cambodia. but because there was no one else there and it had to be done, o'donnell made the decision immediately that he would rescue these men. so he went down to to into the landing zone area and he hovered on the ground for 4 minutes, waiting for the reconnaissance team to arrive there, which is in a battle condition in eternity. it's a very long time to be sitting vulnerable to the enemy. but he he waited. the reconnaissance team arrived, injured, but safe. they boarded the helicopter, all of them. and o'donnell began to pull the helicopter up above the tree line and radioed, i have i have everyone. i'm coming out. daniel weiss with his book. in that time, this memorial day weekend tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span q&a. you can listen to q&a, all of our podcasts on our free c-span now app. washington journal continues. we're back and we're joined by

author evan thomas, whose new book, road to surrender three men in the countdown to the end. the world war two looks at the roles of war. secretary henry stimson, gerald carl speth and japanese foreign minister signori togo. had in the ending of world war two. and would this be memorial day coming up. this is an appropriate conversation to have. evan, good morning. good morning. okay, let's jump right into it. so what made you decide write road to surrender. i grew up in the 1950s, scared of nuclear weapons, and i'm still scared of them. and maybe even even more scared of them. and i've always been interested in the use of them. the first time we actually used these things. and so i you know, people had always i always wondered, did we really have to use that bomb and did we have to use both of them? and wasn't there some way to to avoid all that? and so i you know, i got into it and started reading and i concluded a little bit to my

surprise, that unfortunate only the tragic answer is, yes, we did have to drop those bombs and the simple reason, the clearest reason is, is that japan just was not willing to surrender in the summer of 1945. they were just hopelessly dug in and they we'd have to invade them. and that invasion was going to be a very bloody thing. this has a personal element for me. my father was a junior on a landing ship tank on a landing ship that was scheduled to go to japan for that invasion. so the myth in my household had always been that we were alive because of the atom bomb. i think that's actually a myth. we can get into that. but a lot of a lot of children of world war two veterans know what i'm talking about, that the bomb, you know, saved their fathers lives. well, let's get into that right now. why? why do you why why did you why did you say that? why do you think that myth

exists and do you actually think it's a myth? well, it is true that we are preparing to invade japan in 1945 with a massive force, but it's also true that the japanese were building their own forces. and when president truman signed off on that invasion in june of 1945, when he approved it, the japanese had maybe half a million men waiting for us, for our force of maybe 900,000 men. but by august of 1945, the japanese forces had increased to over a million men. they also had 7000 kamikaze planes waiting for us. kamikaze swimmers, divers and all sorts of suicide forces. so that that invasion was going to be an utter bloodbath, a here's a basis of comparison in 1945 and that winter, we we, the united states, took iwo jima and

it took five weeks and cost the lives of 7000 americans soldiers. iwo jima is the size of the island of nantucket as tiny than okinawa, a couple of months to 12,000 men. okinawa was not that big. the japanese islands were too defended and ready to die. a vast area. it would have been an utter bloodbath. so by august of 1945, the navy in the air force didn't want to invade. they thought they could destroy japan just by starving them to death. and even if we hadn't dropped the atom bombs, think it's more likely that we would have blockaded japan? starve them, would have been horrible, would have killed millions of lives. but that's a more likely outcome than an american invasion. so i think that that the idea that my father was going to die an invasion, i don't think that would have happened. there might have been an

invasion later, but it would have been the same kind of a bloody frontal assault. so i think that is a bit of a myth. the real point here is that japan just was not going to surrender. japan was defeated. their fleets were sunk. we had burned 60 of their cities, but their government was absolutely determined to fight to the bitter end and would welcomed an invasion to bleed us and make us force us to sell for terms that they wanted. i.e. no, no, invade, no occupation, get to keep their emperor, no war. contrast. that's what they wanted. and that was not unrealistic until until we dropped those atom bombs. and not just one, but both of them were necessary. now you focus on three people in to surrender a war. secretary henry stimson. gerald carl spots and japanese minister togo. why are they the key characters

in the book? well, you might think the key characters were president truman. maybe oppenheimer. robert oppenheimer. the scientist who invented it. but i stay away from them for a couple of reasons. truman it's interesting. truman was once described by general groves, the guy who the general who ran the manhattan project, general groves, described truman as a, quote, a little boy and a toboggan. meaning that for the atom bomb decision, he was just like a kid on toboggan sliding down the hill, out of control. and there's some truth to that that the atom bomb was a bit of a foregone conclusion even before he became president certainly, certainly right after he became president. at the same time, it's also true that that truman was the decider. he was the president. he made the decision. the thing about truman, though, who's problematic for an historian like me, is that he made up a lot about his own role, exaggerated that he he he,

you know, whole thing about harry truman, the president, the buck stops here. that was true. ultimately true. but in the summer of 1945, truman was really along with others. it would have taken a massive effort for him to to say no, and he didn't. so i don't i actually don't think the president was a central figure, a more central figure to me was the secretary of war, henry stimson, who had been sort of the chairman of the board of the project from the beginning. fdr, president roosevelt, put him in charge in 1942, and he really ran the show. and he was the guy who, when truman became president, when roosevelt died april of 1945, it's stimson, who to him and briefs him, tells me, we have this unbelievable weapon and we are getting close to using it on the japanese. and stimson is basically telling truman what he's going to do.

again, truman is the president. he has ultimate authority. but the president really running the show is henry stimson. i chose general spots to be spots whose figure is not well-known to people because he was the air force general who ran strategic bombing in first in europe and then in japan. he was the guy who got the order to drop the atom bomb, and i was interested in him what that was like for. my book is very much an attempt to understand what it's like for. the people who have this unbelief, evil, responsibility to use a weapon that's going to kill thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. and i was interested in spots because he had been responsible for killing thousands and thousands of civilians in germany in 1943, 44 or 45. and now he's tasked or ordered

to kill hundreds of thousands of japanese people. in fact, when he was verbally given the order to drop the atom bomb, he said, if i'm going to kill 100,000 people, i want. to see that order in writing. so the secretary of war, stimson, had to write an order to general spots to drop that bomb. even so, even though the responsibility was obviously shared, he was a soldier doing his duty. he was badly troubled by this as anyone, as any human being would be. he was terribly troubled by what he was doing. he wrote it in his own diary. he wrote in his own diary. i was against the atom because i, as i had always been against bombing cities to kill civilians. remember, he had been doing that in europe for two years, but he had been convinced that it would ultimately save lives. this is the essential, tragic

dilemma of these war fighters that this is why you don't want to get into wars as they push you into these dark corners where in order to save lives, you have to kill people. you have to kill more people than than then. then on the other side that you're going to save or maybe save your own people. in any case, it is a horrible moral dilemma. and these are men who had to deal moral ambiguity. and that's why i was fascinated by them and wanted to to to try to write about what it was really like for them. and you also chose to focus part of the book on the japanese foreign minister, togo. why he a major character in this book. in many ways, the most important part of this book is in japan, because japan, as i was saying earlier, just would not surrender. they were beaten, but they wouldn't give up. and so i began looking at the japanese side of the story and what it showed to me pretty quickly was that in japan japan

is essentially run by six men. the supreme war council. these are the war minister, the heads of the army and navy, the prime, all military people. there was one, one civilian. his name was signori togo, and he was the foreign minister and he was the only one of the top group who wanted to surrender. he had to be a very brave person because in japan in 1945, world war two, the top government people were not even allowed to use the word surrender. the japanese were just determined to fight to the end. in their mythology, japan had not surrendered in 2600 years. that's not quite true. but in the myth they were the country that never surrendered. you couldn't even use the word. it was true enough in in battles. japanese soldiers fought to the death. if you look at the casualty tolls, the death tolls, it would in you look at japanese units,

it's the entire unit, a 600 man battalion would lose everybody or almost everybody. and that's in the military code of conduct of japan. you're not allowed to surrender. it was against the law. so tog is a singular figure. and he and a brave figure. because in japan, for a top government official to advocate surrender made him a target for assassination. that was that was not an idle threat in japan in the. 1933 prime ministers were assassinated by hothead military hotheads who wanted to fight what was want to fight. and that's the reality of japan. and so i decided to look at togo. who was he? what was he like? how did he do this? and how did he succeed? let me take a second here to remind our viewers that they can take part in this conversation. we're going to open up regional lines, which means that if you live in eastern or central time

zones, you can call in at 202748 8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, your number is going to be 202748 8001 was again for and central viewers your numbers 202748 8000 for mountain or pacific viewers your numbers 202748 8001. keep in mind can always text us to or 2748 8003. and we're always reading on media on twitter and c-span. wj and on facebook and facebook dot com slash c-span. now, evan, what were some of those key events that led to the decision to drop atomic bombs on japan and were hiroshima and masaki the original? and let me throw one more question here at. you. do you think the events would have been the same if president

franklin roosevelt had lived and truman was not in charge? what would roosevelt have had also agreed to drop the bombs on japan. to your last question, absolutely, because there really was no choice here. they needed to end this war. america was exhausted. americans sacrificed an awful lot of lives and soldiers were were doing willing to do their duty. stimson goes down to florida and sees a lot of air force people coming from europe to on the way to the pacific. and he knows they're going to do their duty, but he just doesn't want to send them into what would have been the worst, the ugliest battle ever fought, fought. and so any policymaker, whether this is president roosevelt or president truman, anybody would have to strongly consider using these weapons. and i don't think there really was an alternative. and in fact, if you look at their discussions, it's not like

there was a big debate in the government, should we drop this bomb or not? that's not how it worked. there was debate about what things would look like after we dropped the bomb and why we were dropping the bomb and where to drop the bomb? but there was no debate over the need to actually drop the thing. we'd spent $2 billion on it. that's a lot of money in those days, but that's not what really drove the train. was that the only alternative to dropping that bomb was either this bloody, bloody invasion that would have killed hundreds of thousands of americans or, a blockade of japan that would starved to death millions of japanese and maybe opened the war opened the door to civil war or famine or just terrible outcomes, perversely, weirdly, horribly. the atom bomb was really the only choice that were the cities of hiroshima and nagasaki the original targets from the very beginning.

no, the original target chosen by the planners, by the war planners was kyoto all the ancient cultural capital, japan. a very beautiful place. i've been there and thank god we didn't destroy it. it also a good target in the sense of it would shown off the bomb strength, which was something we wanted to do. it did have military people there. they had about a million people. it was it was a good target, except that it was the ancient cultural capital of japan. it would have been horrible to destroy it. so. so. stimson, secretary, my main character, henry, he takes it off the target three times. general groves, the chief military guy who's involved in building the bomb, three times groves puts it back on the target list. stimson keeps it off. and finally, stimson goes to the president, to truman, and gets it taken off for good. that makes the primary target here oshima, which is also a

good target in the sense of it, will show off the bomb. it's a military target there. there is a military headquarters there of the of the troops who are going to defend kyushu, the southernmost island. it's a port city, but having said that, it's a military target. the aim point of the bomb was a bridge in the middle of the city. they were taking any chances are missing hiroshima in those days. you know, the technology is pretty crude you could miss the city they wanted to put the bomb smack in the middle of the city. and of course, that killing a lot of civilians. now, you already talked earlier about stimson and his and the work that he had done in europe and. his decisions that he has made now. was he a large advocate for using the atomic bomb in on in japan, or was this for him the

final resort, the last resort, the than that invasion that could have killed billions of people. well, for both steps both of my my main american characters stimson and the war minister were secretary and spots the american. they're both in the same. they both have a lot of experience of the war. you know, we've been dropping bombs on germany and killing a lot of civilians. we had to do that. and now we are going to do it on an even greater scale. both these men were deeply troubled by it. stimson could not sleep in his diary. he referred to the bomb as the terrible. the awful, the diabolical. frank einstein. so they know how it is. spots is the same thing. he's he spots was the general who had to give the order to bomb dresden in europe in february of 1945. the worst atrocity i guess you

could call it that of of 1945 is when the british and american airplanes, bombers bombed the city of dresden, fought with, firebombs destroyed it, a beautiful medieval city. this is in later years been seen as a terrible tragedy, a mistake. general spotts, who was running the air force the night after or two nights after we bombed dresden, he blew $1,700 on a poker game. two months salary. he did this to relieve the horrible. his assistant. i know this because his granddaughter told me about it. his assistant spotters assistant had to write mrs. spotts saying sorry your husband just lost two months salary at poker. and of course, she understood because of the think the pressure on these men to do these terrible things that had to be done.

now, how did gerald spotts react specifically when he received the orders to drop the bombs? well, he he he took them he actually has a small detail. there's a lot of these kind of human details. he took those orders and he went to the pacific. he put in the back pocket of his pants. he lost lost them because his pants were taken to the cleaners. and there was a scramble to find the order. but he carried out that order because he's a he's an officer is a military officer. he has to do it. but it doesn't mean he wants to do it or he likes doing it. he has the cold comfort of a soldier's duty, but he writes in his diary that he's against it, even though he had been against, but carried it out because saw that ultimately it was going to cost a lot of lives, but save more lives. certainly save american lives, that otherwise have had to invade japan. let's let of our viewers take part in this conversation.

we'll start with lewis, who's calling from new jersey. lewis, good morning. good morning. hello, mr. thomas. couple of things, i think. why the general wanted to go after the cultural was because i think it would have been more effect of the elite in japan that was controlling everything because obviously didn't give a -- about killing, having more people killed. but the point i always wondered about and what you have to say about it is if they dropped the bomb, the chain or harbor or somewhere just to show them if they did it surrender, what would happen. it's like hitting somebody in the back and say, you got to surrender. we're going to do it again. and that's all i got to say. thank you, sir. well, you know, there was you've raised a good point. there was some discussion about doing a demonstration and like maybe setting it off on a desert island and telling the, you know, saying, watch this so that

we wouldn't have to kill them. but they could see it demonstrated there was some discussion about that. but there's discussion was fairly brief because you know, if you tell the japanese, you're going to demonstrate that they might shoot down the plane carrying the bomb. they might put american p.o.w. there. the bomb be a dud. you know, this is an experiment. we only had two of these bombs. we tested it once. this is a brand new thing. and they weren't absolutely sure it was going to work. so although they considered it demonstration, they rejected it. general sparks, one of my heroes in this book also proposed, why don't we drop it in tokyo harbor as a demonstration so they can see it but not be affected? i don't think that that idea was rejected, i think properly so because it probably would have just created a radio tidal wave which would have been just as deadly as dropping the bomb. there was the point is, there was no easy way around this.

they had to use this -- thing. how much it stimson in spots know about the radioactive power of the atomic bomb? not enough. the scientists understood something about the radioactive. it wasn't. it wasn't new. they knew it was deadly. but you know, funny. they didn't really inquire that hard into finding out just how deadly. it was. these are the scientists. they also did not tell the their civilian overlords, except in the most cursory. so we dropped this bomb with not full exploration or examination of just how deadly radioactivity was. the bomb when it went off killed 70,000 people and hiroshima another 70,000. these numbers are rough. another thousand died of slowly. a radio. radioactive. radioactive. radioactive radio, radiation poisoning or cancers over a long period of time.

radio is a horrible killer. we only dimly understood it at the time. and because and this is the way human beings work, we didn't. it's as if we didn't really want to know. one of our social media followers posits a theory and i want you to respond to it. this person on twitter, i was taught in high school that we dropped the bombs to save lives because we were killing more civilians with the firebombing of cities. is we dropped the two bombs as a show of force to the ussr. that is sorry, go ahead. my question was, do you agree? this is probably the most this is what you get taught in schools these days, not everywhere, but by many places. a couple of things. one is that the way the firebombing was worse and that we did it to scare russians. there is some evidence that that's called a revisionist view. roughly speaking, there's a lot

of evidence. i think in most schools and colleges, that's pretty much what you learn. that's pretty much what i thought when i began this project. but there are a couple of problems with it. one is that the fire bombing was terrible and it did kill more people in than in march when we firebombed tokyo. then the atom bomb on hiroshima and, august. so the firebombing was certainly terrible that that is true. and i think deep down general spots, for instance, was glad to use the atom bomb just to stop firebombing. but there are a couple of things this. one is the firebombing at basically had stopped or was going to stop. by august, we had burned 60 cities. we were done and we were switching over to at that time to more precision bombing. now, not that that would have been great because it would have created starvation by cutting rail lines, delivering rice. so war is hell, it's bad. however, you do it. but the firebombing was about to stop on scaring the russians.

yes, we did. particularly the secretary of state burns did want to scare the russians with us, intimidate the russians. so that's a factor. but i think the scholarship today shows that it was not the main factor. it was a factor but not the main factor. the main factor was ending the war was making the japanese surrender when they were unwilling to surrender, intimidating russia was a factor, but i don't think it was the determinative factor. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to tom, who's calling from birmingham, michigan. tom, good morning. good morning. fascinating discussion and happy memorial day. if that's appropriate, in this kind of discussion at all. one question i have is why and i've heard the arguments. i'd love to hear yours. why why two bombs? why couldn't one on hiroshima have the test and waited to see if we really needed to and the other is how precisely did we

drill down on the estimates deaths? it seems like there was a lot of imprecision understanding the power of the bomb. how many would die? did we even get any predictions if there were accurate in terms of the 70,000? probably not. the radiation extra 70,000 and really drill down on whether a blockade, not an invasion necessarily would have a million deaths before because. i think that was the quote before the japanese would have surrendered when they finally surrendered it. much lower deaths than that after two bombs. i thank you. those are all good, good questions on on the two bombs. i always wondered that. but here's a story that that suggests that we needed two bombs and i found this by looking at the japanese side. and the first one was august 6th. we the second bomb. on august 9th, there's a meeting of the supreme war council. the people who are running japan

and that meeting, they're discussing what to do. and word comes a second bomb has just a second hiroshima type bomb has just destroyed hiroshima. and the war minister says, wouldn't it be beautiful if the whole nation were to die like a flower like a cherry blossom? let them drop a hundred bombs. they were crazy. these suicidal at this time. now he's bluffing that for effect to, show off for us hotheads. but the japanese, the rulers of japan were not ready to surrender the. supreme war council was deadlocked. it was a tie. 3 to 3. that's after the second bomb. and the american policymakers anticipated this general groves used to say one bomb to show them that we have one and two bombs to show that we have more than one. unfortunately i think that was necessary. in fact, that that didn't secure the surrender. two bombs right away went on the

back and forth, went on for four or five more days, and president truman had signed off on dropping a third bomb on tokyo. he told that to the british ambassador right before he found out the japanese were a third bomb on tokyo. so it was, you know, the japanese were just not going to surrender. i'm sure that was the other part of your question. his his other part of the question was about whether the the they had intended to use one of the bombs on one of the islands instead of using on on hiroshima or nagasaki. well, i addressed that earlier that they did talk a little bit about doing a demonstration, but there that idea, oh, i know the other excuse me, the other question was about casualties. do they know before war they dropped the bomb? oppenheimer the guy who who was

responsible for designing the bomb, he said he estimated 20,000 deaths. there were seven authors. so, you know, it's new. it's a new weapon. don't they don't know. but they underestimate the amount of deaths. this is a little grisly. but later, oppenheimer said, well, they assumed that the japanese would take cover. there would be air raids and the japanese would take cover. that didn't happen in hiroshima. there were air raid sirens and they actually saw the planes overhead, but people did not take cover because and this is a grim irony, hiroshima had been spared from bombing attacks only a few in japan were spared because they wanted to keep a few cities untouched for the atom bomb to show off how deadly it was. so the japanese did not take cover and many of them were up when the bomb went off. and so that increased the death

toll. but also they just didn't know it. they really didn't know how powerful a weapon they had. let's look at this from the japanese side. what was japan's fundamental and how did it guide the country, how the country would fight the policy policy was it was called should katsu the bleeding strategy. their goal was to bleed us to bleed the united states, to force an invasion and greet that invasion with such overwhelming force that they would kill, you know, how many know hundreds of thousands of americans until we agreed to terms that were favorable to them. they knew they were defeated. there are fleets, their fleet was sunk, the cities had been burned, but they thought by making us bleed they could get good terms. what? what does that mean? they would no occupation of japan. there would be no war crime

trials. remember these heads of japan, these generals, they know they're going to face war crimes trials as indeed they did if they lost. so they want no war crimes trials and they want to preserve their emperor, their sacred emperor. and they thought that if they can make us bleed enough in one final horrible battle, we give them those terms that was not nuts. that was not an unrealistic thing for them to think. what changed the equation, john, were these atom bombs that gave flooding, gave the japanese military face saying, oh, we've never seen this before, so give them a face to surrender and so they don't have to fight on. but also it just most one of the most important thing did is it scared the emperor. the emperor, even though he's divine reports to the gods, he really is. his legitimacy depends the military and he's a fairly figure. but finally, when he starts hearing that the you when he

starts hearing that the america bombing group, the 509th composite group is flying around tokyo, he thinks the next one is coming for him, coming for tokyo. and so he musters the courage to force the military to surrender. he has a say down what they call a sacred decision. he gets them all in his bunker underneath his library on the night of of august 9th. and he says, we have to surrender. even that doesn't end it because the surrender, there's another four or five days of arguing over all this. but the emperor comes around because he's scared and not unreasonably for his own life. so was togo doing this whole time? what position was he having waiting, and how did he work with the military and political groups to help in the war? togo had been agitating for quite a while to get them to surrender. one thing he had to do was he gets the whole supreme war council to meet in private secret because they're afraid of

their own staff. these generals are afraid their own subordinates are going kill them if they surrender. so he's been working this not totally successfully trying to get a mediation going with russia. but he's also there's a little group of, sort of a peace party, if you will, of his subordinates who are working inside the palace, trying to convince the the the the emperor's chief political aide that the time has come to surrender and that gradual he works because as i mentioned, the the emperor, who has always been dependent on the military, is supported by the military, but the military has been lying to him about how the war is going. and he's mad about that. and he's he's starting to fear that he himself might be kidnaped the military or or he's fearing that the americans are going to bomb him. his palace was burned out in may, mostly burned in may. so now he thinks that next bomb is coming for him and togo and his allies were able to appeal

to the emperor and get him to do this very thing of calling a meeting and declaring, no, we're going to surrender at the meeting, the emperor gets surrounded by his military chiefs as. he says, i agree with togo. i agree with the foreign minister. we have to surrender. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to debbie, who's calling from south carolina. debbie, good morning. thank you. good morning. and what a wonderful weekend for this discussion. i appreciate it like your author in the fifties and sixties the thought of nuclear war permeated my life as well from the drills at school to the civil defense building signs to my neighbor actually building our neighborhood a bomb shelter and having it completely stopped in 62. hate the thought of us ever having experience this type of again. my father fought with patton and

the european together and voting for deliberate france. he was sent home, but stateside, actually in june of 45, within struction of that they were to be sent out in three weeks to the pacific theater to fight the japanese. i, for one, think that bomb killed my father and many more who were virtually on their way from being killed. that's just my personal because it was my father. but again, i think is so much for this conference conversation. think we should all remember this and especially this we can't thank you the author excellent story. thank you. you know, i share your feelings about that because i mentioned at the top of the show my dad, a was a lieutenant. he was the executive officer on lst 292. that been to d-day had been the

d-day landings. and now they were headed to to the pacific. and my interesting the my my grandmother a diary and my mother, the woman who became my mother told my grandmother that one of my father's ship arrived in florida en route from europe, the pacific, by my mother told my grandmother. she said i'm going down to see even my dad and i hope i get pregnant, she said. and my grandmother wrote this in her diary and my grandmother wrote in her diary. i hope she does not get pregnant because she was afraid that he would die. that my father would die because everybody knew how awful this invasion was going to be. they had, you know, seen the news reports they had heard about iwo jima and okinawa, and they knew that this final assault was going to be a complete bloodbath. and it would have been a complete bloodbath. i do argue, as i did earlier in

the show that i think maybe the invasion never would have happened because we had figured out how to starve the japanese to death. this would have saved lot of americans, maybe even worse. the japanese. it's hard to imagine what's worse than being hit by two atom bombs, but massed ovation could have killed millions. so there are no good outcome, you know, these horrible wars once you start them, they are hard to finish. and this is the dilemma facing all of these these policymakers, you know, the call it caller mentioned that you know what it was like in the fifties when we were all scared of this. i'm afraid we're entering an era where we need to be scared again. maybe not in quite the same way, but, you know, the arms race is on again and the russians are threatening to use tactical weapons in the ukraine. china is building up its nuclear arsenal and we are facing a

confrontation with the chinese over taiwan i'm afraid that we're back in a risky area that the the threat of nuclear war has not gone away. as we we'd all hoped that it had when the soviet union fell and in 1989, 1990, unforced, finally this terrible fear that we had back then. that's that's that's in some ways back. talk a little bit about the consequences for your three main characters after the two bombs hit japan where where were where did stimson sit? where did that spot sit and where did togo sit after the bombings on the morning that that secretary of war stimson brings the photographs of hiroshima to harry truman, to the president that morning when he presents in the photographs and he shows steps, he shows

truman what hiroshima looks like, which is, i say in the book, like the inside of an ashtray. ean, just four and a half miles of just ash on that morning, stimson has a heart attack. that's just how troubled he was by this. now he's an older man. he's 77. so maybe it's a coincidence, but i don't think so. he has a heart attack and then a month later, he has a bigger heart, too. later he has a bigger heart attack. he's tried to persuade truman to do arms control, to share the secret of the bomb with the russians because afraid that if we have arms control, we're going to have an arms race and we could have a world ending nuclear war. so he is the very beginning. this is september 1945. he is trying to. truman let's try to get arms control going. let's trust the russians enough to share the weapon. truman says no. and in fact, the russians are

pretty untrustworthy. i'm not even sure that would have worked. in fact, i doubt that would have worked. but it shows you how desperate stimson was. and stimson was not a desperate kind of person, was a very direct, strong, self-confident. but he was desperate enough to try to get control because he feared that the nuclear genie was out the bottle. and we needed to try to stuff it back in. so he was in. he died. he died in 1950, kind of guilty about all this. but he's not the type of man that you associate with guilt, but he was guilt stricken. he defended the decision to use the bomb, did it very publicly, but privately. he was bothered at in troubled general spots, same sort of thing. he was made air force chief of staff, you know, rewarded with honors and responsive ability. but his granddaughter, me, he was haunted by the bomb and late

in his life, he would sort of mournfully sigh and he couldn't sleep. and he told her he felt guilty about it. he had killed all those people togo in arrestingly, even though he saved japan and saved the world. really. i mean, save the world from further disaster. he is sentenced to prison as war criminal. why? he had been in the japanese cabinet, the japanese ruling cabinet at the time, pearl harbor. so he was deemed be a war criminal. i think this is nuts. they should have given him a medal. but he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. he dies in prison. he had anemia he dies in prison in 1950. he, unlike the victors, is not troubled because he did his best to end the war. he didn't use the weapon. he did his his a peace with himself because he knew that he did the he could to end the war.

let's go back to our phone lines and talk to david who's calling from dallas in texas. david, good morning. good morning. good morning. please give me an extra few seconds. you took me a tangent. stalin was as bad, were they joint to get? they were in joint action against poland. that, quote unquote started world war three or the i mean, to officially and after the invasion they actually controlled more poland and germany, but went on to take latvia, georgia, all the balkans states. and it was a really interesting movie that shows at the end of the war. 1944, where whereas the russians were pushing back against berlin, they had drafted hundreds of thousands of into their service as they pushed back against the germans. the germans later, when they pushed the russians out of latvia in the balkan states, drafted men from those same states. and at the end of the war they had this interesting battle took place. we thousands of latvians on both the russians and german sides fighting each other anyway

sideline trusting with the atom bomb. no, thanks. presenteeism. and you mentioned the starvation. i wrote a book years ago about macarthur, japan and the reconstruction of japan was fascinating. one of the things they mentioned was a i believe i remember the story somewhat accurately. they had a breakfast early on where macarthur was the only one there served and maybe a few other. he was. yeah. that's why you know everybody can get eggs was told there were no more eggs in tokyo or wherever he was. the discussion about that point turned to starvation. they talked about how the japanese no navy left. i they had like one or two subs, one that sank the indianapolis coincidental but they would have there would have been something like 10 million japanese starved in a month if we put a blockade around it and haven't got any food in whatsoever from the time i had read a eulogy to okinawa that showed what kind of casualties we'd be facing if we

if we had to actually land on their mainland, mean, i believe they considered one of those two islands, japan, any way they were going to fight brutally weren't going to surrender. like you said, they were going there. they were working not to win the war at that point, but to get some of terms. the. the of how many days does somebody wanted to delay the war and delay the end of the war. so you drop one bomb, you know, they're not going stop you drop to i don't know i'd like you to answer how many bombs had. i didn't know we had more than two at the time. but every of the war. how many more? thousands of people are going to be dying? you know, it's not just what's happening by fighting the japanese had what was going on in china all over all over southeast asia. there were people dying all over the place. and anything that bring that war to a to a quicker stop where people of america who had fought for four years, the british who had fought for, what, six, the chinese who had fought for what?

i mean, it was this was a disaster. and the chinese, japanese, don't forget, they killed 250,000, approximately, in revenge for the doolittle raid. had the rape of nanking. you had, i mean, again, all the stuff that was going on in china, this war needed to stop. and you cannot blame those men and the people that time for coming up with any they could to stop the war. even one day short of what it might have been otherwise. just go ahead and respond to him. and i actually want you to address this question. were there more bombs available after hiroshima and nagasaki? were there were two been a third bomb available about august 20th. so surrenders on the august 15th, and we would have been able to drop a third bomb about august 20th. we would have had about, i think, seven bombs by the end of september or and then an increasing number our as we got more plutonium. so we were there was a pipeline to build bombs general the army chief of staff was thinking in

the using atom bombs as tactical weapons in an invasion of the japanese in he was ordering planning of use for using seven or nine atom bombs as as tactical weapons in november were in an invasion it would have been they again they didn't understand radiation very well. he they were told just wait a day before you go in. fortunately none of that took place. the viewers. a good point about all the people dying in. there was very good research by richard, who wrote a book called called downfall now has a series on the pacific war is done volume one, tower of skulls. and he makes the point that. 250,000 people were dying every in asia from the brutal japanese occupation. i believe that the --, for instance, in vietnam there was a

rice famine because of it. the japanese took all the vietnamese rice to make try to make aviation fuel. so the japanese occupation was horrendous in asia and stopping the war saved not just the americans and japanese, but many, many chinese people in southeast asia from death because the food, the war stopped and american bounty began to flow and we were able to start to feed people. they could feed themselves as well without a war going on. but, you know, literally millions of lives perversely, perversely, millions lives were saved by, killing a couple of hundred thousand people on august 6th. and ninth. that's that's a it's kind of a gross equation. but that's what happened. well, president biden visited japan in and actually visited the hiroshima memorial museum. what was the significance of

that visit by the president? well, it's a good ramyun that about these weapons. one thing i worry about and i think a lot of people worry about is, you know, after 45, there was a taboo on using these weapons. we remembered how terrible they were. but that taboo, i fear is eroding. it's a long time since 1945 and younger generations may not be as aware. people like me who grew up in the 1950s fearing the bomb. certainly our parents generation who were, you know alive at the time? but the younger generation, your folks may, it may be kind of a distant thing. and i fear that the taboo is wearing off and that putin is going to use one of these things in the ukraine or china is going to use one of them on us or taiwan and maybe we'd use one back. and i just don't in the idea of limited nuclear war, i think once you start these things, you keep on using them and that's

potentially, you know, cataclysmic, potentially the end of the world. god save us from ever coming to that. but but you know, those threats are real and they're they are still i'm sorry to say i, still with us. what do you think the significance is that the president and no president has ever actually offered an apology for the us bombing of japan. you know, that's a morally fraught question. i don't know what i think about that. i don't think the united states should apologize for it. i mean, you know, to be crude about this, japan started this at pearl harbor. they were aggressors in china. and with us, they were guilty of all sorts war crimes and. yes, we did use this horrible weapon and it has the feel of an atrocity but as i've been arguing for the last hour, it

was necessary. so i don't really think the united needs to formally, you know, apologize to japan. i think there needs to be a recognition on all sides that we will never use these weapons again. that's what needs to happen. well, let's see if we can squeeze in another call. let's go to robin, who's calling from rochester, new york. robin, good morning. yes, hello. can your guest give any details about what the aviators, what their thoughts were about delivering bombs and what they felt when the when the bombs are dropped on japan and also, were there any firsthand accounts on the ground when the bombs are dropped from any bomb, any? were there any foreign correspondents at the time when the bombs were dropped?

they were in the airplanes. there was kind of amazement at what they had done. and some men, some were troubled by it. but i think most of them, not all of them, but most of them made their peace with that. they they saw that they been part of something that was necessary to ending the war. they that was an amazing achievement to be able to do. so i think tibbets, the the commander of the pilot, he was he never showed remorse about it. he felt he had done his duty and and part of ending the war early. there have been reports that some of the crew members later in life were troubled. that would be completely understandable and natural. but i think by and large, the crews felt okay about it as as as as time went on. i'm sorry what was the other question? how did the crews feel and then what was the other question? and also wanted to know about how the were there any foreign

correspondents on the ground. were there any ground ground memories of the bomb? yes, of course, they fragmentary reports from hiroshima and nagasaki, not from correspondents, but people on the ground. they didn't really it took a while to figure out really what had happened. the famous route story is the book hiroshima, written by john hersey a year later, where hersey a new yorker reporter goes back and goes to hiroshima. he tells the story of six people who were there. and it's such a vivid, terrible, awful story that it actually made people in america who'd been accepting of the bomb start to think maybe we did. we really have to that thing. it changed public. and, you know, the debates going back and forth ever since. i think most polls today that maybe two thirds of american believed that we needed to use the weapon and maybe a, third, do not. those numbers move around a little bit, but i think that's

the state of public opinion today. let's see if this last caller can give us a quick question. let's go to patrick, who's calling from madison in connecticut. patrick, good morning. hi. how are you mr. thomas? all right. i was wondering if you could if you could talk a little bit about the atrocities the japanese performed like on the island jima. i read about in a book flyboys, where the japanese were actually eating our american prisoners. they were eating our prisoners of war. thank you know, those cannibalism i mean, it was the japanese were very the rape of nanking where there was organa ized rape and murder of chinese people. the i think the statistic that's most telling is that if you were captured, the germans and american captured by the germans, i think something like 10% of our our p.o.w. is german. you know, are people captured the germans died in the

japanese. it was more like 60%. another was the japanese were much more brutal than the germans were germans were not exactly welcoming, but the japanese were horrible and their bad written about this, laura hillenbrand wrote a famous book i think was called undaunted a life in the life for an american p.o.w. in japanese prisoner of war camp was horrible torture, starvation, or even even cannibalism. we have a another quick question from dallas, texas in the us, and maybe you can address this one quickly. very interesting topic. enjoying it very much. the question is, did the japanese wind up facing the war crimes trials, etc., even after bomb was dropped? if so, what was the outcome. there were war crimes trials. the top government i think there were seven people were hung. much of a bunch of sentences.

so there were there were consequences. and then there are lots of smaller war crimes for specific atrocities in the philippines all over the place. and i don't remember the number, but lot of japanese officers were hung for their atrocities. so there was there was justice afterward. some people argued too much that we overdid it. but there there were war crimes trials and there were consequences. 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the vietnam. tonight on q&a, we'll discuss the war with metropolitan museum of art president and ceo daniel weiss. mr. weiss his book in that time tells the story of poet and musician michael o'donnell, who went missing in action during the war after. the helicopter he was piloting was shot down over cambodia, but because there was no one else there and it had to be done, o'donnell made the decision immediately that he would rescue men. so he went down to to into the landing zone area and he hovered

on the ground for 4 minutes waiting for the reconnaissance team to arrive there, which is in a battle condition in eternity. it's a very long time to be sitting vulnerable to the enemy. but he he waited. the reconnaissance team arrived injured but safe. they boarded the helicopter, all of them. and o'donnell began to pull the helicopter up above the tree line and radioed, i have all i have everyone. i'm coming out. daniel weiss with his book. in that time, this memorial day, weekend, tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. you can listen to q&a and all of our podcasts on our free c-span now app. book tv every weekend on c-span two features leading authors discussing. their latest nonfiction books design mom dot com founder blair shares her book ejaculate responsibly, where she argues

that the abortion debate focus more on the lack of accountability by men in preventing unwanted pregnancies. then fox news columnist bethany mandel, author of stolen youth contends that leftist ideology is passed along to today's young people through education, entertainment and culture. watch book, tv every weekend on c-span to. and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at bk tv. talk. c-span is your unfiltered view of government who are funded by these television companies and more, including spark lite, the greatest town on earth is the place you call home spark light. it's our home, too and right now we're all facing our greatest challenge. that's why spark light is working round the clock to keep you connected. we're doing our part so it's a little easier. do yours? sparkling light support c-span as a public service alongith

these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy? see. at c-span's washington journal every day. we're taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day and will discuss policy issues that impact coming up monday morning. we'll talk about mental health care challenges facing current and former members. the u.s. military with former va undersecretary for health and retired major general richard. watch washington journal live at seven eastern monday morning on c-span or on c-span. now our free mobile. join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. and susan rice reflects on her time. president biden's domestic policy adviser. she talks with jonathan capehart of the post as she prepares to step down from her position.