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

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 is the american core where if you strive harder and you work hard that you will be able to get ahead no matter what race,

gender, creed, or where you come from. inner city or out of inner city. >> wednesday, a look at poverty and working families. that's at 9:15 p.m. eastern on cspan. >> this weekend on the cspan networks, friday night, native-american history. then on saturday, live all day coverage from the national book festival science pavilion. saturday evening from bbc scott land, a debate on scott land's upcoming ziks on whether to end its political union with england. sunday, q and a with judge, chief justice of the second court of appeals. he shares his approach to interpreting laws passed by congress. >> on saturday, all day live coverage of the national book

biography pifal yavilions. sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, afterwards with william bu are, , burrows talks about his book the asteroid threat. a nasa documentary about the 1969 apollo 11 moon landing. saturday on the civil war, general william sherman's atlanta campaign. sunday night a look at election laws and supreme court of bush versus gore. find our television schedule at csp csp cspan.org and let us know about the programs you're watching. or e-mail us at comments@cspan.org. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. next, atomic bomb survivors from hiroshima and nagasaki talk

about the physical and emotional affects that ended world war 2 in the pacific. president truman's grandson also participated in the discussion. it's about an hour and ten minutes. >> it's a very exciting time to o nuclear weapons because there have been some significant changes. the martial islands last week filed a suit in the international court of justice to -- against the nine countries that have nuclear weapons for their failure to negotiate in good faith to abolish nuclear weapons in the world. there's also been two international conferences recently where 120 citizen groups have called for a complete ban of nuclear weapons

for humanitarian and environmental reasons. they call for a ban because nuclear weapons breed fear among nations. they don't build security. thech t they have the capacity to destroy all life forms on earth. all complex life forms on earth. they divert funds from health care, education, social services. finally, before i introduced our guests, i'd like you to close our eyes for one moment. just close your eyes and think of all of the people, places, things you love most in our world. close your eyes for a minute. what is it that you most love in this world? imagine that all of that could be destroyed by nuclear weapons. that's why we are here to make sure that that never happens. so it's my honor -- it's my privilege to introduce our honored guests. our first is bclifto

clifton truman daniel. would you like oto come up. [ applause ] >> he is the grandson of harry truman, the only person to order the deployment of nuclear weapons in the time of war. i believe that your grandfather is very proud of the work that you're doing. you also will hear from yamada from hiroshima. he is a shining example of dedication since the atomic bombing she's devoted her life to working in japan to assist atomic life survivors with a lifelong health consequences of radioactive fall out and worked on the global stage for nuclear abolition and is speaking at the united nations today. >> it's also my honor to

introduce michio. plauz la [ applause ] >> he has come to us via a japanese organization that travels the world looking for peace and environmental justice. in addition, it raises money and gives material aid to people affected by natural disasters. [ applause ] >> we believe that you have the right oto know about the world that youeñ live in and that all people should commit themselves to abolishing nuclear weapons that could destroy life on earth as we know it. this is why we do the work that we do. go to the web site of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. icanw.org. take action now. so let's get to work. our first step is to hear what our honored guests have to say.

[ applause ] thank you, robert. good morning. nice to see you both again. despite my background. despite my lineage, i learned about the atomic bombings the same way you all have through history teaching and history books. my grandfather did not speak to me at the decision. i think at the time it was because i was very young. he died when i was 15 years old. it's a hard subject to discuss. also, i don't think that he would have told me anything differently than he would have told you or that he would have said publically that he did say publically about his reasons. i learned about it the same way you did. in my history books, the bombings were about a page. a page, page and a half.

landscape at herb oesh, hiroshima or nagasaki. there was not much about the human costs. there was no -- there wasn't any humanity in that history book. in 1998, when i was working as a journalist in north carolina, we moved from north carolina to chicago. the following year in the spring of 1999, my son wesley brought home a book from school. he was in fifth grade at the time. he brought home a book, sidacho and the thousand paper crane. any of you familiar with that story? he was a real little girl who gived in hiroshima. she was 2 years old when the bomb exploded. she and her family surfivived

almost unscathed. she developed leukemia nine some versions of the legends say you are granted a long life. in either case she wanted both. she wanted to live. she folded more than a thousand paper cranes. she folded about 1,400. unfortunately that did not [bhe. she died in 1955, she's 12 years old. within three years, her friends and family had raised the money to build a statute to her and all the children killed, wounded and sickened by the atomic bomb. it stands in the peace park her holding up a giant paper crane. each year people from around the world leave paper cranes at that

memorial. they leave them all over hiroshima or nagasaki, at her memorial alone i think they live about 10,000 tons of paper cranes every year.