President ial libraries are living institutions certainly it is my hope the Reagan Library will become a dynamic intellectual for him where policymakers debate the future. Now bringing events online to ensure we are still delivering worldclass content even if you cant watch it in person. This week we bring you a small us anchor Fox News Sunday and in the 50th year the broadcasting industry participating in coverage of nearly every Major Political event in securing high profile interviews of dignitaries and leaders broadcasting the sunday morning show live from the Reagan Library Chris Wallace is with us today to speak about his new book and unforgettable account of the lives of the ordinary americans and with those soldiers fighting in the pacific to launch a possible invasion in japan and the story how 116 days going from the Vice President completely cut out of the fdr white house to suddenly become the president also best date on of the play coronavirus. Coming from air force one and academy Chris Wallace executive director karen high bush. Chris wallace congratulation congratulations. Letter to work coming to the Reagan Library i cannot read them all i could up is down. And i just loved it so congratulations not just on the first there for a great first ever. Thank you. Will say that the idea of a historical thriller because my favorite review those that Washington Post that doesnt know what happened in 1945 purposes a well. They say its a page turner and could not put it down and i am thrilled because thats what i wanted to do. Think so much is written in the distant past and thats not what i wanted to do. Wanted to take you into the moment and in this case count down 1845 that is the change the world then went amendment on truman was summoned to the white house and then find out roosevelt was dead and is sworn in and they take him aside afterwards and says i need to tell you about an immense project with most devastating weapon and history with resistance of the Manhattan Project not as he is struggling are making the decision when they dont know if the gadget would even work until 21 days before the bomb and the flight crew the enola gay who is on the mission to she mothers 1500 miles, they dont know if the bomb thats ever been dropped out of plane will knock them out of the sky. Thats what i was trying to do but it was a page turner and a thriller. I am thrilled as a b29 pilot i was riveted as you can imagine in the Army Air Corps you dont have to like the book see you have done very well done where this happens on many occasions thats a masterful job. Thank you you. Thats exactly what i was trying to do. There are dramatic moments. Truman has a meeting with his were cabinet on june 18 and Henry Stimson in the secretary of war all of the top brass discussing that the nazis have surrendered on may a telly will finish and win the war against the japanese. There is a long discussion of the invasion of japan and how many troops it will take and how long it will prolong the war hundreds of thousands of casualties than a junior man the assistant secretary of war ended up becoming a major figure high commissioner to germany and of the Warren Commissioner one four in the cap of the Warren Commission says nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think he asked stimson his boss i think we ought to have our heads examined if we dont at least discuss the bomb. That was literally and the were cabinet the first time in this meeting talk about the casualties and the length of the invasion nobody said the bomb and then basically it was dismissed because it had never been tested. Wasnt tested until july 1821 days before it was used against hiroshima and at that point in june truman viewed it as a science project if it worked great but if it didnt we had to go ahead. I know you are a student of history so what made you choose this particular moment . Its a funny story. I have the idea of doing exactly what i talked about to take a key moment history certainly faced with these challenges and dont know what will happen talking about reagan and with gorbachev i was fortunate enough to cover reagan and then, have reykjavik candies and honest discussions with the possibilities they could and all Nuclear Weapons is where falls apart but to say that went to these herbs and this meeting it creates a tremendous sense of suspense. I wanted to do that but i dont have a subject so february 2019 the day that President Trump will deliver the state of the Union Address and nancy will see environment several tv anchors over to her hideaway at the capital. This is what a lot of speakers have and it is a tradition in washington if the speaker and the president are of opposing parties, that the speaker will deliver the speech the president is to tell you all the reasons why it is bad. We are sitting in the room and nancy policy says this is the board of education. It out a few other folks knew but i knew the board of education was the hideaway and this is where he has people calm after hours to gossip or a strategy. Price president truman was a regular after he would preside over the senate and then telling us in this room he called the white house and then he speaks to a white house official incision need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible. Truman put down the phone and says jesus christ and the general jackson. I have never had before. [laughter] i thought to myself that is the story and that i will delve into to create a historical thriller and as it turns out 116 days from when he is a limited roosevelt has died and he is president of the promise dropped on hiroshima. Some writers respond how do you find that in your first book . Is it is a very odd experience. Is a little coaster their timesheet a delicious fact. I didnt know that when truman i knew the story of jesus christ in general jackson but i know that when truman gets to the white house and is sworn in he is a learned for the first time of the Manhattan Project and there are so many juicy details like that. The only tested the bomb once on july 21st im sorry july 16 and 21 days before they ended up using it so now the launchpad for the flight to tsushima, somebody says if we put this 10000pound bomb livability in the front of the plane then extra gas at the back so it doesnt fall down then its more we have ever carried and the plane might crash on takeoff if it has an atom bomb then there is the atomic exclusion on the us space and will do anything to the japanese. Certainly they say this is only two days for the mission , we cannot take off of the live on we will have to arm it on the plane during the mission so they turn to the officer and say can you do that . He says i never have but i guess i will. [laughter] and then in sweltering heat and then on the way to hiroshima and then he has to take off the casing and to the wiring and then the safety plugs and only then midway through the fight they say the bomb is armed and ready to go the bomb is armed and ready to go. So is like that so how do i tell the story is elements together . And then to say glad you discovered that. Did it surprise you that truman didnt know the first thing . That he and roosevelt have spoken and a couple of times per the Vice President something is important but i guess thats the case . Make people have talked to me about that. He was Vice President 82 days he met privately with roosevelt twice. The fact was, remember this is roosevelts fourth term. Not his first or even second Vice President. He had gotten pretty good to ignore Vice President s. Vice president s come and go i have my were cabinet those that i count on to make these decisions threw them off to the side so i mentioned the fact that stimson takes him aside on the day he was sworn in that truman is overwhelmed to just become the president and said i will give you time to settle in and i will come back. On april 25th, 13 days later he comes to the office to bring president truman not settled in and meanwhile and then to sneak in through underground tunnels and whether been given this a lot of thought that they had come through the front door together and what they are doing together so he snuck in and they gave truman a detailed document to read which explains the Manhattan Project and technical detail and truman complained and said i like reading on documents like this and they said mr. President , we cannot say it anymore but its a complicated project that is how out of touch he was the but of course the end when he made the decision he knew he mastered all of it. Another remarkable fact 25000 people americans working on this Manhattan Project and not a word gets out that is amazing. You are exactly right. So you cover trump and all the ups and downs and ins and outs today. And writing and researching as it has absolutely nothing to do with donald trump. [laughter] not a knock on the present about to say it took me away from all the stuff were in and goes precisely to point they were working on this project for almost three years. 125,000 people of oak ridge tennessee working on the palm and flight crews and not one word makes about the project. If you have 125,000 people today working on a secret project to bake apple pie by day number two survey would say it is outrageous. Was a simple time and when the country was more unified everybody pull together to end the war against the nazis and the japanese then we code use that now. You are not kidding. Fascinating of those two oppenheimer but then so to tell the listeners that is a great juxtaposition. One of the things he wanted on i wanted to do the book because the word just wasnt on the top level it was all of america and one of the stories i wanted to tell is the home front and then there is commentary and amazingly aid to people who are still alive a 19 yearold girl who volunteered to work at the uranium enrichment facility just a big factory and giant machines call tell it on machines. They were called the tele tron girls they had a bunch of knobs and had to keep in the right place they had no idea just to keep it in the road evil help in the war they had no idea what they were doing was enriching uranium creating petroleum to the atom bomb. That she had a boyfriend, later her husband those in europe and an army medic and then the nazis surrender and like a lot of other people delighted but she is terrified because he will not come from the expectation is to be shipped to bloodier conflict in japan. What she didnt realize where the dramatic irony is she is hoping to create the weapon that could save her boyfriends life and that is exactly what happened. And one of the great things as a student of history that are part lines you word never dream of confronting. A ten yearold girl come from a wealthy family and hiroshima and like allied of their families they didnt have any expectation of the atom bomb so that parents would send their children out to the countryside so there was a problem would be one that would be safe. And it ended up being a work camp but couldnt send a letter home because they were telling parents get me out of here. She mailed letter and the local post office get me out of here. Her mother shows up on august 4h to rescue her shoes through and then runs and says thank you and the mother says there is a lot of here in the city list a and the countryside but she says i want to go home so they spend the night and they go home and on august 5th of course that means theyre gone when the bomb is dropped on august 6. And to have a chance to see a clear purview and her going into the smithsonian and that seeing presence of the enola gay. So we do need a documentary fox news i assume you do subscribe to fox nation is called countdown 245 and i said to her would you consider coming to washington for an interview . She said under one condition. What sat . I want to see the enola gay. Never would have dreamt or even of asking her to do Something Like that. What she wanted to do it. So we got permission to go before the Museum Opened i know what her reaction would be she was stunned. Is also called a super fortress it was bright and shiny and we walked up to it. And i said you feel anger . She says i feel grief and grief stricken she thought for a while and then said i want to say a prayer for peace. What she did and then said i think this is an old man and i think he needs to leave the museum and go to sleep. And then she went to sayonara so on some level i think it provided closure. That is such a great moment. Lets go back to truman. T wasnt a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing but it was a choice between dropping the bomb and invading and the top experts and secretary at the pentagon said this was in the summer of 45 you could expect the war to go on at least another year and a half until the end of 1946 and you could expect a million japanese casualties and i have a million american casualties because as they got closer and closer to the homeland it took them three months and they ended up having to kill 100,000 japanese and the 20,000 that were left none of them surrendered. Some of them committed suicide in some of them kept fighting. Some of them were taken prisoner but they didnt surrender and so they knew they were going to have a terrible battle on their hands. Some people said okay but they would have surrendered any way to which my response is we dropped the bomb on hiroshima august 6th and the Japanese Military government does not surrender for three days so they then drop another bomb on nagasaki and the military government still does not surrender. Its the first time the majority have ever heard the voice of their emperor and he basically says we have to surrender and that was it, but it took two bombs and an emperor going over the heads of the government to get the japanese to surrender. I think one issue for truman and honestly i dont know if any president would have made any other decision if you had invaded and if you had lost thousands or hundreds of thousands of americans to their death or this a grievous injury and later it were to come out that you had access to a weapon that could have ended the war and said im not going to use it, i dont know that any president could have faced that or would have wanted to. So i will leave it to others if it was the moral thing to do or not but i think that its a realistic matter. I dont think truman had any choice. I think you are right it was such a catch22. One of the ways it feels like you take the reader, the material you got was just excellent and i wonder what was your source particularly as it relates to trump. I wonder if you are doing this as a commercial. After i read the histories, and theres a lot of histories out there that are very good, you want more so where did i go, the Truman Library in independence missouri. I spent a few days with an archivist as im sure so many scholars have going through these and the treasure trove was the diaries. I often think to myself as i covered reagan in the 80s and i spent six years in the White House Press corps but as i cover trump now, what is going on in their mind now we have access and a better sense of that. They were terrific. He was a good writer as was reagan and he said a lot of things that give you the inner conversation. One of the things i found interesting and its different than i think most peoples perception because he famously was thought of as a very decisive man. The buck stops here and he never looked back on it. As hes making the decision at a summit conference with churchill and stalin in july of 45, he was struggling with his decision. He was having trouble sleeping at night and complained of headaches he had whenever he was under stress in his career. And he keeps talking about a terrible weapon and he describes it in apocalyptic terms as the fire destruction prophecy in the bible. He made the decision and never looked back but this was enormous and he gave it all of the inner turmoil and struggling he should have. He wrestled with it. Tough job to be a president. Robert oppenheimer, talk to us about him. You described him a renaissance man and a genius. Fabulously brilliant as a physicist and people had no question if he had executive skills. He was a skilled administrator and one of the things he had to juggle is general groves, this bulldozer of a man and then all of these be madonna scientists that rebelled at the idea of the deadlines and military order. We talk about second thoughts. One of these other great things in the book after the bombing and after the war ends, truman never looks back on it. Hes asked about it for the rest of his life and he keeps saying i had to make the decision and if i had to make that call i would do it again. All of the people on the flight crew said the same thing. This was the way to defeat the enemy. The people that had second thoughts were the scientists. Albert einstein started the project when he writes a letter to roosevelt and his concern either in england or the u. S. They were concerned with the nazis would get the atomic weapon before the u. S. Or god forbid adolf hitler had a monopoly on the first true weapon of mass destruction. In any case, about a month after the explosion, oppenheimer comes to the white house and he sits down with truman and by this point hes racked with second thoughts and says mr. President , i have these terrible regrets. I feel i have blood on my hands. Truman says dont worry about it, i gave the order. I have the blood on my hands. He leaves and truman says to his staff i never want to see that son of a bench in this office again. Is such a moment. You also tell a story in the book i hadnt heard before and i want you to tell the whole story the part about the pulitzer and William Lawrence with the New York Times and the opportunity he had in the project and how all that turned out. William Leonard Lawrence was a science reporter for the New York Times and he had won a Pulitzer Prize for writing an article on a scientific project. He also thinks to himself this is going to be an immense story and i want it told right. This is another example of the difference between the unity of that time and what we have today so this military general goes in to see the editor and says i would like, because he knows about lawrence. I would like him to disappear off the face of the earth and hes going to get the greatest story. Im trying to remember i dont think he told the editor what the story was. But the editor said okay imagine today if a general did that. Lawrence is basically told you will have the greatest story of all time but you are not going to be able to tell it until we tell you you can. Of course any news man the idea of this story he was brought inside and he was there when they tested the ball on july 16th and he had a genius and we quote at great length none of which appeared until after the bomb exploded and truman announced to the whole project but the writing was fantastic and he came up with a phrase the atomic aid so he was there for all of the testing and i wish my writing were as good as lawrence but you get to read some of his in the book and then he is there with the cruise. Hes not allowed on the first flight because it is obviously the first and they just had 12 men and they were not going to spare an extra seat but he ends up going on the second flight so hes there and describes as a first person witness the detonation of the second atomic bomb in warfare. Hes a great character and its a delight to read. Think about how do you describe the first atomic bomb blast, how do you describe seeing an atomic bomb pick out a city. He does it masterfully. Its almost like a postscript that i guess there was a movement several years later to pull the Pulitzer Prize because of the arrangement that had been made. A. What happened was during that period of time he was on the government payroll and there was just a different sort of relationship. It was much more a sense of we are all in this together. So in the 50s or maybe the 60s he went to the times and said he should get back the pulitzer and William Lawrence did not. There is a big player that you mentioned and i didnt know this as a piece of history that this fellow that was a scientist on the Manhattan Project and turned out to be a russian spy. One of the issues for churchill and potts dam becausee they were involved in this all along. When the bomb explodes, truman gets word and churchill gets word almost at the same time but one of the things they are discussing is when do we tell stalin because he doesnt know anything about this and so just before the conference ends and the decision is we dont want to tell them to early or tell them too much but if we dont tell them anything then we are supposedly allies, hes going to resent it and when they are in potsdam they are already major problems between russia on the one side and the u. S. And britain on the other because russia is back in from the east and has taken over and they are not going to give it up so late in the conference after one of the sessions, truman goes over and its been practiced what hes going to say and he doesnt even bring his translator, he uses the russian translator and says i just want to let you know we had a powerful weapon that we have developed and stalin says something basically i hope you will put it to good use and thats it and he turns away. Truman is dumbfounded. Churchill comes up to him and he can see that its a very short conversation. He says i told him and he didnt seem that interested and even trumans russian translator is wondering whether they translated it properly. Well, the story, the truth is he was interested he just wasnt surprised because as you say there was a german scientist who had gone to britain and ended up in the United States but he had been a member of the German Communist Party because he saw them as the only force inside of germany that was resistant to hitler. Now he leaves and is in the United States and is working on the Manhattan Project but his loyalty is still to communism so he gives all kinds of information which goes back to the russians and the postscript to the story is later that night they end up back in the russian compound together and somebody overhears them having that conversation in which they are discussing the fact truman has told him theyve got the bomb and it works and stalin says i guess we need to get going. A historian would later say at 7 25 p. M. On that night is when the Nuclear Arms Race between russia and the u. S. Officially began. Do you have another book . It seems like you really enjoy this so what is your next one, do you already have one in mind . One of the thoughts i had was not only to do all the things i said to create a historical thriller but to be able to replicate it and so when i came down with a countdown idea i thought if you can do countdown 1945, you can do countdown whatever. Writing a history book there are ups and downs and highs and lows. One of them is getting the chance to talk to you about this book. I cant wait to read it. You have an a whole another career ahead. Its wonderful to see the work that youve done. Thank you so much for joining us today. Best of luck as you do this book tour. The virus is going to end and i will be at one of my Favorite Places in the world, the Reagan Library. Ive been there many times including with missus reagan when she was still alive and i look forward to coming and talking to all of you in person. You are welcome any time. Thank you for joining us for tonights program. We hope that this has inspired you to share what youve learned with family and friends and that you will join us again for another upcoming event. All great change begins at the dinner table so tomorrow night in the kitchen i hope the talking begins. And children if your parents havent been teaching you what it means to be an american, let them know and mail nail them on that. It would be a very american thing to do. Testifies before the Senate Judiciary committee on the crossfire hurricane investigation that looks at interference in the 2016 election. Watch live coverage tuesday 11 a. M. On cspan three. Booktv continues with investigative journalist leslie bloom who looks at new york writer efforts to report on the fatal impact on the bombing of hiroshima. Later about the soviet unions role in the nuremberg trials. Good evening. Welcome to tonights
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.