Studies institute. I began our institute back in 1995. The institute was born in the midst of the controversy around the enola gay exhibit which was going to be held at the Smithsonian Institution but got canceled. This was an attempt by the smithsonian to do an honest and balanced exhibit about the decision to drop the bomb and the consequence of the atomic bombing. This was in 1995, the 50th anniversary. The smithsonian a civic got canceled. The museum in hiroshima and nagasaki asked to bring some of those artifacts to American University and do an exhibit here on the 50th anniversary. While we were planning this, the museum, and your shame and nagasaki, asked that we would bring some of the artifacts to the American University. That was the first time that the abombma and nagasaki museums didnt exhibit as an japan. They have been doing it ever since. This is the 20th anniversary of our exhibit and the 70th anniversary of the actual bombing. We decided to do it again at American University. We combined artifacts from hiroshima and nagasaki with 15 fabulous hiroshima panels. These can be compared to picassos guernica, or the rape of the sabine women, or other classic paintings of that sort. We put that together with drawings from hiroshima that i am pretty sure is the most elaborate exhibit of the atomic bombings ever held in the United States. We have childrens drawings from the elementary school. That was the origin of our exhibit in 1995. 15 years later we have a more elaborate exhibit. Elaboratee most exhibit on the atomic bombing that has ever been held in the United States. It is overwhelming. I cannot tell you how many people have written to me who have seen it. And said it left them in tears. Is one of the most famous images out of nagasaki. Girl, theyoung caption says dazed. She is holding a rice ball. There is blood on her face. She has such a cold look in her eyes. A forlorn distant gaze. Like so many other people. She did not know what had happened. These are people who lived through the bombings. They thought the bomb had landed on their house. They ran outside and they saw appear a fema, or all of nagasaki was ablaze. You can see in one of the panels , it is called fire. Some of the survivors were engulfed in flame. We have a crucifix. There are a lot of these. They are considered to be symbolic. Especially nagasaki. In nagasaki the bomb is to be target by almost two miles. It landed above the cathedral. Nagasaki had not been hit before this. It had been preserved. Americans wanted to have a pristine target to show the effect of the atomic bomb. People in nagasaki thought they had not been bombed because it was the christian capital of japan and east asia. It was a big surprise. The bomb fell right above the cathedral. The biggest cathedral in east asia. We also see the stopwatch there. The pocket watch. That is a very popular image. The bomb dropped at 8 15 a. M. In hiroshima. The clock stopped. Also, it dropped at 11 02 in nagasaki. We did our first exhibit in 1995, we have replicas of the original artifacts. The museums have decided not to let them out. In some of these we have the replicas. What we have here are the famous mushroom clouds. The photos of the mushroom cloud. It is on august 6, 1945. And august 9, 1945. It descriptions were that was like a pillar of flames. It kept expanding. From the top of the column, you can see these bursts. They keep going up. It is enormous. The crew said that they could see the cloud from four hours away. Looking back it was so high. We see the radioactive debris coming back down. It lands back on the victims. Here, we have the view of hiroshima. It is a target for the bomb. You can see the tshaped bridge. The bomb drifted. It missed the target. It landed over here. This is probably the most famous symbol. This is the Old Industrial prefactory. This has been preserved. There was some debate over whether to preserve it. Here, itart here, and has been preserved. You can see that everything is demonstrated. Miles in eachwo direction, totally destroyed. Can be destroyed. You can be burned. This is not a tiny primitive bomb. That the bomb was 60 kilotons in destructive capability. The bomb at nagasaki was 21 kilotons. We later developed bombs to be so much bigger. That by 1954 we were Holding Congressional hearings. Leaderthe scientific laying out plans to build those bombs. They are 100,000 times as powerful as the hiroshima bomb. That was a future they were holding out against. What this middle bomb in hiroshima was. This bomb was a little bit bigger. But the casualties rectally smaller. Surroundedasaki was by this mountain on both sides. So the impact of the bomb was contained. Nagasaki was in the valley. The nagasaki bomb is 22 kilotons. That by thes are end of 1945 there were 200,000 by 1950. Deaths in nagasaki are 7000 dead by 1945. 145 by 1960. The hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb. The nagasaki bomb was a plutonium bomb. We have got some of the more humane artifacts. We have the shoe. We have this from the 13yearold boy. He was killed in the bomb. We have the hat of a junior high student. Bottle of awater young boy. 13yearold. He was killed when the bomb exploded. Got one of the replicas. It is a replica of a lunchbox of a 12 euros girl. She told he disappeared. No trace was ever found of her. Mother was able to identify that as best she could. 1995, two of us suggested that if they wanted to cancel the bombing of the indolent day, this showed to artifacts. The other was the lunchbox of the 12yearold girl. Send thet that would message about what the atomic bomb was really about. Of course, that was the last thing in the world anybody thought would be on display. Thing bynot want any the victims. They did not want that controversy. Here is a more historical panel. The whole would like exhibit about the contest, about issue, it would have made a more boring exhibit. Would have had some information about the manhattan project. They would have started to build the bomb as a deterrent. The american scientists were terrified of the prospect that they were heading in that direction. The bombnot anticipate would be used against japan. Much did not have scientific capability. This is a survey of the bombing target. These are potential targets. People in the United States have been firebombing japanese cities since the 1920s. By the end of the war, three quarters of the bombs were incendiary. Overall, we bomb over 100 japanese cities. We ran out of important major cities, so we started to bomb secondary cities. The destruction was 99. 5 . Some of the american leaders were appalled. One of the secretary said to president truman, i do not with United States to get the reputation. Another top general described this as one of the most gruesome and barbaric killings of nonamerican noncombatants in all of history. This is about the decision to drop the bomb. The official narrative said that the United States dropped the bomb to end the war without cost american lives. The number keeps going up. It could have cost thousands of lives. 1955 it could have cost a half million lives. A lot of japanese and americans would have been killed in the invasion. That is the official narrative. To,erms of trumans mind there is no basic truth to that. The reality was that the japanese, in 1944 new that they could not win. They hoped to get one more victory and then surrender. The big obstacle was to them was the emperor. They wanted to major they could keep the emperor. The southwest Pacific Command theed a report that said hanging of the emperor to them would be like the crucifixion of christ to us. They would all fight and die like ants. Almost every advisor of truman urged him to change the surrender terms. Let the japanese know they can keep the emperor. That was in americas interest. We plan all along to let them keep the emperor. We did not want to refuse that. We were close to unconditional surrender. At your in february 45 roosevelt finally got a promise from stalin that three months after the end of the war in europe, truman said he would to potsdam in july to meet with Winston Churchill and stalin. He wanted to make sure that the soviets were coming in. He gets the agreement from the soviets. He writes in his journal that end the warn will by thursday. He said the russians are coming in. The war will end soon though. Truman also knew the japanese were trying to surrender. The intercepted july 8 telegram as the telegram from the emperor asking for peace. We all knew the japanese were finished. American intelligence reported repeatedly that the entry of the , left union into the war complete defeat inevitable. , truman who is not bloodthirsty, he is not hitler, he did not take pleasure in killing people, why would truman use the atomic bomb knowing that the japanese were defeated . Knowing that they were not militarily necessary . Historians is, as that a big part of his motivation was that he was sending a message to the soviets , and if the soviets interfered with american plants in europe or in asia this was the fate they would get. Youre telling me that the soviets interpreted it that way. One of the senators said suddenly the day of judgment was tomorrow. It has been ever since. That is the reality we are being confronted with. That is what makes the bombing so important. That hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children were killed unnecessarily. But the fact that the human species has lived with this hanging over our heads ever since. That possibility, still today we have 16,300 Nuclear Weapons in the world. We have had this contest with the soviets over ukraine. U. S. And russia still have thousands of Nuclear Weapons still on hairtrigger alert pointed at each other. We are not playing games here. The threat is very real. There were, apparently, several people carrying cameras in hiroshima on august 6. Only one is known to have taken any photos. That is yoshi seagate. He was a photographer. He was a photographer for the newspaper. He had enough film to take 24 photos. He said it was too horrible. He only took seven photos. Five of them have been preserved. He was very respectful. He did not want to show closeups. He did not want to show horrible suffering. Wanted to show people at the relief stations. They were trying to escape from the fire downtown. You can see the destruction. This was 1. 5 miles from the center. He said it was like walking through hell. He said we could not take photos. It was too horrific. It was too intrusive on peoples privacy and suffering. Shows people with almost no medical supplies. Nurses and doctors and hospitals were ended. There was no medicine. People were trying to put oil on the burns. Within days people were reporting maggots coming out of the wounds. It was just awful. Nagasaki people are lying there. They are falling apart on the mattresses. This is a woman breastfeeding her baby. Aboutare lots of stories people carrying dead children and babies. They were trying to nurse the dead baby. We have these images of the charred corpses of some of the victims. What they said was that people who were near the high percent center their internal organs boiled away and they quickly turned into charcoal. They became carbonized. You can see the close burnt off the bodies. Some of the people who wore their care monos would have the pattern burned into their skin. And the shadow summary completely disappeared on the steps of a bank. It is in hiroshima. We talk to one person he survived, obviously. He writes down the name of all of his family members. Not a single one was impacted by the bomb. One by one he crosses them out. This is over the next couple of weeks. One by one they would die. From radiation poisoning. Youd get these purple spots all over your body. You get terrible diarrhea. Your hair falls out. I know many case cases where several days after, these people would die of radiation sickness. Even know that some of the impacts are gone very quickly. This is the hospital. It is above the shema hospital. When it missed the initial target. Asked the elementary school, almost all of the teachers and students were killed. Even other miles from the hide the center. It is prior to the official magus psyche ceremony. They had a private ceremony at the elementary school. A lot of the children come there and have a very special piece commemoration ceremony. It is a very moving ceremony with the school. That is who the victims of the atomic bomb were. War congregates of the send art church supplies to students at the elementary school. The students there use the art supplies at a time when there were very little supplies of any sort. You see so many reports of students. There are living like streeter and kids basically. They were orphaned. They had no shelter. They put up makeshift shelters. Just getting art supplies was a huge issue for these kids. Gratitude they sent back to reince and paintings to the congregation. I understand that these were lost for a long time. They were later rediscovered. Members of the church, some of them went back to hero shema. They met with some of the kids. There is a very nice documentary about this. Japanese i thought it would add a nice touch to the exhibit. It would add a human side in a different way. Americans that reach out to the people in hero shema. And gratitude on the part of the children who received those. Family these were famous japanese artist who came into the city of hiroshima three days after the bombing. They saw the horror. They decided to do a series of panels. The first one was called ghosts. Shows is the image of hero shema. Itple who were experiencing said that they felt that they were walking through hell. There were fires everywhere. People naked. Walking with their arms held out in front of them to lessen the pain. Often they had skin hanging down. Peoples close a were blown off by the blast and the fire. Naked and burnt. You cannot tell men from women. You can see this image here. The shock and the horror. The second panel we have here is called fire. Reality was the fire was everywhere. It was spreading rapidly. People tried to escape the fire. Escaping the fire meant, this is the reality for summoning survivors, it it meant that they would have to leave others behind. They would ignore their cries for help. There were people trapped in their houses. People trapped under beings. People who were injured. In order to escape, there are some tragic stories about children living their parents behind. Our parents leaving their children behind, in order to escape as the flames were approaching. Aboutwere many stories people staying with relatives and friends rather than leave. This gallery told me that i could choose any of the panels that i wanted. I decided i did not want to complicate the narrative. Not just to betray them as victims, but to put it in a different context and show that it was possible for them to be ittims of the atomic bomb, also victimizers at the same time. I wanted to panels that would show that. The first when heres called crows. This one, you have to realize in hiroshima on that day there were 300,000 citizens. 43,000 japanese soldiers. And 45,000 korean slave laborers. The koreans were badly treated by the japanese for decades. And they were discriminated against in japan. They were also discriminated against after the atomic bombing. They got no aid at all. Many of them just died in the streets. What this shows is the crows. It shows these crows coming down and plucking out the eyeballs of the dead korean victims. It is very controversial. Right now, the Prime Minister and his administration were doing everything they could to cover up the history of these atrocities. They are covering up everything they did today victims in china. I wanted to show that part as well. One, this wasthis about the american pows. There were pows in a Campaign Hero shema. 23 of them hiroshima. Many of them survive the bomb only to be beaten to death by enraged japanese citizens. This shows the americans who were beaten to death by the japanese. There is something, and im not exactly sure why, but they depicted several women among the american pows. There were no women, this is somewhat baffling. What we are seeing here is the progression into thinking of them. In the beginning the focus was on japanese victims. Then at consciousness begin expanding. They started to show the japanese as also victimizers. The rate of to show nanjing. They have one on auschwitz. They are trying to make this a broader human story. In 1968. Was done later it is a floating lantern. If you go to hiroshima as i do is my students. Ofparticipate on the evening august 6. They have the floating lantern ceremony. It is very symbolic and important. In the people jumped river to try to escape the flames. They had bodies that were badly burned. Many of them died. All of the descriptions of the river that night were just a sea of floating corpses. What people did in hiroshima to commemorate is they hold the lantern ceremony every year. We are now able to participate. It is no longer restricted to families of the victims. What you do is you make a paper lantern. To put a candle inside. And on it you write a message of peace. You see a long line that winds around. You put your lantern into the water there. It is beautiful. I saw the light and it made a very special. That made it even more special. This is a depiction of the lanterns as they are floating in the river. [bell tolls] American History tv, historian james oakes, prizewinning author of numerous books, discusses the evolution of president lincolns antislavery politics. He describes the abolitionist movements of the day and how they helped transform a politically cautious a lincoln into in emancipator. This hour and 10 Minute Program was hosted by the Lincoln Group of the district of columbia. [applause]
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