Why do you think your grandfather made that decision . Guest my grandfather always said that he made a decision to end the war and save american and japanese lives. I understand that thats a simplistic answer, but that was something that he stuck to all of his life. For me i have been listening a little bit to the Previous Program the previous guests. It is still today a complicated issue whether it was the right decision to end the war. Whether a blockade would have done the same thing. Whether or not we would have had to invade. For me working with survivors, working with the truman library, for me its more important to listen to the stories, to understand why it happened, why the decision was made. So that we dont do it again. And more broadly so that we can avoid future conflict. I think if we look at all the reasons that we got to where we got in 1945, well have a bert understanding how to head it off again. Although sometimes i dont have much hope for that. Host what sort of resources have you used in your quest to figure out that decision . Where are you looking for information on your grandfathers decision . Guest just reading broadly. Biographies of my grandfather, his own memoirs. Writing books that he wrote after the presidency. From his point of view, but also on the other side talking to survivors, working with survivors of hiroshima and nagasaki. Listening to the stories. Trying to understand the Japanese Point of view. Just generally whatever comes my way, whatevers new. Whatever i think i might be able to get some more understanding from. Host you were well along in your career and profession, the life of a parent, when in 2012 you were the first truman to visit hiroshima as part of a visit there. A program we aired in with cspan back in 2012. What prompted your decision to go to japan . To go to hiroshima . Guest ill try and shorten it. Its a bit of a long story. When my son, wesley, was 10 years old, he came home from school with a book. Adako and 1,000 paper cranes for those who dont know the story, he was a real she was a real little girl that survived the bombing of hiroshima at the age of 2. She and her family were lucky. They survived largely unhurt. They lost their grandmother in the attack. She went on to develop radiation induced leukemia 9 years later at the age of 11. In the hospital she followed a japanese tradition that if you ld 1,000 or gamy pape origami paper cranes, crane is the sign of life in japan. She folded 1,300 cranes. Sadly she died of leukemia in 1955 at age 15. There is a monument to her and to all of the children who were killed or sicken the or wounded by the sickened or wounded by the bomb in the peace park today. Wesleys teacher didnt just give them the book. She taught them japanese culture, history. She took them to a japanese restaurant. They folded cranes in class. They had a tea ceremony. I came home one afternoon from work and found wesley in the living room wearing a kimono with green tea and sushy laid out on the coffee table behind him. So she and wesley brought all of japan into our house. On subsequent anniversaries of the bombings when japanese journalists called looking for a comment from a member of the truman family, i mentioned that story. I mentioned that we had read the story together. And i told wesley at the time that i thought it was important for him to understand his great grandfathers decision, his countrys point of view, but also to understand what that cost the people of hiroshima and nagasaki. Wesley said that he enjoyed the book. He remembered as a child enjoying the book. And what he said was it was different from all of his other childrens books. And it did not have a happy ending. A ink it was in 2005 i had sadakos apan, from older brother, himself a survivor of the bombing. He had read japanese journalist account, read the interviews they had done with me. And asked me if we could meet someday. If we might be able to work together. And i said yes. It took us five more years. E did not meet until 2010 in new york city. Him and his son were visiting the 9 11 museum. The tribute center. To donate one of sadokos last original cranes as a gesture of healing for the never terrorist attacks. During that interview, he took a tiny crane from a plastic box he carries and dropped the crane into my palm and told me that that was the last crane that she had folded before she died. And at that point he and his father asked me if i would consider visiting hiroshima and nagasaki and going to the ceremonies. And i agreed. Host our guest is Clifton Truman daniel. We are showing video from that 2012 visit. Video that we had as part of a program with you in that year in 2012. We are going to get to more from that in just a moment. We want to make sure folks know our phone lines are open. 2027488,000. For those in the east and central time zones. 2027488001 nountwran and pacific. For those of you who are World War Two veterans or families, 2027478002. Japanese americans, we welcome your calls on 2027488003. During that trip, mr. Daniel, you spoke to several survivors. I wanted to play the video shot by your son, am i right, your son shot some of this. I want to show conversation one. Survivors telling his story. Well get back to your comments. I remove the rubble by digging around the area. And i managed to remove a felled tree. But in the front, the concrete foundation of our house was covered with a big pillar. I couldnt go forward. And mother was lying face up about a meter away. And her eyes were bleeding. Since i couldnt make it to her side i asked her, can you move . She said, no. Numbers you can remove this stuff from my shoulder i cant move. But i wouldnt. I was a mearl tearistic boy militaristic boy, i knew japan was cornered and going to lose soon. So i was always dreaming every day that i would get on a plane and throw myself directly on to the u. S. Battleship. I never imagined such a horrible hing would happen to me. But i had to say to my mother the fire is spreading so fast that i cant help you. And my mother said, get away from here quick. And i said, go visit my father who passed away in may. Ill follow you shortly. So i went away from the scene leaving my mother knowing that she was going to die in the ire. Host Clifton Truman daniel, how did those stories and your 2012 trip change your perspective on the bombing of hiroshima . Guest obviously i think your viewers will also agree that those are hard to listen to. We listen to they call it testimony. Survivors give testimony. My family and i listened to more than two dozen on that trip in 2012. But as hard as it is for me to listen to, you have to remember i have to remember its much harder for the survivors themselves to relive it. They do day after day after day when they tell those stories. They are committed to doing that. Again, so that we understand the horror of the nuclear attack. And prevent it. Dont do it again. I was struck by the survivors by that kindness, that generosity that they are willing to retell these stories over and over again for our benefit. Not one of them came to me in anger or recrimination or they simply wanted to tell me those stories. And asked me at the end of each interview that i would help keep telling those stories. Again, in the name of disarmament and peace. Host those survivors obviously now 80 years or older, what do you see as your role, as those survivors die, pass away, what do you see as your role in telling the hiroshima story . Guest to keep telling the stories. To keep openly and honestly telling those stories on both sides, telling the human story the the atomic bombings, decision, effects, reasons to keep being opened about that and keep telling those in the name of honesty and accurate history. Host did it feel uncomfortable for you at all to be in the room knowing that decision was made by your grandfather . Guest no. And i will credit the survivors for that. And ors and my hosts companions through that. No, the atmosphere was respectful. Again, open, blunt, factual, but respectful on both sides. I was not uncomfortable in that regard at all. Host we have plenty of calls waiting. Our guest, Clifton Truman daniel. Oldest grandson of former president harry truman. On this 75th anniversary, our line for those of you world war ii vets or family members, william in florida, good morning. Caller yes. When i was i landed on okinawa when i was an 18yearold boy. 2,000 time had about landing crafts. These landing crafts are going to be used to invade japan. Two 1 2 had over thousand kamikaze planes. Bill, a very good friend of mine, he was involved with General Macarthur and the invasion of japan. And i said to him, what would when was it going to be . He said well it was going to be november 1. I said we had a tremendous typhoon on ok in a ma with a in okinawa in that month. I said what would have done for the invasion . He said it would have destroyed the invasion. He says, i know the winds were over 150 miles an hour. Destroyed everything on okinawa. And there was no way that their invading fleet would survive. He says, in fact, general acarthur sent bill to japan to check out the area. He was the nirs american First American in japan after the atom bombs. He said the destruction was unbelievable. But what they had waiting for us, he says, was unbelievable, too. He said they had submarines. Twoman subsequent. All kinds of fortfications. The civilians were all armed to their teeth waiting for the americans to invade. Host thanks for your call. Mr. Daniel. Guest i have heard similar stories. Im not familiar with the typhoon that william mentioned. Those are stories that i heard so from survivors that although they were some of them, of course, that feel that japan was defeated and that it was only a matter of weeks, months, days before they surrendered. At the same time the survivors tell stories of drilling with spears. Of fighting with anything that they could. With kitchen utensils. Civilians were going to be attached to groups of soldiers to fight side by side. Those stories res. Nate with me. Resonate with me. At the same time civilians were terrified. This was not something that they they trained for, but this was not something that they expected. The japanese government was telling them they were all going to fall like the petals of a cherry tree, it was going to be a glorious mass suicide. Thats in line with stories i heard in japan. Host ann in north carolina. Good morning. Aller good morning. I am a student of american history. Naturally for me i want to find ut more about the country. Nd im residing. How would your guest answer the question would japan surrender without a bomb taking into consideration the decisions at the yalta conference in february that took place, 1945, when british Prime Minister winston churchill, president franklin roosevelt, and soviet leader Joseph Stalin decided that soviet union would enter the war against japan. Nd it did. At that time when the bomb was dropped, the soviet union took so much territory that japan occupied and it was basically about to enter had a qaeda hakaida host the soviets . Caller the soviet army was about to enter hakaida. Exactly at that time when the bomb was dropped. So the first one. Was it really necessary . Because the soviet army would occupy japan. They were moving fast. Japan, indeed, they were fighting fiercely, but at that time the power of the soviet union was huge. So they were moving very, very fast. They were right there. Host ann, ill let you go. It Clifton Truman daniel, the survivors you talked to, what did they tell you that the state of the populace at that time. What was the population like . Were they prepared for any sort of potential invasion be it soviet or america . Guest they were prepared. They were preparing for the invasion. Drilling with the bamboo spears. Drilling with army units. But at the same time they had ian was saying this in your previous segment, they had very little left in terms of the civilians had little left. No fuel. Food was scarce. One of the survivors, the first survivor that i ever heard a gave the from, acceptance speech when the International Campaign to abolish Nuclear Weapons won a nobel price for peace, she gave the acceptance speech. Shes a nearly lifelong disarmament advocate. When the bomb was dropped she was a 13yearold school girl. She and 29 classmates were in an Army Building in hiroshima learning to use the japanese secret code machines. And as she told me when we met, we had nothing. We had no food. We had no fuel. You had school girls learning how to use the secret code machines in advance of the invasion. So while both was going on, both were happening, you had this you had them preparing for an invasion gearing up to fight american soldiers, but they were doing it with whatever they had at hand. Host how do the japanese generally view the post War Occupation by the u. S. . Guest some of the stories i heard in japan, one of the ones that springs to mind was that after the bombings, survivors recorded their stories by writing it down. They wrote poetry. They wrote long hand. They wrote it out. Wrote their experiences down. They drew pictures. There were a lot of japanese drew pictures of things they had seen and been through. The occupation government, the u. S. Government, confiscated a it was at because inflammatory. They figured that if you had a lot of that out there, people really knew the horror of the bombings, it would make it harder to occupy japan. Harder to rebuild. Theres resentment over that. Theres resentment over the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission hospitals which were set up following the war to study radiation victims. They couldnt treat. They didnt know how. They didnt treat. They studied. On the one hand that was helpful to general understanding, not only to the patients understanding of their disease but world understanding of racialation poisoning. But it felt like lab rats. Host who was running those hospitals . The us us . Guest that was us. Yes. Host hear from kenshi in washington, d. C. Good morning. Caller i just wanted to bring out two important facts that im just visiting from japan. First of all most people seem to be unaware that whenever the u. S. Bombed, they would drop leaflets, a total of 70 million were dropped, that specifically said we dont want to harm you. We are working to bring peace to the country. And would specifically warn people to leave the areas they would be bombing the next day. Over 70 million were dropped. Second, when you speak to when you are in japan, theyll never tell you this, but especially the older people, i have heard from probably over 100 of them, they will tell you when they heard the news of the bombing of hiroshima, they danced in the streets. Ill give you a quote from because that meant the war would finally be over. The leader of the pearl harbor ttack, met in 1959 with paul tibbitts, one of the ones that dropped the bomb. S in his quote. You did the right thing. The japanese attitude at that time was fanatic. Every man, woman, and child would have resisted the invasion with sticks and stones. And finally, its very important that the this narrative now has developed, but when you speak to the people that actually were adults and remember, they were all say when they saw the american bombers flying overhead and then when they heard about the bombs, they were so happy because there was no way they felt terrible for the one that is had passed away, but they knew if the war came on land, approximately at that time about three Million People would have died. So it was the interesting thing is, i was in baghdad before the war, and it was the exact same situation. The people were so desperate. Nothing could lodge a bad ruler. They said let the americans come. We would rather have them bomb us. Some of us will difmente at least well be free. Two important facts. Number one, over 70 million leaflets were passed distributed. If you go online you can see them all. They are just they say the world is with you, japanese people, hang on. Everything will be ok. We are very sorry but the only thing we can do is bomb. You go so we let can get a response from our guest. Guest thank you. Those are familiar to me. Think of another story that she told. Emperorsed to the broadcast, surrendering on august 15, she and her family. They set up a loudspeaker or radio system, a hanging speaker from a tree. They had got up into the hills outside of the city to escape and she remembers people weeping, crying out, stunned, as you said, both in relief and stunned japan would surrender. And frankly surprised to be hearing the emperors voice, it was certainly the first time all of them around the speaker had heard the emperor speak. He did not often address the japanese people directly. Host want to show our viewers some information on those leaflets. If you look at the atomic heritage association, an article about some of those leaflets and how they were used. California, next up. William, good morning. Caller good morning. Quitee on all of this is different from what you have already heard. Dads born in 1943, and my at that time, until he retired, was an Administrative Assistant admiral the submarine base. Very important during that time, submarines were very important. Eureka, lived in california, we lived in vallejo, mothers brother. He asked if he could live in the basement. He did the lettering on the doors to all of the offices and stuff like that. Today, they have vinyl lettering. It had to be done at the time. Anyway, as i was growing up, 1943, said, i was born in and as i was growing up, my uncle lived in the basement and my parents were always gone on the weekends and he was like a babysitter. He would be stone sober monday through friday, but saturday and sunday, drunk as a skunk and i could never understand that. I just thought that was the way he was. But he was suffering from what we now call posttraumatic stress disorder. What would happen as i got older, he started going into the war, talking about the war, he was in the army. One time he scared the living daylights out of me, i will never forget it. I went downstairs, he broke out his rifle, and then he reached into this private area he had and he brought out a bayonet, he put it on i did not know what it was he put it on the end of the gun and started telling me how he was killing japs that is what he called them. He got furious. And then he settled down, because i guess he realized i was just a little kid and he put it all away and he apologized and he never did it again, but he will talk about it every time he was drunk. My perspective is, my uncle did not want to kill anybody. He was the nicest person you wouldve ever met in your life. Host your response. Guest thank you. To talk about your uncle, i think of fred mitchell, who lived in pennsylvania, i dont know if mr. Mitchell is with us any longer, he fought in the pacific. He was like your uncle, he never wanted to kill anything as a child growing up on a farm, he could not shoot deer when he went hunting with his father. He did not like to kill anything. He wound up fighting in the war in the pacific i think he was a Radio Operator on a destroyer. Two kamikaze planes hit his destroyer and he was lucky to have survived. Theas blown out by explosion. Destroyed battery was and he lost most of his friends and he wound up in the water for hours, gasoline, burning water, and he was traumatized came back and was treated for ptsd. For decades afterwards, he hated the japanese, kept that hatred. It got so bad that his wife and his parents did not know what to do. They were a religious family, they attended church every sunday, but he could not shake this and they were worried about him. If he saw someone that even looked as if they were of asian descent, it did not matter chinese, korean he got angry. Finally, he watched a program on television about a group of former marines who had fought on okinawa, and a group of former kamikaze trainees who had gotten together, they met in japan and talk to each other and put it behind them. One thing or another, he wound up doing something similar. He traveled to japan, he met with former kamikaze trainees and said we were just a bunch of old men talking to each other, they were just like me. He was in his 70s when this happened. He was finally able to put that hatred away. Host you talked to many survivors of hiroshima, i assume nagasaki as well. Have you ever spoken to former crewmembers of the planes the dropped the bombs the enola gay . Guest i have not spoken to anyone on the enola gay. Host we will go to larry in gallup, new mexico. Good morning. Caller good morning. Nation andhe navajo i want to say a piece regarding the navajo code talkers. Served on the islands, iwo jima, nagasaki. Wereavajo code talkers they heard the the navajos were working in the South Pacific headquarters they were told something was going to happen. That was the message they sent out. Events in the bombing the navajo, some of code talkers were sent into nagasaki and hiroshima, confiscating weapons, distributing food and clothing. Sentwas the message they after the occupation back to San Francisco through navajo code. We dont know who the navajo code talkers were who sent that code, that was part of history. Thank you. Maybe you can Say Something andt the American Indians their role in the post occupation of japan. Host Clifton Truman daniel. Guest i dont know the history of native americans and the ivajos in the occupation, but know someone who was also there with the code talkers. Captain artillery fought his way across the pacific. Invasion,he expected he was looking at maps of nagasaki, they were supposed to land in nagasaki near the port area. Valley, is a deep japanese gun placements were going to be able to reign shells down on them down on them. He was worried they would not make it through the initial assault. He was hugely relieved they did not have to land at nagasaki. They ended up landing at nagasaki weeks later as part of the occupation and he was heartsick about the devastation. He said the hillsides were bear, nothing standing. No trees, no buildings. The u. S. Army had disarmed the japanese officers, taken their weapons, taken their swords. There was a huge pile of swards, ceremonial swords. All of the men were urged to take these as souvenirs come otherwise the u. S. Would have to destroy them. He was not a souvenir taker, but niceose the swords, a sword and scented home. Over the years afterward, he did not put it over his mantle, he did not show it off, he kept it in the closet and had a devil of a time keeping his children and grandchildren away from it. Over the years, he kept it clean, he wailed it, he oi led, he kept the blade clean. Over the years, he wondered who it belonged to and if he should give it back. He tried off and on over the years to see if it could find the owner or the owners family but never had success. When he retired 67 years after the war, through the st. Paul, minnesota nagasaki, japan sister city, he found someone who could translate the wooden tag on the sword. Ais tag was wooden and had name and address. Through sheer luck and a lot of phone calls, they found the son of the owner of the sword, the owner who had to give it up. A japanese newspaper executive in nagasaki. He wrote to him and said he wanted to give the family back his fathers sword. He came to the u. S. With his wife and two sons to receive the sword back. The ceremony was packed and it was very emotional. There was a writer who helped arrange this. She writes about survivors of hiroshima and nagasaki and she helped survive this. She said i cant get any work done because i keep getting phone calls with people who want to return swords. Int lets hear from joe wilmington, north carolina. Caller i am the son of a world war ii veteran who worked all the way up to czechoslovakia and saw nazis were using children and old people at the end. My father volunteered to be part of the european element of young soldiers. A that time he was 21yearold staff sergeant. They went down to naples where they were building a ship and they kept them on board for three days. When they released him, they said there were bombs that had been dropped upon japan. Beentainly may not have , my father served 30 years in the military and used to talk to a lot of people that were pows and survived different battles from iwo jima. When i was stationed in new mexico, i met a couple of navajo peoplelkers, which more should be talking about that element, as well. Harbor, was no pearl there would be no issue about talking about that. Japans Imperial Force was in china in the 1930s. Host thank you for your call. You mentioned the code talkers. We have covered several programs. Website, cspan. Org, you can find information. Our guest is Clifton Truman daniel, talking about the 75th anniversary of hiroshima and nagasaki. Mr. Daniels is also the honorary chair of the board of trustees at the library institute. You have written a couple of books about your grandparents. Did you ever ask your grandmother about the bombing of hiroshima . Guest no, i did not. Going back to whether i asked my grandfather or grandmother, we saw them on family vacations. These were also vacations from school. The last thing i was looking for was another history lesson. Host [laughter] guest my grandmother, the same way. I did not ask her about the bombings. I dont think my grandfather or my grandmother would have told me anything differently than they would have told you or anyone in the audience. Was open andr consistent with his views and there is nothing family would have learned that the public did not know. Let me go back for two seconds to say to joe in wilmington, it was nice to hear from someone in wilmington because i lived there for 15 years. It was in wilmington at the end of a day full of ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in 1995 that i first met pacific war veterans and they were trying to get a hold of my mother, margaret truman. As we left an event, they were sleeve andnag her talk to her. My wife and i stayed behind and asked if there was something we could do for them. Both of these men had tears in their eyes and we asked what was wrong. They said nothing, we just want to thank her. Host i understand you were also vocal in encouraging former president obama to visit japan in 2016. Why was that . Guest in the interest of being open and honest about it. Decisions were made, horrible decisions in a war. , iistorian and broadcaster listen to him years ago and one thing he said the atomic bombings were certainly an atrocity, but they were the last atrocity in a war of atrocities. It was a devastating war. People make decisions in wartime that are fatal to millions of people. If we are going to learn from this, you have to keep talking about it, you have to be open and honest about it. President you think obama accomplished in that trip . Guest i thought he did exactly the right thing. He went and he listen. Peace park, he spoke to survivors. One of the survivors i believe he gave a hug he was a survivor of the bombing but also spent about 25 years of his life and a lot of his own money finding out exactly what happened to the 12 americans that were killed in hiroshima. They were prisoners, they were navy and army airmen, a mixed group that were prisoners in basement cells in the Police Headquarters in downtown hiroshima. Nine of them died immediately in the explosion, three of them died within a day or two of poisoning. Not much was known about what happened to them and their families back in the states did not know. He discovered a lot of the people he was interviewing for other survivors for other stories or drawing pictures of americans in hiroshima. He tracked down every lead and was able to find out what happened to the men. To let their families know in this country and memorialize them in another victims of hiroshima. Host about 10 minutes with our guest. Mickey, good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to tell you, my and seven of my uncles were in world war ii. They fought together from europe all the way through pacific and all of this. My father was at normandie, rmandy andthe no walk into a concentration camp in germany. He said even though he had fought in two of the biggest battles in history, but he never realized how terribly a human being could treat another human being until he walked into that concentration cap. Bombs, i wouldc like to put that into perspective. What the atomic bombs dropped on a war,id was it ended million tomated 70 85 Million People were killed during that war, and those atomic bombs put an end to it. Thank you. The debate goes on. I find myself, as i said earlier, in the middle of district i cannot, will not, tell it pacific war veteran that those bombs were not a good idea. They had been through so much already. They had fought for their country and endured a lot. I also cannot tell a survivor of hiroshima and nagasaki that the bombs were a great idea. They too suffered. That is what i try to look at the human suffering, the sacrifice on both sides. You have to look at the human stories to understand what happened and what that means. Host new york, good morning. Caller hello. I want to tell another side. My father was an air corpsman in new guinea. I wont say anything negative about the japanese today, but my father was in new guinea. He was in three different groups, and every Single Person but him was the only one left. He never talks about the war. When he got married to my mother, used to get up in the middle of the night and have his arms around her neck, the only jap. Jap is a dead he died at 56 years old because of it. Had we not dropped these bombs, we would still be at work. My father died in 1976. The last year of his life, he talked to me constantly about the war so i knew a lot about it. This was protecting their god. This was not protecting their president , their country, this was protecting their god. If we had not dropped those bombs, we would still be in war today. Severeer died with posttraumatic stress disorder, having a nervous breakdown and died at the age of 56 because of all of this. Host we will get a response. Guest thank you. Just said it yourself, you separate the japanese of today you also have to separate japanese civilians in 1945 from the Japanese Military. Wideinly, there was a range of emotion over the war among the japanese. There were those who were fighting for the last man, committing suicide, going down, and those who were brow beaten into that, who just went to live there lives and have peace and wanted the war to be over. I did a program with a survivor of the bombing of hiroshima. Old when thears bomb exploded, she was badly burned, she came to this country in the 1950s. We were with a group of International Students and when the time for questions came around, one of the students stood up and said, i am chinese. Sympathy, you want you want understanding for the bombings, what about what the Japanese Military did to my people, to china . She said very quietly, we had no idea. We did not know what was going on. Certainly, she did not. Some japanese dent, they understood fully. You have a broad range of understanding. Host the headline we saw you from the Associated Press survivors mark the 75th anniversary of the worlds first atomic attack. During your visit of 2012, what was your initial reaction of going into that peace park in hiroshima and how was your visit received by the media and the public . Guest my initial reaction in both hiroshima and nagasaki stuck, it should not have been a surprise but it was. Peace parks both are like being in a church or a mosque. It is Hallowed Ground. Ashes are three feet down in a layer of the soil which was called the sad layer of soil. You are on Hallowed Ground and you feel it. There is a feeling in both hiroshima and nagasaki, a feeling of peace, both cities are dedicated to peace. That was my initial reaction and it stuck. The reaction was positive. A couple of japanese journalists wrote positive articles about the upcoming visit. People were polite and kind, the japanese media was respectful. Hitch, and i should have been expecting it but i was not, i got a question in the first interview i did in tokyo before we even went to hiroshima. The reporter got two questions into the interview and said, have you come to apologize . As i said, it caught me off guard, it caught me flatfooted. I said no, this is not what this is about. This is about listening to the living. She kept rephrasing. If you did not come to apologize, why bother . She kept coming back to the point where my translator was half out of her chair to intervene and stop the interview because it was rude in the Japanese Point of view. I worried about that question all that afternoon at an event at Tokyo University all the way to hiroshima on a train. I thought, am i just going to wind up defending the apology thision, putting off doing the whole trip. I walked into the peace park the next morning and reporters hadnd the monument and i not seen him in two years. I had not seen him since we met in 2010. He came out and put his arms around me and hugged me and most of my worries evaporated that ment because he was showing in the japanese media and the japanese people that we were in this together. Host bonnie in ohio. Two uncles in world war ii and one got captured by the japanese, him and part of his squad, and they threw them down in a pit and cover them up. Every time to get out of the pit the japanese would kick them in the face with their boots and knocked him back down. After they came home, they never talked about it. Firstd out my moms husband was one of the guys who helped drop the bomb on hiroshima, when he came home he died a few months later. He said i dont ever want to see that again. You dont want to see it in your lifetime because it was very, very nasty. That is all i have to say. Host thank you. Again, the last atrocity in a war of atrocities. Host let me ask you from this point out what you have been doing in staying in contact with some of the victims, some of the survivors and their families. Does that work continue . Guest not as intensely as at first print when i first came back from japan, i spent four years working with a nonprofit in new york. The nonprofit over a period of eight years, they brought survivors to speak to more than 30,000 High School Students in the new york city area and i worked with them for four years doing just that. Up of the founders would get and talk about the Current Nuclear arsenal, the 17,000 or so Nuclear Weapons, all of them hundreds or thousands of times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed hiroshima and nagasaki, so many of them are on hairtrigger alerts. About are talking modernizing the nuclear arsenal. We feel like we are on the edge of another arms race. At the same time, there are countries working against nuclear proliferation. This still going on. I spent four years talking to students and i would tell the stories i am telling you now and then introduce a survivor and then he or she would tell his or her story about the day of the bombing and students were very receptive to that. High School Students can be tough to reach. They slouched in their chairs, they look at their phones. None of that was going on. They were paying attention. Selfies,s, they wanted they wanted to talk to the survivors, they wanted hugs and i got them. Host lets see if we can get a call or two more. Michigan, good morning. You are on the air. We will go to cameron in missouri. Good morning. Caller hi. I just want to say favor andyou do us a take your phone off speaker . It is a little hard to hear you. Caller i apologize. Is that better . Host that is better, yes. Caller ok. I just want to say that starting a war the something we have done for years in the past. Protests going on in america, looking back at our history, i realized that maybe there is a time coming when we dont have to fight war anymore. Andan just come to peace live in that peace had not have to go back to fighting anymore. If we can come to that time, we would be better off and not worry about which country is going to get which country. It is a chaotic mess. If we continue to fight wars, all we will do is hurt each other and damaging our neighbors. Daniel, ifon truman you can hold your thoughts for a minute. One more call from hawaii. Caller thank you so much. 2 30 in thep since morning to try to see this program. I am so happy to meet with you, the grandson of truman. Am 1946. , a days ago, from nagasaki professional photographer, he just passed away at the age of 96 print he was also a survivor from the nagasaki bomb. He and my father were very good friends. My father also passed away a couple years ago. I really wanted to see this program. In 2020, i think it is the intelligent era and we have internet. What we need to know out of all this tragedy of humans killing each other, we should put an end to it. We have to learn to appreciate and study languages. Can communicate with each other to a deep understanding, it is a cultural understanding. Japanese people had a long years, for thousands of we went through the samurai era, modernization era, everything we do has changed. Host i really appreciate you waiting through on the line. We will get some last thoughts. Guest thank you. Is nevada, missouri. Story itof you, the brings to mind is a survivor of cavesmbing of nagasaki in that were built into the hillside. She lost her family, she wound up homeless. She was sick. Her sister was so sick and disheartened that she committed suicide by stepping in front of a train after the war. She talks about her story, she speaks out in the name of peace. She had the quote that sums up what they were saying about war. She said simply i think peace , the basic idea of peace is to have some understanding of other peoples pain and i think that is very true. Host Clifton Truman daniel, it has been a pleasure to have you share some time with journal. s washington every day, we are taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day, and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. Friday morning, we will discuss the federal moratorium on evictions that is about to expire. And moodys analytics chief economist will be with us to talk about the state. Watch washington journal live friday morning, and join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. Book tv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming up sunday, msnbc political analyst sir lena maxwell with her book, the end of white politics. Interviewed by maria kumar. At 10 45, the maryland republican governor larry hogan on his life and career with his book still standing. Cspan2 this be on weekend. The perjury case against President Trumps former National Security advisor Michael Flynn will be reheard to the u. S. Court of appeals on tuesday. The panel of judges will decide whether a Federal District court judge must dismiss the charges as recommended by the justice department. Here the case live tuesday at 9 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan and at cspan. Org, or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Remarks from President Trump on the u. S. Economy and president ially, president ial candidate joe biden. He spoke in cleveland, ohio, for about 20 minutes