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

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

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 . . . t, 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 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 cspan.org and let us know about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. on twitter use #c 123 or e-mail us at comments@c-span.org. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. next, atomic bomb survivors from hiroshima and nagasaki talk about the lasting emotional and physical effects that ended