ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth. behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware. >> american history tv is on social media. follow us at c-span history. next on american history tv, we hear about the critical world war ii role and ultimately tragic story of the uss indianapolis. it sank in shark infested waters after it was torpedoed by a japanese submarine on july 30, 1945. the ship had just completed a secret mission, delivering parts used in the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima, japan. speaking at the national archives in washington dc are ,ynn vincent and sara vladic

co-authors of "indianapolis: the true story of the worst sea disaster in u.s. naval history and the fifty-year fight to exonerate an innocent man." >> i often refer to the stories in the national archives. we are not just a storehouse to billions of pages and miles of films that hold stories of our past. in these records, you can discover human lives and how the great and small events of history change them. today, we will hear the stories of the men who sailed the uss indianapolis during world war ii. the cruiser sinking in july, 1945, just weeks before japan's surrender in the war was the first -- the worst sea disaster in history. it can also help unravel mysteries even decades after the events took place. last summer's identification of the wreck of the indianapolis was aided by historians discovering a log landing craft

had seen the indianapolis the night before she sank. just this month, the navy was able to settle the question about the number of survivors because of research done in the records housed in our facility and our national personal records center in st. louis. some stories are easily told. others take 73 years to come to light. preserving the records of our past, we assure the building blocks of our stories will be available now and far into the future. ann vincent, u.s. veteran, is number one new york times best-selling author of 11 nonfiction books, the best-known different""kind of and "heaven is for real." sara vladic, and acclaim

document refill maker, is one of the world's leading experts on the uss indianapolis, having become upset with the story at the age of 13. over the next two decades, she met and interviewed 108 of the ships survivors and in 2016 released an award-winning documentary film of the disaster legacyindianapolis: the ." the official journal of the u.s. navy, and appeared as an expert the usstor on indianapolis, live from the deep, which explored the ships records. the book is also listed on the new york times bestseller list. so before they come to the stage, we are going to see a short film. if you will roll the film now. [video clip] >> i started into the navy when i was 16. >> i saw the flag raised.

>> [indiscernible] were hitth of july, we by two torpedoes from a submarine. >> thing i know, the ship is coming right out from under me. >> i never did know how to swim in the navy nevers -- navy never taught me how to swim. >> cross your legs like that. >> it was chaos. >> we couldn't understand why we weren't rescued. >> the guys decided, hell, we are going to die. >> on that fourth day, i said i hear planes. we began to splash water and yell and began to pray. gotything and seemingly it to a point where had he gone any further, he would have gone over but you know what he did, he made a dive. did i make it with nothing to eat, no water to

drink, no sleep for five nights? the lord was with me. >> if somebody wrote this up as fiction, nobody would believe it happened. >> people don't realize the politics in the armed forces. >> all the headlines were about the captain. >> many heads should have rolled before they ever got to the captain. >> the story has never been told. those that want to remember, don't want to recall. >> i think it ought to be told. >> i would like to start this talk with a question. who can tell me or who first learned of the story of indianapolis by watching "jaws?" raise them hi. what about other sources, document race, the news? a show of hands?

who hadn't heard about it until maybe the last week or two? i heard about it when i was 13 years old and was watching a documentary with my father. it was about the pacific war and the story of the indianapolis was reduced to a single line, which was it was a ship that carried the bomb and was sunk. i thought there has to be more to it than that. so i went to the library. at that time, there was no google. my dad told me to go look it up. i think it was the grolier encyclopedia. it was not in any book. there is very little to be found about it. i kept looking and found some stuff but i thought somebody's got to spell this story someday. i thought by the time i was old enough to do it someone else would have done it. i graduated college from pepperdine and no one had heard

about it, no one was talking about it, it still had not been made. so i decided to look for the survivors of the indianapolis and that is when ask jeeves was around. [laughter] dating myself. it said there was paul murphy and mary lou murphy, the chairman and secretary of the survivors organization. so i called them up. they invited me to a reunion and i said i would love to meet you and talk to you, so they invited me to the reunion. that was the first time i was able to meet some of the indianapolis survivors. it was a big year. it with your a lot of things happened with the captain's record and we will talk about that more this afternoon. it was a ceremonial year, there were a lot of events and it was the first time i talked to these men and got to know them and they invited me to come back. over the next couple of years, i got to know them and their families. over a denny's breakfast a couple of years later, i just

graduated college and they said we want you to be our storyteller. that.n't say no to when a world war ii veteran says they want you to be there storyteller, you go to task. you do the work. at the time, i wanted to make a movie. i wanted to write a screenplay and i needed to interview these men in order to do the story. you can't tell it unless you talk to the people who lived it. i started doing interviews in 2005. a screenplay and ticket to a major network and they said this is the test thing we have seen since band of brothers, but it needs to be based on a book. i don't know how to write a book. so i asked friends and family, do you know anyone who knows how to write a book? screenplays are very different, by the way. it ended up being my mother-in-law. i was introduced to lynn vincent

, who at the time had a few bestsellers, so it was very intimidating and i did not want to mess it up. so i called her, hoping she would give me some advice. i emailed her first. i said can you call me i just need five minutes. she just had a couple of books real"ut -- "heaven is for and "same kind of different as me." she gave me five-minute supper time and that was our first phone call. not know when did she called was that i'm a navy veteran, number one. and i'm an investigative journalist before i transitioned to books and number three, i have literally been praying for an iconic world war ii story to write. there are world war ii stories that are as iconic as indianapolis, but none that are more so. when she called me, i was like god is answering my prayer.

but all she wants is advice, what am i going to do? i did not want to force myself on her. after a few conversations, we agreed to team up and we had our first meeting. -- sara: i like to tell lives -- tell the story of the first meeting. she had written these very christian stories and we had only spoken on the phone and i thought i was looking for the woman in a sweater vest carrying a bible. [laughter] and she showed up on a harley. [laughter] and i knew from that point it would be a good working relationship and it was. from the beginning, it has been a blessing, has been an incredible experience. i'm going to say for both of us. [laughter] great writing

partners, but great friends. we have been eating our way across the southeast. i was going to say that sometimes we get asked, there have been other books written about indianapolis. what's new? what are you going to do that's different? one of the things i like to say is there have been worthy books about indianapolis. by first was the 1959 richard newcomb. he was the first journalist to realize this was first of all a horrible tragedy, really a bookend to pearl harbor in terms of one began the war and the other ended the war. second, he was the first to hadize that captain mcvay suffered a grave injustice. that triggered the survivors reunion. the first time they got together in indianapolis, the city, was in 1960.

30 years or so later, another reporter, and iron chinned journalist of the old school wrote another book. you have to remember that archives and records continue to be classified. some things had been declassified by the time he wrote his book, but not everything, including the ultra program, which was the most intelligencefied program of the war. there remain things that were not rev a and i'm going to talk about the archives -- that were not revealed, and i'm going to talk about the archives in a moment. then an author wrote a book called "in harms way" that recalled the horrific experiences of the survivors. of it took place in water. help --tried to do was

the indianapolis is much more than a sinking story. it has been recognized as a sinking story, a short story. how any of you every year on shark week, they roll out the indianapolis as the worst shark attack in history? indianapolis was so much more than a sinking story. whose depths strategized and plotted out the pacific war. you could argue she was one of the most important vessels in the pacific war. we tried to bring that out for readers. would you like to talk about some other things that we did? toone of the things we tried do was to go back to the

original source material. went to the archives. we went to college park and spent a lot of time there. we wanted to stay there forever. they let us have a sleeping bag in there, we would have stayed. we spent an incredible amount of time there. we went to the naval war college, the library of congress, and we were able to interview survivors, the rescue crew, and the families of those who were lost at sea in order to tell a firsthand account of what took place, not only during the sinking, but in service to the country. these are 16, 17, 18-year-old kids running these vessels. were participating in these

battles. they were viewing distance from these, witnessing what was happening at this time. .e wanted to go back to that we went to letters, the correspondence between husbands and wives because they were writing back and forth from the ship. there was a gentleman who is a dentist on board the ship. a, because he

attack in march of 1945, the day before okinawa was invaded and the, because he struck the indianapolis. nine men were killed and they went into dry docks to repair this and that was the first domino that sent the ship into the mission of carrying components for the atomic bomb. so when the ship was in dry dock, this gentleman went home and visited his wife who is very pregnant at the time. was able to spend a little time with her. three days after he was recalled back to the ship when his leave ended, earl junior was born. so they were able to receive some pictures where they delivered components of the bomb. they were been preparing for the invasion of japan. he received photographs of young girls -- a young girl who is

born prematurely and ran around carrying the ship showing everyone about how excited he was about his brand-new son. tose kinds of things we like incorporate into the story and the firsthand account. we wanted to get you to know those men in the ways we were privileged to in the years of interviews. saraf the things mentioned, was when she heard of the indianapolis, it was reduced to just a line. it's the ship that carried components of the atomic bomb. but no one told that story. highlythe most classified mission of the war. we found the private papers of a man named robert furman who was an army major and it just so happened that major furman was the chief intelligence officer for the entire manhattan project and he had run around europe trying to track down the state

of german atomic science because the scientist on the american side were really worried the germans were going to beat the united states and being able to deploy and operational atomic bomb during the war. in his records were these handwritten accounts, day by day, moment by moment of transporting the atomic bomb, the components of the atomic bomb aboard uss indianapolis. so we see that mission in our book goes from his perspective, not just as an army officer, but how he got to know the army officers and navy officers on the indianapolis, but also from the perspective of the men. many components of the atomic bomb were carried in two cylindrical canisters which were very heavy. one of them carried uranium, which at that time was among the heaviest of natural elements. partnerrman and his

secretly come a lot -- nonchalantly had this carried into their quarters and meanwhile, they made a big deal out of this automobile sized crate that they secured in the aircraft hangar aboard indianapolis. what they were trying to do is avert the attention of the crew. the crew knew that something really secret was happening and didn't know what it was. nolanfurman and captain decided they would make a big production and post a marine guard around this crate to divert the cruise attention. tell them what the crew did. these are teenagers and their curiosity led them to bedding on what was being transported in this entire's crate. it was everything from rita haworth's undergarments to scented toilet paper for general macarthur.

none of them guessed what was actually in the crate. there's another story, another part of the book that we bring into the story is the japanese perspective. journals and notes of the, kazi -- he was in charge of the, kazi program. his letters and the letters of the young, kazi pilots who ultimately committed suicide in honor of their emperor. in addition, the home front, i jim here and audience, alger junior, his father served aboard the indianapolis and he has an incredible story and his family has an incredible story -- spoiler alert, he survived. when he came home, he married a japanese woman. we had the incredible privilege of interviewing their family in that she, at the time, was in

school learning and preparing about the invasion of japan and what they would be called to do, training these young students to fight with sticks for the invasion. they were going to fight to the end and what happened from the japanese side, the perspective of the atomic bomb and how happy they were it ended the war. after the war, flash forward a couple of years, james belcher senior varied this lovely young woman and they have a family together. that,aling that came from that story on the homefront and that perspective, that's another that is aclude personal experience and perspective of how the indianapolis and what took place in world war ii carried on through present day. continues after the rescue. the rescue is tremendously especially for people

-- will you stand up, please? jim's father survived. [applause] for those of you who raise your hands who said you have just only recently heard the story, i saraoned indianapolis and mentioned the cosma kazi attack --, kazi attack. no one aboard the ship knew what was in the crates. they made a speed run to pearl hours. 74.5 it still stands today for that class of ship. they went to finian island in the northern marianas. they were there on july 26 and he received the photograph of the child he would never meet. four days later, they set out on

a routine mission. that time of, at the war, it was considered the backwater of the war. they did not send an escort ship with indianapolis. , they were usually accompanied by destroyers or destroyer escorts to protect against enemy submarines. evendid not send an escort though he had intelligence that a group of four attack submarines was heading down to .his facility they determined to sink as many american ships as they could because they knew the war was going to end one way or another.

-- it was just a few hours ago this week was the 73rd anniversary of the sinking. commander mochitsura shipmoto encountered the and fired a spread of six torpedoes. two of them hit the annapolis. one of them blew the bow mostly off the ship and the second one hit indianapolis amidships, about 300 of the crew of 1195 men went down with the ship, including, we believe lieutenant commander henry, the dentist, and about 900 men made it into the water alive.

they stayed there for five nights and four days. momente can explain in a why that happened. but after those five nights in four days, only 316 men survived. rescued beginning on august 2, 1945. afterwards, the navy has to decide who to pin this on and what they decide is to court-martial the captain, , even though they did not give him the proper intelligence or an escort ship. one of the things we did a fresh was to examine the primary source documents for the .ourt-martial of captain mcvay and without 73 years of interpretation, we found what we believe is the smoking gun as to why captain mcvay's ahead.artial was rushed

because of the primary sources waspersecution of mcvay worse than we thought. then comes a fifty-year year effort to exonerate the captain. that effort was led by the survivors themselves and a young boy who learned about indianapolis and did it, talked about it for his school history project and brought much attention to the story in the late 1990's, 50 years after the fact. third person who is critical to helping exonerate the captain ofas the indianapolis and we are lucky enough to have captain bill tody with us today. [applause] sara: we mentioned "in harm's

way" that was written in 2001. when that was written, none of the exoneration had really happened. it was underway, but there was not a conclusion by the time doug wrote his book, so we had the privilege to tell the story of what takes place between 1998 1960 when the earnest effort began all the way through 1998 where it really started to take ground. then into present day, where exonerate captain mcvay in 2001. at that was a huge effort by bill tody and senator warner, warner, senator bob smith, a lot of back and forth. it was not smooth sailing. forgive the pun. it was an effort by many to get to this point where the captain's name could be cleared. it was decades of fighting

because every time and exonerated -- exoneration effort would mounted, the navy would push back and say this court-martial was legally justified. so first the survivors and then captain mcvay's son, they wrote to president reagan and vice president bush. each time they were told the court-martial is legally sound. number two, presidents don't have the ability to overturn a navy court-martial. so those letters happened in the 80's. in the 90's, remember i told you about dan kurtzman. he found what he considered another smoking gun. that was also in the national archives. he found a letter which indicated even the navy new captain mcvay was convicted on what they called a super technical charge.

1990's, the survivors, a man many of you are familiar with got involved in the exoneration effort. how many of you have heard of joe scarborough? he's on msnbc. at that time, he was a congressman from florida and happened to be in hunter's district. he put that sixth grade history project on display in his congressional office in the first district in florida. he soon, that gathered a whole bunch of attention because it was made for tv. i see some young men up there. how old are you guys? 10? seven. hunter was only 11 when he started this. write to the and, congressman 1997,rough, this was in

96 through basically 99. he was everywhere. he was on the tom brokaw nightly news. he was on david letterman. years ago called george magazine. they named this 11-year-old boy one of the 20 most interesting men in politics. [laughter] tv -- young boy helps elderly survivor in their exoneration quest. the exoneration the navyched congress, pushed back and pushed back. did aptain bill tody little back behind the scenes stuff to finally help everything go through. lieutenantnically, commander mochitsura hashimoto. warner would not

put the resolution to exonerate captain mcvay on the floor. senator rob smith was saying please take it to a vote. senator warner would always say that ab has decided this. the navy decided this case ago and keep deciding it. warner got this letter in the mail and he was so astonished that he called senator smith and said you have to come see this. after receiving that letter, senator warner took the resolution to a vote and the waseration of captain mcvay finally passed. sara: that is just a small part. we really wanted to get into all of these perspectives and tie the narrative together with

first-hand experiences so that you can see all of this as though you were living it. you get to know the survivors, you get to know bill tody, and you get to know the belcher family, the glen morgan family, you go on a journey with them as they experienced this terrible thing they went through in the water, but then how they fought back and claimed justice for their captain 50 years later. it is more than a history telling. it's more than facts and dates. it's an experience and we hope you get to know these men and this crew like we did. i want to open up to questions. are there any questions -- not only questions for us, but questions for captain tody. we warn him we were going to do this. we told you too much.

[laughter] there are microphones on the side. >> can you hear me? and i'm a aiden jones lawyer here in washington. a very strange category in that i didn't hear about this story until the day after father's day this year even though i was at navy officer during vietnam. i was a damage control assistant on a destroyer escort. fire.ived a serious we would not have survived if we did not have it on the way back from refresher training. so this book means a lot to me. about your navy background and experience and how much this played into the

story. i was enlisted. i was an air traffic controller, which is a technical rating. i had to rely on captain tody a lot to take me to see because when i served in the navy, women were not allowed on ships and all air traffic controllers served on ships. i knew the language of the navy and knew the culture of the navy. one of the biggest places my was inperience helped the rumors and sos had been sent from indianapolis and ignored by navy and covered up by multiple parties at multiple stations and just being familiar with the culture of the navy, after looking into it and analyzing it, that cover-up didn't really stand. it did not make sense.

only did no one have anything to gain by that, but the number of records that would have to have been falsified for that to happen was insurmountable. it just didn't make sense that there was some kind of conspiracy to cover up and sos. another place that came into play, my navy experience came into play had to do with the national archives. aat is that there was subsiding 700 miles ahead of the surmised to' path perhaps be i 58, the ship that sank indianapolis ultimately. it had also been said by respected historians that maybe that submarine didn't exist. then there were some people who covered the submarine sighting to one extent or another, but none of the previous authors had

been navy veterans. -- it occurred to me one day why don't we look at the logs? we were able to find the ship logs and not only that, but because of nathaniel patch, an archivist at the college park branch of the national archives who should wear a big s and a cape says why don't we look at their reports, the submarine warfare reports. he does that up for us and we were astonished. captain tody was astonished to find these detailed records of 15 separate attacks on this enemy submarine that was in the path of indianapolis. what we found was not only that the navy failed to inform indianapolis of those attack knew ofes, but they another submarine directly in their path as well.

out andt a few things this is more a statement and a thanks. i said i didn't hear about this until the day after father's day when my daughter was a senior attor at mcmillan, but was simon & schuster and she heard about the book. i had not heard anything about the book. it was actually an advanced copy she somehow got a hold of and sent me for father's day. -- so thankful you made this story public. and one thing that is new about your book is the coverage of the court-martial and how horrific and unfair it was. one reason it did not come out and see the light of day is because there was a cover-up. it's really terrible what happened to the captain and what he had to suffer as a result of all of this.

so, i thank you for telling this story. tonow you are going to go politics and prose at the wharf tonight. toy weren't originally going offer you a place to speak, initially when i first asked my daughter's friend there about it. subsequently learned it. i am hoping it is getting good coverage. it certainly deserves it. it is an incredible story. and still trial attorney but not very much anymore, to read about the court-martial and how difficult the attorney defending the captain was, how difficult his position was, how little time he had to prepare, how little evidence he had to prepare a defense, it makes the story

doubly, triply horrible. so thank you for getting it out it is very hope successful in reaching people not only so they can understand , wethese things can happen can understand why the cover-up occurred. it was the end of the war and they didn't want to talk about this, particularly since it was the biggest sinking and loss-of-life the navy has ever had. not even close. i guess that'sd when i wasto say and little, i remember watching these victory at see movies and documentaries. you would have never seen anything about the indianapolis in any of that. i don't know whether there was any footage at any point but it was not a story they wanted to

tell at the time. >> the dentist -- how hard was that? it started initially with the survivors organization. a lot of the family members were very connected and i was able to meet families such as the dentist and his family. now it is more of the indianapolis crew reunion. more of the lost at sea families came and they all had letters. with myny road trips husband going all over the country, interviewing, reading letters, looking at this information. the on that, it was spending time in the archives, going beyond just the story itself. everyone had mentioned what other ships were in the water at that time?

they still had their war damage reports. they had their ship logs and deck logs and those ships were not sunk at the end of world war ii, so the records existed. we would go into those and say what do they see at this time. what was the temperature over here. it was one step by one step by one step and we would be just before a deadline, every time, and someone would call or we would find a record and it would be a game changer. it would be friday afternoon at 4:00 and we would get a call from the son of the prosecuting -- in thef mcvay book is due monday morning at 8:00. he is in d.c. and we are in san diego.

but he's here. so we said bill, can you go to this guys house and look at this box of stuff from 1945. and there were incredible, game changing notes in there. stop the presses. [laughter] weekend and he sent us notes and pictures. in this cap happening and happening. -- this kept happening and happening. our efforts have been blessed from the beginning. we prayed and we asked for things to be revealed to us that had not been told before. trueus tell the whole story of the indianapolis and her legacy. and that is how things happen. --did a lot of work, but lynn: a lot of providence. >> thank you. >> thank you much for coming and

speaking and telling this story. i thing i really find amazing about the story is that it was untold for so long. it makes you wonder the other great stories that are out there that are untold. because we have the opportunity tody i want to ask captain a question about your experience. having worked in a your accuracy, i'm a former air force officer, so i understand probably some of the pushback or experience you had to go through and maybe some of the potential backlash from your involvement. can you talk about that and if you experienced any negative repercussions from your involvement in this whole situation? admit there was a great deal of vigorous debate.

mostly from the legal folks in the navy. people hear things the way they want to hear it and over the --ades, i would say why while the survivors are trying to fight for the exoneration of the captain, none of them are lawyers and none of them really knew how to frame the argument in ways that would not raise antibodies within the judge advocate general and the navy. so all i had to do was raise one issue that could prove to be untrue. woulde entire argument fall apart and we would get sent back for years. what i would try to do is find a solution that didn't require the navy to admit the court-martial was defective.

i thought it was a win/win. the lawyers could be happy because they did not have to declare the proceedings were improper and we could all admit the outcome was not just. the problem is lawyers didn't even want to agree to that. navy lawyers. there is no progress taking that approach beyond the scenes. -- behind the scenes. congress with surreptitiously and bypassed a the congresso get off top dead center to make a move. surreptitiously is a good word. >> can i ask a follow-up real quick? the reluctance of the navy to admit the court-martial was the evidencewith and documentation and as time passes, we start to learn more -- was it monetary or simply a

systemhing that the couldn't be wrong because of its wrong, what else does that mean? >> it was expressed in plain english if the navy is good with any culpability or failure there might -- people might sue the navy. families might sue the navy over over mentald anguish. it seemed to be a red herring, a canard. problems fighting that point of view. take a ended up doing is legal approach to get ang's moving. -- get things moving. priorator warner's service as secretary of the navy, did that ever come up in any of the discussions in terms

of his initial reluctance? lynn: that was one of the concerns senator smith had. at the time he was the chairman of the armed services committee and senator bob smith served on that committee along with other names people would recognize -- this is lieberman what happens when you are 55. [laughter] those other guys. there was a concern because senator warner served as secretary of the navy and had the opportunity to rule on this before and had declined to do so, would he do so now? i think it was because of the relationship between smith and warner that warner eventually agreed to have the hearing at all. i can't get into senator warner's head and i don't know if bill can, but it's possible

senator warner could have said to himself we can have these hearings all day long and i can then just not take it to the senate floor and then i've done my due diligence. that's sort of exactly what happened until lieutenant wrote thatashimoto letter and that tipped it over the top. >> i want to commend the captain. there's another famous naval officer who wrote "run silent, run deep" who also wrote a book called "scapegoat" which is his attempt to exonerate people at pearl harbor which did not go forward. for hisink the captain efforts and success moving forward. and mostsubmariner submariner's remember him.

him when iut to started working this issue. he wrote the forward to 's booker hashimoto called "sunk." there's a chapter devoted to the indianapolis sinking and he wrote the forward to that book. we had spoken about that years before. when i started getting involved in mcvay's exoneration, i got a letter where he strongly supported the exoneration of mcvay. >> one more question. sara: -- the account of japanese simmering operations in world war ii. question is following up

on the records. some of your research information, the son -- the boss of the son of the prosecutor, does that information and up in the archives? where does that information and up, so the next researcher has it? do some of that end up in the permanent records here? we have been talking with a few locations. in addition to 170 hours of transcribed interviews, we have these records we collected, so there are a couple of sources. one of them being the indiana historical society and a few other branches, possibly the archives, to make sure they are accessible to the public. [applause] sara: we've been given the hook. lynn: thank you.

tv,his is american history featuring events, interviews, archival films, and visits to college classrooms, museums, and historic places. exploring our nation's past, every weekend on c-span3. emperor hirohito announced japan's unconditional surrender on august 15, 1945 after the august 6 and ninth bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. the formal surrender sermon he took place aboard the uss missouri in tokyo bay, ending world war ii. c-span'shistory tv and "washington journal" will be live to look at the strategic situation in world war ii specific theater -- pacific theater. the impact of these adam bombs. on august 6, we will be live on c-span from 8 a.m. till 10 a.m.

eastern. the guest includes the author of "twilight of the gods." grandson,ent truman's clifton truman daniel. on august 9, we will be live on from 9 a.m.-span3 until 10 a.m.. guests will respond to viewer calls and tweets. >> american history tv is on c-span3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archival films, college lectures, and discussions on the presidency, the civil war and more. you can watch these in their entirety on our website, c-span.org/history. here's a quick look at one of our programs. ♪ >> each week, american history america" bring films that provide context for today's public affairs issues. city, a housing

demolition project is underway which will improve families of living conditions with moderate means. old tenements and fire traps are being torn down to make way for modern buildings containing comfortable, sanitary apartments. ♪ at colonial park in harlem as many other congested areas, wav workers have constructed a huge swimming pool and are completing a bathhouse that will accommodate 2100 persons. skilled workers are employed utilizing the knowledge of their trade gained in the days before the depression. ♪ swimming pools are particular valuable to the community because they offer a haven of relaxation to young and old during the hot summer months. ♪

at the same time, swimming pools remove children from the crowd city streets, providing every safeguard to prevent such tragedies as were all too common to the old swimming holes. typical of the park improvement all over the country is a wading pool built by wba workers in which youngsters may splash to their hearts content. to the playground area have been made possible by the grading and improvement of parts of the park that were formerly merely decorative. even the youngest children find plenty of opportunities for play under watchful supervision. ♪ nursery schools have. the children are provided -- have been established. instructors --

>> american history tv, exploring our nation's past every weekend on c-span three. next on american history tv, we visit an atomic bomb exhibit at american university and -- in washington dc -- washington dc. this american artifacts program was recorded in 2015. peter: i am peter kuznick. i am the professor he of history at american university and the director of the american universities nuclear institute.