............

and he said, well, if the germans are winning, we should help the soviets, and if the soviets are winning, we should help the germans. this is of course before we got into the war. i mean, he does not like the soviets. he distrusts communism. you know, he's -- he's right out there, make america great. so you'll have to excuse me. it's very hard not to throw these things in. so when molotov, the soviet foreign minister, comes to, you know, check truman out, to introduce himself on april 21st

or 22nd, i think it is, truman starts to -- they get in a conversation, and truman starts to dress him down and says you're breaking your agreements that were made at the altar. you're -- you know, you're not doing this, and you're not doing that. and molotov is so taken back, i mean, this is their first diplomatic meeting, so taken back. he's never before talked to like that in my life and truman says, just like a scolding school teacher, well, keep your agreements and you won't be talked to like that. and all of the people in the room are absolutely shaken. the acting secretary of state goes back to his office and tells people about it. the word gets to simpson, the

secretary of war. now stimpson on the night of april 12th had mentioned to truman just very casually after the first meeting that there's a very important project that i have to tell you about, and it just goes over truman's head and stimpson hasn't told him enough to really alert him to the manhattan project, but stimpson is really shook up because he feels that the atomic bomb is going to be the key to either peace in the post-war world or a very, very difficult post-war period with the soviet union. so he writes a memorandum, calls the white house and says i have to see the president as soon as possible, and within two days he is in the oval office with his

memorandum talking to the president, and this is an absolutely amazing memorandum. it's april 25th, 1945. it has nine paragraphs, each numbered, and it begins with the first paragraph. and he reads this to truman. within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history. one bomb of which could destroy a whole city, and then he goes on with two and three building on that case, and number four, and number five he says, the world in its present state of moral advancement compared with its technical development would be eventually at the mercy of

such a weapon. in other words, modern civilization might be completely destroyed. and then he goes on to say. furthermore on number seven, in the light of our present position with reference to this weapon, the question of sharing it with other nations and if so shared upon what terms becomes a primary question of our foreign relations. also -- and this is really interesting because the moral dimension comes up quite often. also, our leadership in the war and in development of this weapon has placed a certain moral responsibility upon us, which we cannot shirk without very serious responsibility for

any disaster to civilization which it would further. and i'm going to read that again because it is important and it's prescient, our leadership in this war and development of this weapon has placed a certain moral responsibility upon us, which we cannot shirk without very serious responsibility for any disaster to civilization, which it would further. on the other hand, next paragraph, if the problem of the proper use of this weapon can be solved, we would have the opportunity to bring the world into a pattern in which the peace of the world and our civilization can be saved. so for stimpson, the post-war period depends on how we handle the atomic bomb.

and this is what he's telling president truman. he's making -- he's making the case. now, president truman, as i said, was not very well-informed about foreign policy, and so he turned to the man what had expected to be nominated as the vice president, james f. burns who was -- had been a supreme court justice, had been known as mr. assistant president, he knew about the atomic bomb, he was at yalta, and he took shorthand. he was skilled at shorthand, and so he had the very best notes of the yalta conference of anyone,

and truman reaches out to burns and taps him as his secretary of state. he doesn't officially become secretary of state until july 1st, but he's at truman's side constantly, and of course he's the one who whispered in truman's ear that the soviets were breaking their agreements at walter -- at yalta. burns has a very, very different view than stimpson, the opposite view, in fact. stimpson's assistant john mccoy reported that after a conversation with burns -- and this is a memo that mccloy writes through stifrpson, that burns was quite radically opposed about cooperating on the international control of atomic energy, he wished mccloy wrote

to have the implied threat of the bomb in his pocket during conferences after the war, the actual quote is during the conference he was to attend in london beginning on september 4th. and so that's after the war, but during the war burns' press secretary, walter brown writes in his diary that burns thought the atomic bomb, quote, might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war. so back to the original thought, the views may be determining -- the bomb may be determining. now, so we have two very opposing positions within the

highest level of government. what's happening in the manhattan project? there are also opposing views there about the atomic -- the atomic bomb. there is a group at the university of chicago led by james franc, f-r-a-n-c-k who write a memorandum known as the franck report that argues that the atomic bomb should not be used own japan because if we ever expect to cooperate with the soviet union after the war, such an action will make it impossible, and just to quote a

few sentences from a very long report, if we consider international agreement on total prevention of nuclear warfare as the paramount objective, if we're thinking about the post-war period piece in the post-war period as our paramount objective and we believe that it can be achieved, this kind of introduction that is using the bomb as a weapon of atomic weapons to the world may easily destroy all of our chances of success. russia and even allied countries, which bear less mistrust of our ways and intentions as well as neutral countries may be deeply shocked. it may be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation, which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly

releasing a weapon as indiscriminate as the rocket bomb -- they're referring to the german v-1 and v-2 rockets -- as the rocket bomb and a million times more destructive is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of having such weapons abolished by international agreement. so that's the argument the scientists are making at the university of chicago, which is part of the manhattan project. as you know, that's where fair mee's famous squash court experiment took place. on the other hand, robert oppenheimer at los alamos is a member of a committee, it's called the interim committee,

that's organized by stimpson, and he believes that the bomb should be used. he's been told -- he's back and forth to washington a lot at this time of the year, and he's been told that we're going to have to invade japan and the bomb may, in fact, prevent the necessity for the invasion. so he's supporting it, and in fact, in the interim committee, he argues that if two bombs are available, we should use both of them at the same day, but that is fortunately -- the idea is fortunately squashed. now, you all probably know the story of truman's attitude at the potsdam conference. the potsdam conference begins about the middle of july, july

15th, and the test of the atomic bomb takes place as you know in alamogordo on july 16th, and general groves' report arrives in potsdam hand carried and given to stimpson who briefs president truman on it on the 21st of july, and churchill in his famous volumes on world war ii when he discusses potsdam, he says now i know what happened to truman. he had learned about the atomic bomb, and he bossed everybody around that afternoon. suddenly he was a different -- he was a different man. it gave him the confidence that the united states was in a position to, in effect, not only

get the war over with this weapon but also to have something that stimpson called at potsdam the great equalizer, the atomic bomb would equalize or neutralize the huge soviet advantage in conventional forces in europe. so truman's attitude changes completely. he calls in general marshall, and he says, marshal, you know, we came here with the intention of getting the soviets to live up to their promise to invade japan to come into the -- to come into the war, and can we -- can we get them to back off that now that we have the atomic

bomb? we don't need them. in fact, we don't want them because we don't want them to participate in the occupation of japan. well, at yalta, stalin had promised roosevelt that within three months of germany's surrender he would come into the war against japan. you know, there was a non-aggression pact between the japanese and the russians. neither of them needed a two front war, so they had this non-aggression pact. stalin wants a piece of the action in japan after the war. and remember, there was this 1905 rus sew japanese war, which the japanese won, and they took all of socalin and a lot of other territory from the soviets, and stalin certainly

wanted that back. so three months germany surrenders on may 8th, and one month, may, june, july, august 8th, and why three months? i mean, why didn't he enter the war immediately? why? because all the soviet troops were on the european front, and it would take three months to move all of the forces to the japanese front. so stalin is committed to coming in. there's no question. marshall says to truman, you know, we can, you know, tell them it's not necessary anymore, guys, thanks a lot. but it's not going to -- it's

not going to do any good. they're going to come in because, you know, they want to come in, and indeed, that's the case. so the bombs are dropped on japan on august 6th, and on august 9th on nagasakinagasaki, hiroshima on the 6th, three days later on nagasaki. why three days? originally, it was a five-day spread. and the reason for the five-day spread was that it was expected to be a very complicated process for arming the second bomb, the plutonium bomb. but the scientists are very gung

ho on the island where the planes to attack japan took off from. and when colonel tibbitz plane comes back after its successful raid on hiroshima, the scientists say we might be able to do this in four days now that we've had the experience with the first bomb, and tibbitz says can you do it in three days because bad weather is expected to come in, and that's, in effect, what happens. that decision, that three-day spread is made by gung ho scientists and air force, army/air force personnel on the iand of ta knee yan. it is not a truman decision. it is not a henry stimpson decision. it's not a general groves decision. it's a battlefield decision.

so three days. after the atomic bombings, what effect does this have on stalin? everybody was worried about stalin's reaction, and of course they were right. vladislav zubok, a very well-known american/russian historian writes in one of his books that news of hiroshima and nag nagasaki, quote, struck stalin like a thunder bolt. he was shocked. and there's a wonderful memorandum of a conversation about a week later that stalin has with ambassador hairman,

averell harriman, who's the american ambassador to the soviet union. george kennen who's the number two man, he takes the notes and writes this memorandum. stalin says to harriman, we have entered the war in spite of your attempt to end it before we did so. [ laughter ] and then harriman replies, the atomic bomb will end the war. we have it, and it was very expensive to build. it will have a great impact on post-war international relations. now, that had to be prepared text. i mean, a skilled ambassador like averell harriman doesn't say things like that off, you know, just the top of his -- the top of his head. it's expensive.

it's going to have a great impact on post-war international relations meaning we've got it and you don't, and stalin says japan was about to surrender anyway, and the secret of the atomic bomb might be hard to keep, and i can't help thinking that stalin really had to work hard to suppress a big grin when he said that because the soviets had been getting information on the manhattan project since 1943, and stalin knew -- knew about the manhattan project long before harry truman or averell harriman, et cetera, et cetera.

so what about the decision to use atomic bombs against two japanese cities. the first thing i would say about it, it was neither inevitable, nor was it necessary in order to end the war in august of 1945. why do i say that? there are several reasons. one, the invasion was not scheduled to take place until november 1st, and two, as stalin said -- and he knew it because the japanese were trying to see molotov in moscow, that the japanese had been searching for a way to surrender with conditions for months. we have all sorts of traffic

from our decoding of the japanese diplomatic message traffic to this effect. in 1939, the united states broke the japanese diplomatic code, not the military code, but the diplomatic code, and throughout the war we were reading all their message traffic. it was referred to as magic, and you can see all this stuff on the web, and it's -- it's fantastic what we knew about what was going on in japan that the japanese didn't know that we knew. now, we were demanding unconditional surrender which was unacceptable to all of japan's leadership because it implied that the emperor might be considered a war criminal

and, as you know, at that point in time the japanese considered the emperor a deity. it was proposed by the military, the japanese military, for very personal reasons. it was humiliating, and the japanese military understood that they had lost the war, but they were trying to surrender with some kind of saving face, and they wanted conditions. for example, they wanted to disarm their own troops. they wanted -- there were four or five conditions. one of them i usually say sarcastically is the japanese generals should get their tea in the morning served by american sergeants. but you know, none of that was

going to be acceptable, but all of japan was absolutely determined to fight to the death if the emperor's life was at stake. so the japanese military proposed a dual strategy or imposed, not just proposed, imposed a dual strategy on the japanese government. one part was diplomatic, one part was military. the diplomatic part was that japan's foreign ministry must approach the soviet union and try to persuade the soviet union, prescribe them with -- we'll give back everything that was taken during the 1905 japanese war and whatever else made sense, to get the soviets to mediate between japan and the united states, to mediate on

behalf of the japanese or better surrender terms than unconditional surrender, and they argue that the advantage of this also was that if they were mediating on our behalf, japan's behalf, that would keep them from attacking us, which of course the japanese realized was a possibility. that's a diplomatic part of the strategy. the military part of the strategy was that they would focus attention, focus their military on all the areas that were most likely to be the areas of the american invasion, and the argument was that, no, we're not going to be able to defeat the americans, but we can bloody them enough so that they will be

willing to accept surrender with conditions. so that's the strategy. but stalin intended to be a victor and an occupier, not a mediator, and once he entered the war, as i said, on august 8th, 1945, the japanese strategy -- military strategy was completely lost. the diplomatic element had failed, but also with the soviets coming into the war, the military strategic planning had failed because all of japan's troops were going to be in the southern part, and it was

impossible for the japanese to fight a two-front war. and not only that, when the soviets came in, what was the likely consequences? they were going to take socalin and all those other areas the japanese had taken from them, but they were very unlikely to take hokkaido. in fact, stalin proposed to truman after the war that he take hokkaido and truman said no way. and the other thing that you have to understand is that the japanese government was virulently anti-communist, more anti-communist than the americans at that time. so the thought of the soviet union coming into the war sharing in the occupation, taking hokkaido, it was japan's

worst nightmare. the worst nightmare, and so all of a sudden when the soviets came in, the surrender, japan surrendered to the united states appeared to be its best possible option. there was no way the japanese were going to lend themselves to being occupied by the soviet union if there was some way to prevent it. so i think it's fair to say, certainly based on that line of argument and during the q & a period we can, you know, sort of talk about other lines of argument that the atomic bomb did not end the war.

it was soviet entry into the war, and it's probably also fair to say if the timing was the same since the bomb and the soviets coming into the war occurred simultaneously more or less that the bomb did not save any american lives. in fact, i discovered in some research that i did that two americans who were in a hiroshima jail, two pilots whose names are norman burrset and ralph neil were killed during the atomic bombing. what were the reactions? we're talking about visions of the manhattan project, and truman says in his memoirs that when he heard the news, he was

on the ship heading back to the united states. he gathered the sailors around him and told them the news and said this is the greatest thing in history. when eisenhower heard about it, he reports in his book crusade in europe, i was against it. we didn't have to hit them with that awful thing. and there's a whole list of admiral lahey and others who were opposed to it, but the one that i find the most interesting is john fordellas who becomes eisenhower's secretary of state, and the great promoter of brinksmanship with nuclear weapons. in 1945, august of '45, after the first bomb is used dulles

writes to truman sends a telegram. he says if we as a professedly christian nation feel morally free to use atomic energy in that way, men elsewhere will accept that verdict. atomic weapons will be looked upon as a normal part of the arsenal of war and the stage will be set for the sudden and final destruction of mankind, taking us back to henry adams. now, after the war there is a concerted effort led by oppenheimer to bring some form of international control of atomic energy into being, and

the first report, state department report that he is not named in but he is the designer of the report is called the atchenson lily report whiches comes out in february of 1945. truman administration is not thrilled with this. he turns it over to bernard ber rue, who presents a different version, his own version to the united nations atomic energy commission in june of 1945, and by december of 1945 when it's voted on, it has to be unanimous to be accepted. the vote is 10-2, russia and the soviet union and poland dissent, and that's really the end of the possibility of a serious effort

to bring some kind of arms control to the nuclear issue. now, i want to conclude in the next five minutes or so with some general points. no decision in history, certainly not any government decision is or was inevitable. if you believe in inevitability i would say don't bother to study history because history is the study of possibilities. why was a chosen over b and c, and in my view, most importantly, what would have happened if b or c had been chosen so i'm going to end with a counter factual. what if the arguments of the chicago scientists, the franck

report, which i read to you, had carried the day? what if after the july 16th test in alamogordo that that was the last use of the atomic -- of atomic bombs? what would have happened after the war? well, you can imagine that there was no way to keep the manhattan project secret, and it was the most expensive project in wartime history, $2 billion, which today is a drop in the bucket but was big bucks back then. what if stimpson's views about nuclear danger had prevailed and the weapons were not used. well, there would have been a congressional hearing for sure. no special prosecutor, just a congressional hearing, and stimpson would have been called

as the secretary of war who was in charge of the project, and what would he have said? he surely would have said what he told truman, that this weapon can destroy civilization or if it's properly used can save civilization, that the united states is not nazi germany. we're not imperial japan. we have our own morality. we have our own way of coming to decisions, and since it was not necessary to use the bomb to end the war, it is inconceivable that we would use such a weapon.

atomic weapons are beyond the pale. atomic weapons are weapons that can destroy human, all human life on earth. we must work to make sure that these weapons do not become part of the arsenals of the world. now, i ask you, if nuclear weapons had been introduced to the world as being a pariah weapon rather than a magic bullet weapon that was used twice on what oppenheimer later called in reversing himself an essentially defeated enemy, would things have been different? i don't know. you don't know, but we all can

have our opinions about that, and i submit to you that the most important thing that i have said to you tonight is to put that thought in your mind to think about, to discuss with your children and grandchildren, and to talk about the whole decision-making process that leads from point a to point b and finally to a nuclear weapons. it seems to me that counter factuals are at the heart of the human condition. every animal can understand what is happening to it at a particular given moment and it reacts accordingly, but only

human beings can think about alternatives. we're not lemmings, and it is very, very important to always consider the alternative. let's think about it in the context of the united states and nuclear weapons today. i don't think anyone can argue convincingly that the iran nuclear treaty, for example, was inevitable or what about north korea right now? is there an american policy that is inevitable, i don't think so. choices are going to be made based on assumptions. sometimes those assumptions are right. sometimes those assumptions are wrong. there's nothing inevitable here. but there are compelling logics, and i'll end with one that takes us back to the concerns of the

most farsighted scientists of the manhattan project. it's a comment by the canberra commission in 1997 discussing nuclear weapons and the world, and they say the proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used accidentally or by decision defies credibility, and that's a real downer to end on. and i apologize for that, but it really is the crux of the issue today. the world that we face if nuclear weapons keep

proliferating is a world that is going to be far, far more dangerous than the world we have lived through. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> yes. is there a microphone around for -- right here. >> using the atomic bomb on the soviet union to end -- did anyone make that suggestion? >> were we? >> was there a suggestion? >> not during -- certainly not during the war, but i mean, afterwards, i mean, you know, especially during the eisenhower administration, massive retaliation, brinksmanship, all

of the war plans that we have managed to be able to research are filled with plans to, you know, destroy the soviet union in a week, yes, absolutely. >> can you repeat the questions? >> okay, right. yes, sir. >> profession sherwin, thank you for a very good presentation. i would like to correct you by saying that admiral harriman was not an admiral, he's an ambassador. >> no averell. >> my pronunciation, sorry. truman had little to do with foreign policy, but he did serve in the artillery in world war i. >> yes, right. >> and you said stalin was struck as a thunder bolt by

understanding that we had a nuclear weapon. that's not what happened at potsdam. >> no, no, no. stalin, i quoted vladislov zubok. >> yes, but he was wrong. >> no, saying that stalin -- that the bombing, the use of the bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki struck stalin like a thunderbolt. he knew about the nuclear weapons, but the fact that we would use them on what he thought was a defeated enemy he saw as a warning to him that the soviets could be next. so i'm sorry that i wasn't clear enough to -- yeah. but thank you for your question, yes, sir. >> do you believe as he intimated, i think, that hiezenberg deliberately slowed

the german effort for the bomb down? >> you know, that's a big controversy, and just to explain it to the rest of the audience, did heisenberg, the famous german physicist who claimed that -- after the war that he knew how to build an atomic bomb, but would not tell hitler about it because it was too horrible of a weapon to give to hitler. all of the german physicists that the russians didn't get were rounded up in an operation near the end of the war and sent to farm hall, a building in britain, which was completely bugged, and we have the farm hall transcripts, and when the

announcement came over the radio that hiroshima had been bombed, otto hahn said to the rest of them, if that's true, you're all second raters implying that they were trying to do it. now, heisenberg, you know, argues that he did know how to do it, but wouldn't reveal it, but the historians of science that i've read make a fairly persuasive case, i think, that his calculations were wrong. on the other hand, thomas powers, a friend of mine, wrote also

biography of heisenberg defending him, so i guess it's kind of up in the air. >> what do you believe? >> what i believe, i guess i'm more inclined to believe that he made a mistake. but without evidence. that's different. yes, maybe i should -- way in the back there. yes. >> why did oppenheimer change his views seemingly so quickly from wanting to use the bomb to let's internationalize it? >> yes, yes, why did oppenheimer change his views so quickly. he was convinced during the war when he served on the committees that it was necessary to use the bomb to prevent an invasion, and very soon after the war he learned -- because he was very plugged into the war department, and he learned that it wasn't necessary. so on two occasions that i know

of, one in a public speech, and one in an article in the earliest versions of the bullet of atomic scientist, i think it was the june '46 issue. he actually wrote it in writing that it was used against an essentially defeated enemy. but he never argued publicly that we shouldn't have used it, you know. yes, sir. >> would the decision to have used the bomb been different had roosevelt lived? >> well, of course that's another counterfactual, although your guess is as good as mine. i tell all my students when i said that, your guess is as good as mine. no, it's not actually as good as mine. but your guess is okay. i have come to believe. i've done a 180 -- i've come to believe, and the high park memorandum that i read to you is

part of that that if roosevelt had lived, it would not have been used the way it was used, and here's the additional, you know, sort of reasons. roosevelt's primary goal for the post-war period was good relations with stalin, with the soviet union, and very persuasive cases were being made that if that is your primary goal, using the bomb on japan, you know, in august of '45 the way we did is going to undermine that goal so i think that, you know, roosevelt's goal of good relations would have predominated. yes, lady, madame, lady. >> what do you think about north korea? i mean -- >> i'm sorry.

>> nuclear weapons, if one country pulls the trigger, they're in a sense destroying themselves while destroying someone else at the same time. >> right. >> i mean, there's not going to -- you know they're not going to pull the trigger and then let's talk about whether we should bomb you. where is this all leading? >> i'm glad you asked that question because like everybody else i've been thinking about that, and i was in seoul last november actually during the election for of all things, a conference on nuclear history. and we had a lot of koreans speaking about their view of north korea and much to my surprise, the south koreans, at least that were at this conference, argued that while kim jong-un is -- appears to be a bit crazy and totally

unpredictable, it's a strategy, and he no more wants to see this very good life that he and, you know, the elite in north korea by starting a war. and the other thing to be said is that what the south koreans worry about most is the united states taking some initiative that could start a war without consulting with them. since they believe they understand the situation a lot better and they have the most to lose. it would not take nuclear weapons to destroy seoul. there are conventional -- everybody in the business, so to

speak, believes that they have so many conventional weapons targeted on seoul that in a day, you know, the city would be flattened. >> so much money and effort goes into these various countries having nuclear weapons or the potential. it's a mexican standoff. >> yes. . >> if you don't have it, you're weak. if you have it you're stronger. >> people pay attention to you. ask yourself the question, why does north korea want to spend all this money on nuclear weapons? why? because they have our attention. they are the bad guys and they have this perfect deterrent situation. they have south korea they can swat like a fly, and we

cannot -- without taking a chance having south korea destroyed. you know, bomb north korea. why doesn't china do something? well, china doesn't want to see regime change collapse. and worst of all, they talk about china doesn't want refugees streaming across the border, that's the number two issue. they don't want south korea on the river, south korea which is an ally of the united states. and have the united states on the yellow river, they entered a war for that reason. yes, sir. >> it seems to me the situation in the middle east is probably the most unstable and dangerous situation. >> yes. >> israel says they have the bomb, but everybody who has had a bomb has tested it to make

sure it works. they don't know if it works or maybe they do because somebody else tested it for them. but we don't know that. iran developing the bomb and attitudes there and sensibilities there are a whole lot different than we could ever understand. i think that's probably one of the most -- way out. you'll use it, because of commitments, i don't know. >> a couple things, first you'll recall that i mentioned that the iranian bomb was not tested, that was the one that was dropped on hiroshima, and did a pretty good job so that -- testing is not an issue.

also, it's very likely that the test of south africa way back when was probably an israeli test, but i mean, who can argue with the point that it's really unstable. i'll make a different argument than prime minister netanyahu would make. he called the -- an iranian -- nuclear armed iran an existential threat to israel. i don't think it's an existential threat to israel it's an existential threat to israel's hijemini in the area. iran is not north korea. persia is a civilization that

goes back back back back back. they understand if they use nuclear weapons, israel would blow them out of the water, and maybe the united states would be in there too using it. also speaking of blowing, the wind comes. remember chernobyl and all the poisoning. so, it's, the bomb has become this and it was from the beginning. this silver bullet and this, you know, i'm king of the mountain and all the littler kings are on top of the mountain, too. unless there's a reversal in some way, which i globally

favor, we're going to have more states with nuclear weapons. and i suppose we have to -- churchill said, jaw jaw jaw is better than war war war. and the idea that we don't talk to these people because they're not behaving the way we want them to is insane. if you look at the cold war between 1945 and the end of the cold war, when the united states, certainly in the 1950s, we were hysterical about communism, absolutely certain they wanted to take over the world, they were going to take over america, they were going to be in -- if we didn't stop them in vietnam, they were going to be in california. it was crazy.

we had an embassy in moscow, we talked to them constantly, i'm writing a book on the cuban missile crisis now. and the reason the cuban missile crisis did not end in a disastrous war was because kennedy and chrushchev were talking constantly, there were quite a few letters between them. five, six, days. you have to keep talking, and we should have embassies everywhere. and this idea of cutting the state department budget, i mean, you know, we need to triple the state department budget is what we need to do. yes, sir. excuse me. >> if the majority of the japanese people at the end of the war were willing to lay their life down for the emperor, that doesn't sound like a defeated enemy to me. so what about the argument that

as horrific or unfortunate whatever word you want to use, as it is, we must eliminate the japanese people's will to fight by facing them with a weapon which poses a threat of sure annihilation. second question, real quick. what makes you think that an unused weapon of this magnitude after the war is over would be recognized by the world as something as terrible, and ban it when history of previous arms controls and geneva convention and everything was against weapons that had been used in war. so, what about the argument that using it, horrific as it was, created an incentive to see the true horrors of war and result in an international movement to

control the weapon. >> i mean, it's a perfectly legitimate argument and you're certainly not alone in making it. and there are historians who have studied this issue, the way i do, who are convinced that that's the way to look at the issue. but i go back to the idea that it was obvious to every scientist who was involved in nuclear weapons, even before the bomb was built, you remember i read the memo that bush wrote to simpson and the president saying, this bomb if it is

possible to build it, will be determining. that it will be, it is beyond the pale to compare nuclear weapons to anything before is a false analogy, first of all. second of all, the results of using it are what we've -- we see what we've got. if you think that declaring it an unacceptable weapon would not have changed things, then i cannot argue with you. but i am thoroughly convinced that if nuclear weapons were introduced as beyond the pale, unacceptable, that no civilized country would use them and that international relations had to be organized around