followed him and the revisionist side that dr. walker mentioned in his introduction, that notion has to be put aside. what i think is striking about america's sole possession of the atomic bomb is how little u.s. officials sought to use it for diplomatic ends and purposes in those initial stages. let e me move then and make some fairly brief statements about truman's motives. these are the arguments that i concluded from my book, the most controversial decision. this book i should add, the

title has certain irony to it. the decision was not controversial for truman at the time. it's subsequently that the controversy emerged. truman authorized the use of the atomic bombs to force japan to surrender and with the deep hope of saving american lives. he was primarily concerned, of course, with american lives. this is what moved him and the american military effort. it must be said as richard frank and his wonderful work has clarified that the atomic bombs contributed to forcing japan's e eventual surrender and in bringing the brutal war in the

pacific to an end prior to what would have been an enormously costly invasion of the japanese home islands. further more while the atomic bomb was never entirely separated from considerations of post war international politics, especially in the mind of secretary of war henry stimson, the decision to use the weapons was not driven by those concerns. the atomic bombs were used primarily for a military purpose. now truman and his associates did not seek alternatives to using the atomic bombs. they accepted it as a weapon of war and proceeded to use it. they saw it as a legitimate weapon. but we can say this and we can have more discussion, i'm sure, of this matter in our question

period. . viable options that might have proved successful alternate courses can't be identified with any certainty, even in retrospect and when far removed from the pressures truman was under in 1945 of course, the united states could have e eventually defeated japan a choke blockade, perhaps starving millions into submission. a very damaging invasion. but even that has some questions about it. there was not an easily available and appropriate option that would have met the serious political and moral objections

of the many later critics of troou mampb's decision. those who from our safe distance now almost 70 years who all kinds of alternate scenarios to end the war, i think, engage sometimes in wishful thinking that cannot be supported by the historical facts. as you know, there has been enormous criticism, as dr. walker made clear in his introduction of the american use of the atomic bomb. but i want to ask you to consider a few points in the remaining time i have that might complicate the rush to judge the action that truman took. those who condemn truman's

decision to use the atomic bombs surely should hesitate a little so as to appreciate that had he not authorized the attacks on nagasaki, thousands of american and allied soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, would have been added to the lists of those killed in world war ii. this would have included not only those involved in the pl s planned invasions of the home islands, but also american, british, let me add australian ground forces in southeast asia who expected to engage the japanese in bloody fighting in the months proceeding such. some folks of limited knowledge of world war ii ignore the reality that there was ugly fighting proceeding throughout much of asia. during those months leading up

to the use of the bombs. added to their number would have been the thousands of allied prisoners of war whom the japanese plan to execute. to complicate further the rush to judgment, one must acknowledge that truman was most viekly very correct in march of 1958 when he told the chairman of the city council that the bombs had prevented the loss of japanese deaths in an invasion. hard as it may be to accept when one sees the visual record of the awful destruction of hooe roche ma and nagasaki, losses would have been substantially greater without the atomic bombs.

furthermore, the attacks changed the whole dynamic of the occupation of japan. ironically, they facilitated a quick and easy surrender and a broadly cooperative populous in a way that no other method of military victory would have guaranteed. moreover, the awful weapons abruptly ended the death and suffering of innocent third parties throughout asia. a point that professor frank addressed at the end of his remarks. rather surprisingly, the enormous wartime losses of the chinese, the koreans, the vietnamese, the japanese, at the hands of the japanese received little attention in weighing the american effort to shock the japanese into surrender.

the losses in nagasaki were horrific, but they pale in significance when compared to the estimates of 17 to 24 million deaths attributed to the japanese during their rampage fromman chur ya to new begin any. it's a channel house of atrocities. during the months of war following the attack on pearl harbor, reliable estimates established that between 200,000 to 300,000 persons died each month either directly or indirectly at japanese hands. furthermore, robert newman reveals that, quote, the last months were in many ways the worst. starvation and disease aggravated the deaths. it is plausible to hold that

upwards 250,000 people, mostly asians but some werners, would have died each month if the japanese empire struggle d in is death throws beyond july of 1945. so i put to you that the atomic bombs shorten the war, averted the need for a land invasion, saved countless more lives on both sides of the ghastly concept and brought an end to the japanese brutalization of the conquered peoples of asia. does that make the use moral? truman himself had doubts in retrospect. truman's first conviction that he had done the necessary thing, dropping the bombs, ending the

war, saving numerous lives in the process did not stave off his own serious moral qualms about the action. just on the day after the bombing of nag ka si, he said that no more atomic bombs be dropped. in words that reveal his personal anguish and his growing recognition that the two cities were much more than the military targets he had authorized the bombs be used against, he explained that the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people is horrible. his then secretary of commerce henry wallace recorded in his diary, he, truman, didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, all those kids.

in 1945 deeply colored his whole attitude to nuclear weapons. he never again spoke of them as military weapons to which the united states could make easy resort and he indicated some retreat from his pre hiroshima. in looking at moral responsibility, i want to put to you that we must look beyond harry truman. those who accuse truman might refrain from putting him in some singular dock of history until they u carefully considered the responsibility of the japanese leadership for the fate of their own people. post war these leaders effectively played up their

victim role so as to induce a certain guilt among americans about the wars ending. this helped disguise the important reality explained by the historian herbert biks that it was not so much the allied policy of unconditional surrender that prolonged the pacific war as it was the unrealistic and incompetent actions of japan's highest leaders. blinded by their preoccupation with the fate of the imperial house, those leaders let pass every opportunity to end the war until it was too late. in moral terms, surely the japanese leadership had a responsibility to surrender at least by june of 1945 when there existed no reasonable prospect

of system and when their civilian population suffered so greatly. instead the neosam rye who led the military geared up with true bonsai spirit in a national campaign. they were in prolonging the war should not be ignored. friends, i want to put to you that harry truman was a good and decent man who try ied to live a moral code, a moral code grounded in his christian views. a moral code grounded in the 20th chapter of the book of kpi ex-douse and the sermon on the mount. truman later stated honestly, i am opposed to any kind of

killing. whether by atomic bomb or bow and arrow. truman was, however, also a person who knew that decisions in the sometimes confusing fog of war placed policymakers in circumstances where they sometimes have neither a clear or easy moral option open to them. perhaps truman had himself and the atomic bomb decision retrospectively in mind when he wrote 15 years after their use in a discourse on decision making that, quote, sometimes you have a choice of evils in which case you take the course that is likely to bring the least harm. from the perspective of today

truman's use of the bomb viewed within the context of this long and horrific war should be seen, i believe, as his choosing the lesser of the evils available to hum. admittedly, he did not weigh carefully the options in some moral calculous at the time and proceed forward with that understanding. no, he proceeded ahead because he believed that this was a weapon that could end the war. but fair minded observers will see that he did, in fact, choose the least damaging of the awful options open to him. henry had it exactly right when he wrote in 1947 that the decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over 100,000 japanese. no explanation can change that fact and i do not want to gloss

over it. but this deliberate destruction was our least abhorrent choice. but it must be understood, the least to bring the bloodshed to an end. so too must be appreciated that truman did not turn his back on some feasible moral course of action that would have secured a japanese surrender. even a decision not to act would have undoubtedly incured terrible consequences. such inaction would carry some burden of responsibility for the

prolongation of the killing of innocence throughout asia in the house of the japanese empire. would it really have been more moral to stand aside so as to maintain a moral purity u while a vast slaughter occurred at the rate of over 200,000 deaths a month. isn't there a tragic dilemma here, namely which innocent lives to save. could truman have rested at peace by prolong iing the japane domination of asia? as future anniversaries of the dropping of the bombs occur, i hope for less condemnation of truman's decision at least until the critics can specify a moral

and still feasible course of action to end the war. perhaps there might even be some empathy for the man required to make the decision and who carried the burden of his harry truman of independence, missouri, was some moral mons r monster. those who criticize his decision would do well i think to place themselves in his shoes and ask what they might have done in his circumstance. honest observers who refrain from analysis and criticisms will acknowledge that they were used primarily for a military purpose so as to force japan's surrender and that they prove defective in inflicting defeat

on the japanese. truman and his associates did not seem alternatives to using the atomic bombs, but viable options that might have proved successful cannot be identified with any certainty, as i have said. sadly there was not an easy available and appropriate option that would have met the moral objectives of the many critics of truman's decision. therein lies the tragic dimension of the decision to use the atomic bombs. thank you so much. [ applause ] >> our third speaker is robert norish, the author of "racing for the bomb."

this is a book that came out in 1992 and will be republished and came out to rave reviews in journals and popular media. he's also the author on books on nuclear weapons. he earned a ph.d. in political science from new york university and he's applied his expertise on a nuclear weapons and jobs held with the natural defense counsel and now with the federation of american scientists. i'm glad to introduce stan nors i. ris. >> thank you very much. good to be here. i'd like to thank all of the organizers of this event. the book was in 2002. unfrptly it went out of pribt, but it's coming back so i'm happy about that.

in my cleanup position here, let me summarize the paper i have submitted. it mainly has to do with the title of this panel here. and what i say is the sub decision to drop the atomic bomb needs fundamental re-examination. so i won't be concerned wlt issues or whether it was the first shot of the cold war. rather, i would like to focus on whether there was any decision at all. whether the word decision is the appropriate word to describe what happened and concerns the timing of the bombing and the role of general groves, not surprisingly since i wrote a whole book about him and his

role in the bomb. and when you follow the actions of general groves, i came to the realization that it was not really any decision by president truman to authorize the use of the bomb. he acquiesced in the decision of others. he went with the momentum of events that culminated in the bombs use. and only in retrospect in interviews and in his memoir did he put himself more decisively directing the use of the bomb in july and august of 1945 more involvement than was actually the case. when you begin to look for the documen documents that truman authorized, you can't find one. of the 70 some documents in the

library entitled "the decision to drop the atomic bomb", not any contains language from truman authorizing the use of the bomb before august 6th. an odd omission in the that it title. he was not ignorant. of the bomb when he became president upon fdr's death and he was told soon after by general groves the details of the bomb. and according to general groves, the only decision that truman really made about the bomb was not to interfere with ongoing plans. the momentum of the project was extraordinary at this point. all engineered by general groves, i think, i try u and

show. and when there was enough material, the bombs would be used. there's no doubt about that. in an amazing coincidence that i still find amazing, at the end of july, there was enough material for the two types of bombs that were to be used. enough uranium and enough plutonium for a test bomb that was already used in the middle of july but another amount was available at the end of july that would be used in the fat man bomb on nagasaki. it didn't have to turn out this way at all. it was only because of the efforts to speed up the production of these two kinds of

material that the availability of the material was ready at that time. and was used. so my argument is that truman really didn't authorize the use of the bomb. e he went with the decisions that had been made long, long, long before. going as far back as the authorization by president roosevelt to initiate the program. why would you build a weapon of war if it was not intended to be used. it was given over to general groves whose bosses were simpson and marshal. and another scientific adviser named bush and with this complex of people here, it was full speed ahead. i call my book racing for the

bomb. speed was of the essence. every day u counted. and the intent, as i agree with my fellow panelists was to end the war as soon as possible and the pacific war as soon as possible. another question is what if the war had not been over in europe, would the bomb have been used in europe? the war was over on may 8th. that was too soon for the bombs being ready. and the question was never focused on whether it would have been used in europe. so truman was in an odd place when he inherited the presidency. and as bill mentioned here, he went with the continuity of things that had r already been put in place. the continuity being that simpson and marshal, two people that truman had the utmost

respect for, better to go along with what is already in place than make the contrary decision. so as general gross says, truman's decision was not so much to say yes but to say no. it would have taken an enormous effort to say no. we're going to go some alternate route. and with the people surrounding him and the plans already in place and the momentum under way, it was just not in the cards that truman would do anything else but go along with what had already been put in place. so as woodward and bernstein said follow the money rgs it was always my research to follow the bomb. when you look at how the

material was made, you focus in on the timing of when the bomb was used. as i said before, when there was enough at the end of july for the two types of bombs, they were going to be used. if it had been done a month before or two months before, it would have been used then. so it's just a matter of when there was enough material that the bombs were ready and were used within days afterwards. and if you follow the path from hanford, washington, or tennessee where the uranium was made, as it made its way to being fabricated into the pieces needed and transported to the forward base from which the bombers left. you see that they are racing for the bomb.

there's no doubt about it. there's not a minute lost. and whereas i argue that truman did not authorize officially. there's no piece of paper that say, i, harry truman, authorize the use of the atomic bomb. i don't criticize him for this. what i do criticize him for is take i taking some liberties with the historical facts afterwards and interjecting himself into this process and taking more credit than is historically accurate. what he did do is introduce himself into stopping the bomb. as was mentioned before, once some peace feelers began to be heard from japan after the nagasaki bomb, truman

interjected himself and said no more and general marshal told general groves, no more bombs are to be taken upon except upon authorization from president truman. later the term predelegation became known as this process. the real order to use the bomb came from general handy, who was the acting chief of staff in washington while marshal was in potsdam. he authorized the group to use bombs as made ready. as made ready. and general groves being the good. army officer would supply bomb number three, bomb number five,

if needed. so there was an assembly line in process in which more bombs would have been used. but truman interjected himself and stopped that assembly line. stopped that predelegation, which had been granted in an order in which i don't think he ever saw. i don't know. so that is something to keep in mind about truman's role in the bomb. he did interject himself into stopping the use of the bomb beyond nagasaki. and with good reason because there were feelers out to have the japanese unconditionally surrender. just one final thing in my

remarks, having to do with the timing, every one of these days is crucial to the way things turned out. counterfactual history is sometimes a dangerous occupation, but sometimes it's useful. and it is, i think in this case, useful to consider what would have happened if the bomb had not been used on august 6th and august 9th. it was mentioned on august 8th that the soviet union entered the war and this has become, according to one scholar's argument, an action that had more impact on the japanese than the dropping of the atomic bomb and ending the war. the japanese had to consider august 6th, hiroshima and they

did something about it and surrendered and stopped the whole thing. had that gone on, the soviets had already begun basically an invasion of japan. had the war gone on another few weeks or another month or two, the whole post war period would have looked entirely different with japan. japan would have had soviet occupation and we would have had a situation much like germany. and that didn't happen. so i recommend to you a very good article by a fellow named david glens, who is a specialist in soviet war plans and world war ii about the invasion of japan and it's mentioned in my

paper. so what president truman was not as involved in the decision to use the bomb as the subsequent literature has alleged. and this neglect was not entirely his fault. he should not be blamed. if president roosevelt had lived a few months longer, may, june, july, august, i don't think anything would have been different. the bombs were ready when they were ready and would have been used. we would be looking at president roosevelt's role in the bomb. so why don't i stop there and have any questions in the period that follows. thank you. [ applause ]

>> we're actually running ahead of schedule. i would like to thank the speakers for the brevity of their remarks and two things that i ask of speakers for this conference before we got here. one was not to read their papers because we have all had bad experiences with that and they department do that and they stayed right on schedule. so we have lots of time for questions. the format is there are two microphones at the front. if you have questions, please line up at the mics. please identify yourself and as much as possible, direct your question toward one of the panelists. >> my name is linda chapman. thank you very much, very instructive. i would say all history is revisionist and maybe to make a pa jorty of one side or the other is a pa jorty. but i would like to say that dropping the bomb was an imper

ty and had to be done. can we talk about strategy? i'm no expert in this. why civilian targets? why not the military targets, as you suggested. there was a huge build up of the japanese military there. why wasn't that the target of the bomb? and maybe the second question is, why did we have to drop two if it were about really ending the war and not just making a test of these two bombs that were developed. thank you. >> i guess this is aimed at me. again, it was general groves who was in charge of establishing what was called the target committee. this was done in april. the first time they met was april 27th. groves, a master bureaucrat.

he says i have nothing against committee as long as i get to choose the members. so he chose the members and they were a collection of military people and scientists. and the army air forces and so on and so forth and they decided that they would spare any city that hpt already been bombed. they wanted really a fresh look at an unbombed city to show the power of the bomb. that was the intent of why some of these targets were chosen. groves was obsessed with trying to get kioto on the target list and stimson, who had visited japan i think twice, knew its historic and cultural import to the japanese and vetoed them

again and again and again. groves was obsessed with trying to get it on, but it didn't happen. and thus the target list became nagasaki, hiroshima, they were at theened of the deliberations. i think they didn't know whether this was going to work or not. they were sure about the little boy bomb. two pieces of uranium, fire one into the other, it's going to blow up. we don't need to test. plus it's going to take too long if we have a test bomb and we won't have another one for many months later. but this plutonium bomb, it was tested and it worked.

full speed ahead towards getting enough plutonium to the case and all the rest and have the composite group ready to deliver it. and of course, the perfect mission that went according to plan, it dropped the bomb on hee roche ma exactly when they said it would and returned safely. there was much more difficulty in the second mission against nagasaki. i won't go into all the details about fuel lines and they almost ran out of gas and there was covered clouds and they wanted a visual target on to nagasaki. so that almost aborted, but it

didn't. we have to shock the japanese into taking that final step. it makes a distinction between defeat and surrender. they are not the same thing. the revisionists have constantly said that the japanese was defeated. of course they were defeated. they were probably defeated at mid-way although they probably didn't know it. how do you get them to surrender. surrender on your terms. and that took a long process and eventually it was the atomic bomb that convinced them to intervene and say, enough, it's over. >> the decision to use as

professor norris made clear in his paper was the one decision that how we from our vaptage point, why department they give them more time to see if that would make a decision. it was essentially driven by general groves, the one decision to authorize the use of the weapons that they used to. both cities were military industrial targets. they were not simply filled with civilians and targeted because of that. the japanese army responsible for the defense of the southern part of japan and it was a supply and logistics base for the military communications

center. nagasaki very important port wide ranging industrial activity. the kpli u indicated dynamic of how japan fought the war and who was the civilian and who was a combatant, et cetera, made targeting something that had already devolved into an area where dare we say civilian targets were on the lists. it's under fdr that the tokyo fire bombing occurs, of course, and the war had devolved into a level of what we can look back and see as almost barbaric targeting of populations who i should add had been warned to evacuate these cities, but this is where the tragic dimension in my view enters in.

>> let me say i think what you have to understand in looking at the design of the use of the atomic bombs, you have to understand the most important thing was the purpose. the purpose was articulated a number of times. the idea that it would take some tremendous shock to get the leadership of japan to actually come pitch late. the targeting was really a separate issue. the question whether you should target a military area versus a city. the question is what would impress leadership in tokyo. also the atomic bomb, which we did k not forget, are much, much, much smaller than anything that came after or not nearly the same sort of things we looked under the cloud for some 70 years. general groves and others also saw the use of the bombs against

cities as essentially a bluff. it was a bluff to prove that we had not merely one bomb, but we had an arsenal of what this ultimately wo

(n nuclear programi] and in my vie is very interesting is as soon as they heard the words ato e1 theic bo them knew what it was but they also knew how incredibly difficult it was to make that bomb. that's why that first response to the first reportsw3&a5 of t bomb, the imperial army sayst( well we're not going to concede it's ae1 bomb until we have aóa investigation. the imperial navy even more onio ominously is even if it is an atomic bomb. there can't be that many ofe1 them. that second bomb at gakasaki knocked the props of the idea that the u.s. did not have an arsenal of atomic weapons. that's why as tragic as that all is, those two bombs achieved the

bluff. also if we understand what the japanese military was talking about, it shows that basically no 5=9mqration would ever have worked because the japanese come back would have been this is very interesting. let's see you do three in a row. >> just one point on the timing of it. general grobesq told general r he says theñi timetable appears that we've speexg things up here. y as august 17th. so we've got august 9th, the next bomb, it was going to take that span of time from the 9th oru it toxd get ready the 9th to use. #/for august 17th. they might have gained a day orl

fabricate it. get it off the chain. so he was ready for many more than just two. but he thought two would initially be!u probably enought it wasn't going to stop there. he continued to make them. >> thank you. >> my namee1 is kathleene1e1 su. i would like toe1 invite us to broaden our perspective. when i look at this trueman nuclear legacy, i also think we could easily say human nuclear

i mean, i think that if one c co concedes éhrt nuclear weapons weapon does not understand what a nuclear weapon is. i think thasáe1 whilei] specifically about them, those of usfá who were at the symposi last i]night, heard them speci c specifically saying that the

to almost about 30 years i worked at a place called the natural resource defense counsel which looked into the environmental legacy of making the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb from 1945 on. we looked and sued the government many, many times over how quickly, how adequately they

were cleaning out the mess that had been made. and environmental and health considerations were always secondary. primary was, you know, the russians are coming. i'm sorry. we've got to build more bombs. we built bombs like crazy. i think about schi66,000 of the over the course of 1945 to 1992. constantly recycling. they were the things to have for the military. the military wanted them in every variety. we had two competing laboratories who supplied whatever they wanted. sometimes gave them things they didn't even know about. so this was the dynamic of part of the arms race. the russians were coming. competing service rivalry

between the army, airforce, navy wanting them up. laboratories. good jobs in all of these places so it was in congresses interest to have good budgets to support it. this was the engine of the arms race. you know, we're going to live with the legacy of what happened for decades to come. we've already spent countless billions of dollars cleaning up the mess that was made at rocky flats at hanford, oak ridge, smaller places. it will be long before all of us are gone before they even begin to make a dent in this but it's fueled the department of energy a great deal on the clean up. as far as testing, you know, people were exposed. the things desert rock exercises

in nevada, they had soldiers in trenches charging mushroom clouds and what they thinking? there are many leg assies to say nothing of what the russians did. if we did it this way you can imagine how the russians did it. they did it in a horrible way. dumping all sorts of nasty things all over the place. so their legacy is even worse than ours. there are some other legacies among the british, french, chinese or anybody else that decides to go for the bomb. the person who asked the question, raised a very good point that the legacy endures and we have to think beyond what happened in august, 1945.

>> it is a very important and valid point of as i alluded to, you have to bare in mind, the weapons in existence in 1945 are tiny compared to what's come after. i also agree with the notion of expanding our horizons and putting all of these events in context. what i would like to emphasize to you is think about the quote, good war the way it actually was. on september 1, 1939 when hitler rolled into the soviet union, tim snider, he writes that at that point in time, hitler had killed approximately 10,000 human beings on the basis of race or political reasons. by that point in time joseph

stalin had killed between 6 and 8 million human beings in implementing his policies. by that count at that point, the japanese war in china had killed probably at least 4 million chinese. when hitler rolls into the soviet union in june of 1941, stalin added several hundred thousand additional victims in poland and the baltic states. by this time, somewhere in the vicinity of 7 1/2 million chinese have died. we cross in my view a very important moral rubicon in the 20th century. we decide we're going to ally with the soviet union. from a strategic standpoint seems that this is undoubtedly the only correct decision and reasonable decision at that

point. we did have a voice about how we would characterize that relationship. we could have depicted it as simply, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. we chose instead to depict stalin's soviet union as democrats and obscured the nature of that regime. when the accounting came over the deaths of over 20,000 polish that we knew the soviets had killed we chose to cover it up. at the very outset of our participation in world war ii, we have made this very important fundamental moral choice about you ho we'w we're going to depi our actions and allies. then you see the long slide from there from a series of events that leads to the bombing of cities and the use of atomic weapons and other moral choices that truman faced.

this is all part of the production and residuals of making atomic weapons. it's even bigger than atomic weapons, it's a whole moral universe that we have to recognize that people were living in in the 19th and mid-20th century and we we are living in today. we should give consideration about what we there dealing with at the time before making judgments. >> just a couple of points. when we sit in our location today we often wished things had sort of worked out differently and occurred differently, et cetera. of course, what drove the manhattan project initially was a fear that hitler and the nazis were going to develop an atomic bomb. you would wish in retrospect everyone was a good person and we decided not to pursue such

technology. i believe it was a responsible decision on the part of the americans and british of course were already engaged in research, et cetera. because they feared what the world would be if adolf hitler was the first person to possess atomic weapons. so you understand what sort of drives the decision making and then sort of organizational genius like grobes pushes it. the remarkable capability of the united states pursues it. i don't dispute for a moment some of the unfortunate consequences of the american possession of atomic weapons, et cetera. yet, i think we should mention that hiroshima and nagasaki are the only times when weapons were used in warfare and perhaps in a

terrible way, in a terrible way, they gave us an example of the awful consequences of these weapons such that statesman on all sides in the cold war have held back because they know of the awfulness of these weapons and that they play at least some part in that regard so i can see that there are all kinds of issues that bubble forth from nuclear weapons. for myself, however, i would have to say that during the cold war, i'm glad the et cetera didn't engage in any sort of unilateral disarmerment. by and large, i think deterrents worked. the soviet union was a threat to the united states. they were held at bay by the

nuclear balance. >> i want to make one brief comment as well. what's different about atomic bombs as opposed to dropping one atomic bomb as opposed to venti enormity and two the radiation affects. i was going to ask this of the second panel this afternoon but i will throw out what the radiation affects research foundation, what their latest findings are of radiation affects in hiroshima and nagasaki. the answer that they've come up with is that yes there had been radiation affects. there's still people dying from diseases from radiation from the bombs. the numbers are not huge. i think we should keep that in mind. between 1950 and 1997 from a cohort of 86,000, 572 survivors of the bombs, there have been

above what the incidence would be expected to be. what normal inscidence of cance and other diseases would be in those two cities. there have been in excess above what you would expect normally in those cities. deaths from cancer and other diseases possibly caused by radiation. there had been again, between 1950 and 1997, the latest figures that they have posted 440 total deaths from solid tumors and 250 from noncancerous diseases. also between 1950 and2000, the excess numbers of deaths from leukemia, this is what showed up first in the atomic cities. again, beyond what you would expect in a population that

size, the normal -- pardon me the excess number of deaths inh mass destruction there was almost no emotional reaction from stalin at all probably their espionage had already

undercovered and knew what we were doing. no doubt they were also trying to develop their own bomb which they did a few yearscq later. to what extent japan and germany how far along they were in that program. was there any cooperation or inclusion between germany or the axis powers to develop the bomb. do we know how, where, when they would have used this weapon? >> well there's been an extensive investigation of this question of the german bomb and how far along they were. this was the obsession of general grobes. this was an erarly recruiting method. many of the scientists had worked for key german scientists and had fled to the united

states and were concerned about what was going on back in germany. it appears after looking at just about everything that the german program was halted just as the american program really got under way in a major way. probably the spring of 1942. albert sphere would have been in charge or was in charge. hezenburg, was involved in all of this as with a some other notable germans. in the spring of 1942 it looked pretty good for the germans. maybe the war will be going okay here and we don't need to divert resources into this thing when we need more tanks and this and that so the jegerman program wa

de-escalated and put at a very low level. there was no general grobes to orient everything and put it in place. grobes was obsessed. he created a team called the alsos team which was a group of soldiers and scientists who were at the leading edge of the invasion of europe first in italy and then later in d-day to find out really what was going on. by about october, 1944 -- october or november, this alsos team has found out that the german program was not going anywhere. there's no fear of the bomb. nevertheless, that didn't cause the american effort to go any slower. in fact, it was raking along at

an extraordinary pitch. in late 1944, early 91945, they rounded up these scientists, the american soldiers and they sent them to england in a place called farmhall which was a nice little chateau near cambridge. of course general grobes had the place bugged and listened to the german conversations to really fi find out what was going on. on august 6th, 1945, the german scientists who were incarcerated at farmhall learned of hiroshima. heizenberg said they did it. they thought they needed tons and tons of highly

uranium. of course you don't need very much at all. so this began an explanation that the german scientists used after the war. very tricky here. it was almost immediately decided by heizenberg and the others that they would take the position that they knew how to make a bomb but they didn't want hitler because he's a nut case and a mad men so we won't give it to him. now, the german scientists argued this for many years and i think it's totally fallacious. first of all, i don't think they knew how -- they never investigated enough to knowkhow to make a bomb and organized themselves into making one. they could have done it. anybody can do it as we know in the history of what has happened over the past 70 years.

many other countries have successfully done it. every country that set out to make one made one. they are still doing it. iran is going to get a bomb there's no doubt about it one of these days. only one of the countries, south africa has willingly given it up but that's another whole story. anyway, the german scientists rested on this argument that oh, yeah, we know how to do it but we didn't want hitler to know that so we were the dissidents in the thing. i think this is baloney. anyway, there are a lot of books written about this. general grobes, he listening in on these farmhall transcripts which finally became declassified. he got the first copy. there are multiple copies and they are fascinating reading about. the state of the german bomb program which was going no where. but anyway that's how it ended up with. >> with resperkt ct to the japa.

there's really two parts of an atomic bomb program. there's the science part. so the basic idea was well known to#h anyphysicists by 1939. the tough part was the evani engineeri engineering. that's why japan didn't have the resources to expand an atomic bomb program beyond the initial stage. there's actually been books published that claimed the japanese program had advanced so far to claiming there was a test an atomic bomb in 1945 in korea. nonsense. thank you for that. it's very helpful in that accurate scientific term that we needed at this moment. but once again, i come back to the point, remember though, from at least the third quarter of

1944, the idea about an atomic bomb, an atomic bomb program, the potential importance of an atomic bomb was well known in the top levels of the japanese leadership including general dojo whose on record on that point. so they understood the idea of an atomic bomb. they just questioned like the germans whether anybody else could do it. >> hello my name is trevor. this question may be more for you. looking back throughout human history, wormld leaders hwuz employed severe tactics to bring people to their knees. popular culture seems intent on venerating these individuals and their efforts. while this is most often seen in light of imperialism, it might

appear that that same cultural mind set is at work here. looking forward in light of that, should we view mr. truman's decision as where you must do what your conscious demands in faith even if the acts seems or is evil or does this signal maybe a more profound disconnect in our thinking that precludes us from finding the peace that we seek or to modify the question, do we have any more of a decision in whether or not we're a nuclear world than mr. truman did. thank you. >> thank you, trevor. >> i tried to present the issue as truman choosing among a series of deeply awful options and choosing the one that was

the least -- looking at it in retrospect. retrospect. i'm not suggesting he engaged in some deep moral evaluation. he was guided by2 grobes. the momentum was all there. they considered it a military weapon. they thought it would shorten the war, save american lives. so that was his thinking at the time. in retrospect, i think his case that they pursued an option that can certainly be seen as the least awful of the awful options that they had. there was no easy option. that's what i asked folks who so quickly rush to judgment on truman to consider what was the alternate course? what would have been the civilian casualties in that course of action, et cetera? so i never wanted to see nuclear

weapons utilized. i don't think that they can in any way be justified because of the incriminate nature of them. particularly, the nuclear weapons as rich pointed out today so vastly more damaging in their consequences than the weapons used in hiroshima and nagasaki. ethically going forward, i think statesman have to work hard to make sure that there can be a reduction in theseviéñ weapons that they never be utilized in warfare again in the samei mannr that hopefully things like poison gas and so on will never be used again. so i don't know if that fully addresses your question but i hope it helps, trevor. thank you. >> let me just add here. i really ñrthink, bill, really captures accurately mr. truman's

attitude as often glibly saying he never lost any sleep over the decision. this is not what happened. his consciousness operated on two levels. the one level was did i make the best choice of the awful choices in front of me? had done the best choice that was presented to him at the time. was he absolutely pain stricken about the consequences of that decision for the rest of his life, i think the answer to that question was ej fmphatically ye. he was tortured in many ways when the read all the comments out. i would add one thing in those interesting moments in august of 1945, he talks directly in one of the cabinet meetings about

billing over 100,000 people with the bomb. we know now that number was precisely the number which had appeared in his hands that day or the day before in a decodedto from the japanese that that was the report about the japanese navy about casualties at hero heroshima. he was reading in great intensity about the reports about what had happened. >> and as i mentioned in my comments, interjected himself into stopping any further droppings of the bomb which had been predelegated to general grgr grobes to keep using them until told to stop. and then they were told to stop and they did. >> stan has got me most of the way there. there was no decision. you know, still at a certain level truman as the president

knew he bore ultimate responsibility, right? a decision not to intervene is in a sense a decision that he was carrying out the policies that had been set. when you put it in the context of truman takes over. as we all know now with no proper preparation for that roll or briefing. he announces that he wants to execute the legacy of fringe roosevelt. he's a man very much alone finding his way. these very moving scenes you read about, he goes home with these great reading lists trying to figure out what was0h fdrs legacy. what was the president that he revered really wanted to do.]añi he's searching earnestly to find this. one of the areas he deals with is that he had enormous confidence in stemson and

marshall and also a policy that roosevelt had endorsed. compared to other things he was simple matter. this was the president's policy. i've announced i'm following the president's policy. why should i spend any more time on this. he has a meeting about the invasion of japan because he's concerned about casualties. he has no separate meeting although later he recalls something like this but doesn't really take place specifically about dropping the bombs. in a way in some sort of perverse way in my looking at it when he says later i madetyaoeu decision or whatever here, you can look at it as this is his conscious that i'm going to wear the sack cloth. it was ultimately my responsibility that this happened. >> so it sounds like we should retitle this sessionç truman's nondecision to not use the weapon. >> thank you all very much for

this interesting session. my question is for actually mr. walker. at beginning of the session you talked about the division between the traditional view and the revisionist few. thought extreme views had been discredited. specifically on the traditionalist side you said the view was discredited because the united states had other ways to win the war. throughout the rest of the panel, i feel that we've actually heard quite a strong defense of the traditional view specifically m specifically he described the alternative to using the bomb as being either an evil blockade and mass starvation of the japanese populace or the invasion which is theñr traditional few. what other alternatives if any were you thinking of? >> the other alternatives and in the context of 1945, there were

not viewed as alternatives to the bomb. the bomb was one way to potentially end the war. there were other potential ways to end the war that was including entering the soviets to enter the war. continuing with the conventional bombing and also the blockade which was going to have sku excruciating affects on the japanese population. the other possible way of trying to end the war was a demonstration of the bomb which was ruled as not an affective juer of the bomb. it's richard and others have mentioned, the value of the bomb was not its killing power, necessarily. it was the shock value. to shock the japanese leadership into surrender. that was the purpose of the bomb. so there were other ways that

the war might have ended. it might well have ended. american leaders knew that the japanese were at least considering surrender. the so called peace advocates were not in control and american leaders knew that as well. but there was at least some movement toward a surrender on the condition that the emperor but allowed to remain on his throne and again i mentioned this in passing and rich mentioned it. japanese thinking at that time aleast among the leadership was not that the emperor was going to become a constitutional monarch but he would remain a devine ruler. that was totally unacceptable to the

did. we don't know how much longer. but the fact is that american soldiers were still dying and sailors were still dying. that was truman's main concern. as we've heard this morning, hundreds of thousands of innocents were dying throughout asia at the same time. the longer the war went on, the more deaths there were going to be. that was tr urktruman's primary concern. the war would have ended eventually -- we don't know exactly when but there were other ways that were under consideration and that were discussed that june 24th meeting at which the bomb was not even mentioned until the very end. so the war would have ended. we don't know when or how long it would have gone on. >> another course would have been for the united states to completely change -- for japan. i think that would have been

politically impossible for anyone to undertake in the disastrous course of action for japan itself. >> if i may just follow-up. sorry, the follow-up question would just be if there was at least the possibility of the japanese side was maybe not decided but was considering surrendering and an option of the soviets entering the war. how does that inform our

again, followed general grobes and follow how the bomb physically was made and got there and dropped. there was no time. i mean there's no deliberation. the other point is who knew about the bomb? i mean which -- even very, very high members of the giajoint chs of staff didn't know about the bomb and only learned of it very late and thus there's not this kindeg of open discussion. you know, decision would have -- to really have the word

decision, everybody has got to be informed about something and deliberate back and forth and weigh this and weigh that. none of this happened. the train has left the station. it is going down the track so fast that nobody is going to interfere withxú this thing. keep it limited to as few people as possible who know about it. that's what happened. it was used because the momentum was such that it was inevitable that once you started down that track it was going to happen. grobes made it happen. >> well, i think what impressed me was the idea that there was no moral option that truman did not take. it seems to me that a moral option would have been -- mr. norris you pointed out that it would have incredibly hard for him to stop the program entirely

but what if truman had said let's wait one week. would that be a moral option? >> let me address specifically because in my view there's a really fundamental fallacy about the arguments of soviet intervention as an alternative. the way this was nominally presented we know the atomic bombs are used and we know the horrific affects of this bomb. the only consequence of soviet intervention is the death in combat. the reality is that hundreds of thousands of japanese were captured by the soviets both combatants and noncombatants. you canr/eñ various numbers. the number i use now is 1.7 million total. there has been for years scholarly debate about the number of japanese in captivity

who die. there was a book published about a japanese scholar who said the number who perished was somewhere between 300 and 500,000. in the book embracing defeat, he's estimating the numbers 400,000. just recently there's a book called the gods left first, who had access to soviet archival documents. those settled some of issues about this. it shows that roughly about 73,000 japanese combatants were killed fighting with the soviets in august and on into september of 45. it showed about 62,000 japanese soldiers or combatants who were captured by the soviets in that august campaign died in soviet captivity from disease, abuse, stafbati starvation. it also shows about 180,000 japanese noncombatants died in

soviet captivity. now that's just the japanese who died as a result of combat on the asian continent. if we presume that we will let the soviets secure the war means a soviet occupation zone in japan. the math is one out of seven japanese who fell into soviet captivity are going to die. do the math, another 3 million. when we talk about moral consequences, it seems to me we have to recognize all of them that we don't reacreate a hieray of victims in which some are entitled to complete immunity and other noncombatants are not worth discussing. >> thank you. we have two people who have been waiting very patiently so yes, sir, i'll take you and 7lyes. >> thank you. my name is ron cole.

i'd like to thank the distinguished panel for some really excellent discussion here. i'd like to follow-up on something i think she may be the next speaker. i hope i'm not stealing any of her thunder. she mentioned last night that after the bomb none of the doctors there had any clue what was going on but the hospitals that were set up they seemed to be that they were more aligned on just researching the medical affects of the bomb. it's almost like this was sort of premeditated. they knew there was going to be affects and that they wanted to follow-up on those and regarding the issue of there's a lot of science involved in it but there's also the engineering aspects. regarding the scientific discussions ahead of time. the ionizing radiation and those kinds of things. -- we can probably follow-up in the next session but what -- i'm

pretty sure president truman didn't have any access to these discussions but as far as the military or who might have had access to the potential fall out of these kinds of weapons. what is it going to to do the atmosphere, o zone layer, these kind of things. can you give us insight into the scientific discussions and where it ultimately was truman made road. >> stan, i think he dialed your number. >> i guess he did. you know early on, robert otenheimer, maybe if this thing on it would ignite the atmosphere and 18 the earth. he went all the way from california to the summer kcabin

to tell him about this. the response was better to live under the naugzi heal than end human civilization. then they realized we're not going to aying siignite the atm. there was something in the back ground that something bad would happen. in fact on july 16th, when he's flying down, facing away from the test bomb, and the flash8c goes off, he thinks in the very first instant oh, my god i think they fried the atmosphere. of course they didn't. >> anyway, they knew something was special about this weapon. there were scientists and medical people looking into it. the first reports that came back from hiroshima about this radiation sickness were very

alarming and again, general grobes did his best to tamp down the exposure of this new fact going on limiting jurnournalist who would nose around and talk about it and everything. so it was something knew and disturbing. it later became much more disturbing to the japanese in we knew that was bad. that went on and finally the world said enough. there was a treaty and they stopped testing in the atmosphere. to all of our benefit. thankfully they stopped it. from ignorance to, i don't know, revelation about this and it's still going on and we're still investigating and health physics is a whole area of research that

i'm not competentm enough to follow but does. >> if i could just add, scientists knew about the affects of radiation and there was some discussion about that before the bombs were dropped. they didn't think that the affects of radiation would be all of that much in hiroshima, nagasaki because the scientific su assumptions was that the deaths that occurred and there was no question that there would be a large number of deaths, the deaths that occurred would be from heat and blast and not so much from radiation. it turned out they were wrong about that but they were clearly aware. the scientists were, i doubt ifp truman was. i doubt if grobes but clearly there was a lot of scientific, basic but a lot of knowledge about radiation affects in 1945. >> i think i would -- as i

understand it, what's striking to me is that at one level the scientists knew that radiation was a hazard, could be a lethal hazard, could do terrible things but in their calculations they convince themselves that basically as sam was saying that anyone who was in dank ger of having a lethal dose of radiation would have already been killed by blast or heat. they truly were shocked when the first reports roll in about radiation sickness. i think it's entirely clear that no one up the chain had any inkling of this because the scientists didn't think it was a hazard and didn't communicate that. if they had a grip on what radiation actually did that made it more of a poison, more of a poison gas over which there was

a taboo rout the use, it probably waould have changed th entire dynamic of decision making. the only nation who used poison gas on the battlefield was world war ii, primarily against the chinese from 1937 to 1945. the germans of course used gas. we know what context that was. there was clearly something about gas and the idea of poison that at a visceral level i'm sure would have had a much profound affect on marshall and truman than the notion they had that it was just a bigger bang. >> and we have a final question from a special question. >> thank you. i have a specific question but before i talk about it. can i just express my general comment? i listen to you people.

i realize that you seem to share the similar view in perspective. i was thinking that in this country there are a lot of many other historians and other experts who do have very different view points on the issue we're talking about. i think it would be a great service to american citizens to have this kiu.zez symposium by the people with a different perspecti perspective. not only american people but i think there are lots of japanese hiftonnia historian experts who have very different view points and in other parts the world as well. wouldn't it be wonderful if we could organize symposium of this

natu nature? >> i can address that if you'd like me to or why i asked the people to speak today. what i did was base my invitations on people who had done outstanding work. it was not based on their ideology. it was not based on their position on the bomb. it was intentionally not a panel of one revisionist, one traditionalist and one poor guy in the middle because i've been on panels like that and they are extremely unproductive and extremely unpleasant or can be because all we do is trade quotations and i specifically wanted to avoid that and i got the best people i could and i think i succeeded. they are all people from that broad sprawling middle that i talked about. you know, i think i disagree with these guys quite a bit. i don't want to -- but i think

we agree on theóy fundamental question that the bomb was primarily used to end the war as quickly as possible. within that, there's a lot of room for disagreement. so that's my approach to invitations. >> okay. thank you. my specific question is this, i'm sure you all know that after the bombing, united states sent a b 29 to the military personnel, scientists, medical scientists, the government wanted those experts to go to hiroshima, nagasaki, make the assessment of the quality of destruction and to write a report back to the government. you all know about what the report said, perhaps many of the people in the audience don't

know. what i understand is that the report from that team was, yes, indeed japan was already beaten, not needed"k. this is public knowledge. anyway, today, i thought it was interesting you didn't mention anything about the government's effort to make that testament. what did the report say and how you would react to that. iófvkóokçó thought it would r us to hear your comments on the government. thank you. >> thank you. what you're referring to is called the united states strategic bombing survey. the specific report you're talking about is a summary report of a specific war. that report does in fact have a

conclusion in it that says japan would have surrendered without the atomic bombings of november or december. since the time that that report has been published and has been used frequently in the debates about this, it has been subjected to scholarly study as to what was the basis for that report. the purportedly is based upon interviews with japanese officials that support that conclusion. what the scholars found when they went back to the actual documents relating to those interviews, the interviews do not support the conclusion. the fellow who was the principal draftsman is someone who we've now had two majorly scholarly worked who have gone through and basically shredded his work on that point indicating that he had another agenda in mind when involved the further future of the u.s. airforce or whatever here.

one again, i can't st'e strongly enough how much empathy i have for you and fellow survivors and everyone who was involved in that. it is an enormous tragedy. we should never forget about it and keep it in mind. but we've now plowed through this a very great deal. we've been through a lot of the debates back and forth or whatever here. as sam said, things may be heading more towards a middle ground but the notion that japan's leadership was on the cusp of surrender or could have easily been brought to surrender in 1945 even the more recent works i would put in a revisionist camps have back add way from making those kind of assertions because the evidence is not there. that strategic bombing report in my view has been pretty thoroughly trashed. >> yeah. just as the germans after the use of the bomb made up a new

story about their supposed role. many americans did as well in terms of taking positions and saying things that were later used by the revisionists to say why the bomb shouldn't have been used but they never did it. eisenhower was the best case. he puts himself before stemson saying don't use the bomb. this never happened. he just lied through his teeth but, he wanted to look good for p posterity so you do things like that. now we could go on. there were many things said after the war about the bomb but no military figure said no so anyone in thoert authority before the bomb was dropped. period. it's now shown up and down that that's the case.

you can't stop people from using these quotesant t and the revisionists it. they tried to make an argument which eventually fell apart upon closer examination and -- t. anyway that's something to bare in mind in this whole discussion. >> with respect -- >> one final point. >> the one thing that we do have documents that he said before the end of the war was that the bomb would not work. that's the one piece of advice he gave president truman. they will not work. i'm an expert on explosives. >> that's what admiral layhee said to truman. i'm an expert on explosives and it won't work. >> thank you all. thank you to your panelists. thank you all for your attention. [ applause ] >> wednesday on cspan 3, american history tv feature

programs about the cold war. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a discussion on the fall of the= berlin wall 25 years later. at 9:55 p.m. our lectures in history series examines u.s. cold war human radiation experiments. at 11:10 p.m. eastern history tv's the presidency looks at george h.w. bush and the end of the cold war. the cold war. 8:00 p.m. eastern on cspan 3. coming up wednesday, a house budget committee hearing looks at federal, state, private charitable programs aimed at reducing poverty. here is a look. >> a lot of people don't know how difficult it is. i don't know one person maybe in this room that can juggle the things that me and my husband have to juggle every single day with having three children on medical disabilities, going back and forth to work sometimes

maybe having to take an under the table job just to bring in extra money. there's not a lazy bone in my body. there are many people would live in the inner city under the poverty level that are not lazy. we want to be apart of the conversation. we want to have full time jobs and go to school and go to college and things like that. i actually believe that certain people just put that stamp of lazy on us to put a smoke screen up to really not see what's on. to look down on us or humiliate us or twist our words. i feel like we are the most strategizing people that there is. everyday we wake up and cut coupons like everybody else and get up and go to work and strive for that american dream because that's what everybody strives for. the american dream. that's what we need to get back to