Appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science and mens journal. He has been a featured speaker and has appeared on Numerous National tv stations including cnbc, msnbc and in various documentary, films and tv shows. Is a significant amount of research. We have an archive, 15 million , oldents, crackerjack research team, he is compliment three of the Truman Library. Credit and the praise we can get very we are grateful for aj for doing that. I like the dedication he put into this book and for those of us who have photographs and portraits of harry truman in our offices kind of resonates. He dedicated this book to his father as follows. To my father who has kept a portrait of harry truman on his wall for more than 40 years, which i think is a wonderful testament to our president we love so much. That is it for me. Please join me in welcoming aj baime to the podium to talk about our favorite president. [applause] thank you, everybody. Can you hear me . I want to start by saying this is a really special night for me. I this is my fourth book, and i travel around the country quite a bit standing on stages like this, and ive never theres no place in america, no place that has so much affection for a Hometown Hero. So just to play even the smallest part of that celebration is a blessing. Another reason why this is a really special night is because really special night is because there are a lot of people here [laughter] which is wonderful. I can remember a couple times speaking to more people than this, but only maybe one or two. And its so much more fun to get up on the stage and talk to a crowd of people than i remember earlier in my career just like packed houses of empty seats everywhere you would look. [laughter] its been a long road to get here. Alex touched on something just now, another reason why this is a special night is because this book is dedicated to my father. Hes supposed to be sitting right here, or right there, wherever. He cant he couldnt make it tonight. And i had this whole, you know, something i wanted to say, and i was kind of let down. But it turns out that we have some tv cameras here, so i can say it anyway, and he can hear it. So my father was a great man, and he mentioned the name truman in our household a lot when i was a kid. And when youre a kid, you dont understand these things, you know, when your dad said this was a man of integrity, this was a man who made hard decisions. And all you can think about is, you know, dukes of hazard on tv, you dont care, right . [laughter] and as i got older, it resonated with me. And if he was here, what i wanted to say my father taught me a lot about goals and achieving goals. And what i would say, we have this saying in my family when something happens thats good and its aint life grand, i used to say, dad, aint life grand . And if he was here, thats what i would say. So lets move on. Thank you to rainy day books more hosting this event. Thank you, kurt, and the Truman Library. I loved, loved spending time at the Truman Library. I spent quite a bit of time there. The archivists are amazing, and im so excited about kurt graham sitting here, the director of the library, the renovation that theyre working on is really exciting, and i cant wait to see it when its done. Alex, who introduced me, Mary Mcmurray and lacey at the Truman Library institute were so wonderful many helping to set this up. And jenny kincaid, jenny is here, she runs her own pr firm in town, and shes awesome. I want to begin my talk tonight with a parable. Some of you might have heard it. It starts out, it sounds like a joke, but its not. Starts like this. Two drunk guys are at a bar, and theyre arguing about the existence of god. And theres a religious man, and he believes, hes a believer, and theres an atheist. And the atheist says this extraordinary thing happened to me last night. I got lost in the woods i got lost in the woods, and there was a snowstorm, a blizzard, and it was very cold, and i couldnt find my way out. And i started to realize that i thought maybe i was going to die. So i thought, well, what the heck, you know . Ill try this god thing out. And he gets on his knees and he prays. And the religious man at the bar, he says, well, look at you, youre here. This is proof, right . You survived. This is proof in the existence of god, and the atheist says, well, actually, some guy just walked by and showed me the way home. So it was pure luck, right . [laughter] and the point i want to make is its amazing how two people can look at the exact same scenario and come to such very different conclusions with such immaculate conviction, right . We see this all the time. This is really the reason why we have politics, why we have political debate, why we have political parties, why we have political philosophies and political systems and also why people like me write books, because history is a living, breathing thing. Were constantly interpreting it. So who knows what this is a picture of . This is the first atomic explosion. Its july 16, its just before dawn in new mexico. Now, the point i want to make here is weve had 72 years to discuss the atomic bomb in world war ii, hiroshima and nagasaki. 72 years to examine the documents. We all have can look at the same documents, we can read the same books, and its extraordinary that after all of these years, we dont have any sense of consensus. There is so many people out here out there who think this atomic bomb was the wrong thing to do, and there are so many people who think it was the right thing to do, and we believe this with such conviction. At the Truman Library, theres a whole section probably a lot of people here have seen it theres a notebook, and people are invited to write down what they think, whether they think this was a good idea or a bad idea and why. And when you flip through the pages, its amazing. Kurt, you probably do this every day. Just go down people who feel so strongly. And you can tell there are a lot of kids handwriting, why did harry truman do this, and other people will say, well, this saved lives. Whats amazing is that we still cant agree, right . I know a lot of people here in this room, im sure, have opinions and feel strongly about them. Were going to come back to this right here. Ok. Im calling my talk tonight this is how you earn respect in washington. [laughter] so what were going to do is take it what i do in this book is look at the first four months of the truman administration. Its a very inspiring story. This is my favorite part about writing this book. One of the things we did when i was a kid at my house was watch rocky a lot. My dad showed us rocky all the time, because it was this story about a guy who comes out of nowhere and does such amazing things. And he thought this was a story that would resonate with a kid like me, especially a kid who wanted to be an athlete. And thats really the inspiring story of truman thats in this book. So were going to look at the image america formed of truman during the first four months in office. So lets start here. Now, what is this book about . Its called the accidental president harry s. Truman and the four months that changed the world. Here in missouri we know this is the story about a man who, who was a regular person or was perceived to be a regular person, like you and me, who becomes in 1945 the most powerful man in the history of the world by accident. And those are his words, by accident. Truman has no college degree. Hes never had the money to own his own home. He has never met joseph stalin. Hes never met Winston Churchill. He has no experience in highlevel international diplomacy. And hes walking in the footsteps of fdr, right . We hear, we know the story so well. I am hoping that if and when you read the book, you will learn a lot of things that you didnt know. Just for the sake of this conversation getting us started, we know. Truman, he had a lot to deal with. He has no understanding of the inner workings of the white house. He has very little understanding of the globalling emergency, not much more than the average person who reads the New York Times or the Washington Post or the kansas city star. Meanwhile, at the time he becomes president he has this is debatable but arguably no information about the atomic bomb. So the thesis of this book is that the first four months of the truman presidency should be considered the most challenging of any four month period in any american presidency. On my web site, trumanbook. Com, i made a little documentary, and im going play a little slice of it just to catalog what happens in this four months. I hope the sound is ok. Lets see. The first moments of trumans presidency saw the collapse of nazi germany, the founding of the united nations, fire bombing that killede cities many thousands of citizens, the liberation of nazi death camps, the suicide of adolf hitler, the assassination of benito mussolini, the capture of arch nazi war criminals are you there was the fall of berlin, victory at okinawa and the potts dam conference during which the new president sat at the negotiating table with Winston Churchill and josef stalin in sovietoccupied germany, in an attempt to map out a new world. Humanity saw the first atomic explosion, the Nuclear Destruction of hiroshima and nagasaki, the dawn of the cold war, and the beginning of the nuclear arms race. Aj heres harry truman arriving for work on april 13, 1945. So we know hes an unknown quantity. The nation is in shock. Fdr had just passed away, and people are very concerned because they dont really know who this guy is, right . Theyre very used to having fdr as their president , hes been president longer than any other man, and roosevelt arguably is the first president to be considered a Great American one of the Great American president s during his administration. So others have been considered one of greats after their deaths. Truman i mean, roosevelt during his administration, arguably, was considered one of the greatest. Robert nixon, White House Correspondent at the time, said of truman at this moment, here was a man who came into the white house almost as though he had been picked at random off the street. [laughter] senator arthur vandenberg, republican of michigan, said on this morning in his private diary, the gravest question mark in every human heart is truman. Can he swing the job . Now, its extraordinary to think that truman at 33 years old was an obscure farmer here in the state and even more extraordinary to think that at 38, he was financially in desperate straits. How many people in this room have seen this picture . [laughter] two weeks ago i spoke at the fdr president ial library, and i asked the same question. It was about little more than half these people, and i got one person but i knew a lot of you had seen this picture. Isnt it extraordinary that this man right there, hes 38 years old, and his business is going down the tubes, he has no political experience whatsoever, some years later would become the most powerful man in the history of the world . Let me show you another picture. This is truman walking through the white house door on his first day of work. So how does he get here . How does this happen . Naturally, in the book i spent a lot of time talking about how he gets here. Im going to give you two numbers that give you some perspective. One is truman shocks the nation, right . At the Democratic National convention in chicago in 1944. At that time 2 of americans, 2 im sorry, i should say democratic voters thought that truman should be the Vice President ial candidate on the ticket, 2 . And yet as we know because of strange things that happened and nobody has ever been able to to agree on exactly what happened truman ends up on the ticket, all right . Heres another number. Heres the two of these men. This is an extraordinary picture, and one of the reasons this is extraordinary is because there are very few pictures, right, that show these two men together. They really didnt know each other very well. Theyre sitting on the grounds of the white house under a magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson. Youve heard of Andrew Jackson around here. Theyre having sardines on toast, and theyre talking about the election, and roosevelt reaches for a pot of tea to pour it into Harry Trumans glass, and his hand is like this. He cant get the tea in the glass. And truman, the Vice President excuse me, Vice President ial candidate, realize that this is he realizes, i think at that time, where this is going. At the time of the 1944 election, 55 of americans could name fdrs running mate. Isnt that extraordinary . 55 , which means 45 really had no idea, literally no idea who this guy was. They win the election. 82 days later truman is walking through the white house door, right . So keep think about this. The nations in shock. Hes in the white house. He has to walk into roosevelts office, and everyone the staffers, they dont know who this guy is. And all of the staffers kept diaries. A lot of them are in your libraries, theyre so fascinating. A lot of them are published. And truman puts a sign on his desk, so im going to begin to make a point here. Truman puts a sign on his desk, it says always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. [laughter] who knows who said that . Here in missouri, we should know. Mark twain. Aj mark twain. He puts a quotation in a leather portfolio on his desk, and it reads, i do the very best i know how, the very best i can, and i mean to keep doing so to the end. Thats abraham lincoln. Thats truncated slightly. And he rolls up his sleeves and he goes to work. Now, those same staffers and cabinet members who kept those detailed diaries who were all writing on april 13 who the who is this guy, right . You see the narrative unfold in their diaries. So im going to read some impressions of what people were thinking about truman four and five weeks into his administration. This is joseph grew who was second in command in the state department. He wrote, nothing but the most favorable reaction. I think he is going to measure up splendidly to the tremendous job which faces him. This is the notoriously cranky white house chief of staff, admiral william leahy. He proved to be easy to work with and one of the nicest people i have ever known. Heres another one. This is my favorite. This is assistant press secretary evan ayers. He is capable and an extremely fine gentleman for whom everyone has the highest regard. Isnt that extraordinary . Think about it, how do we get to the gravest question mark in every american heart to an extremely fine gentleman for whom everyone has the highest regard in two months . That happened. So what is the answer . Lets come back to the sign on the desk, always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. Ruman liked to say that he aimed to, quote, live up to my mothers teachings, right . That informed all of his behavior. So the point i want to make here is this is a man who had sort of his own human constitution. It was the fabric of the man, right . And these werent this wasnt him saying this, this was other peoples impression of him, which is remarkable. Now, washington officials quickly realized that this was a man who could be trusted and had integrity. He could be trusted to wield this extraordinary power that he had accidentally inherited. Thats how you earn respect in washington. Chapter two in my little chat tonight, this is an extraordinary photograph. I grew up as a journalist i mean, in my career, and i had a special affection for this paragraph because ive been in so many press conferences where so many people stood up and said absolutely nothing. [laughter] what i want to make im going to talk now about truman and his relationship with the press because i think it was really important. This picture is an extraordinary moment in our nations history. I want to talk about trumans first press conference, but i have to do it this is not a picture of that. So im going to talk about trumans first press conference. Im going to come back to whats actually happening in this picture. So on april 17, 1945, its trumans fifth day, fifth full day in office. He holds his first press conference. And think for a second, theres no tv, theres no social media, so people are very, very curious about who this guy is whos their leader, right . So a Record Number of people show up, 348 reporters. Who has been to the oval office in the Truman Library . Imagine 348 people jamming in there. That was the scene. And im going to read a little bit, actually. We have the transcript, obviously, of that press conference. So everybody piles in, and truman says, are they all in . The white house usher shuts the door, and truman says, good morning, good morning. Good morning, sir, mr. President , someone yells. Will you take it kind of slow for us today, please, sir . Surely, surely, truman says, anything i can do to accommodate you. And everybody is looking at him and they are like, youre not roosevelt. Youre standing up for starters, right . [laughter] there was a reporter in the room who later wrote in his diary we all knew that roosevelt had gone to grotten and then harvard, that roosevelt came from a quite old, welltodo family, that hed moved in what is known as the best circles all of his life. Truman was a small town midwestern missourian of farm origin. The contrast was in appearance, voice mannerisms and even their attire. President roosevelt, while a casual dresser, was very well tailoredded. Truman dressed like he had just walked off of main street in independence, missouri. [laughter] now, truman knocked em dead that day. He knocked em dead. At the end of this press conference, this crowd of people erupted into spontaneous applause. Isnt that wonderful . Why . One, he was funnier. He was funnier than people thought. He was an amusing guy. Two, he spoke with this he spoke in this way that they werent used to. They had a question, he answered it. Roosevelt, they were used to. They would ask a question, he would take, he would like take his cigarette holder like he was conducting an orchestra and never going to answer people. Entrance people. No matter what you asked, he was just going to say what he was going to say. Truman answered questions, right . Now, he had a very tumultuous relationship with the press, and at one point truman, he compared reporters to prostitutes in his diary. [laughter] at the same time, the press loved him. Cabel phillips who was a Washington Times correspondent for 26 years later wrote no president of the last 50 years was so widely and warmly liked as mr. Truman. And when i think he said liked, you cant like a president like that unless you respect him, right . So where does this respect come from . One point i want to make is that the press, as a member of the press, the press was a very different animal at the time. Think about the way the press treated roosevelt. It was a tacit understanding that nobody would photograph roosevelt in his wheelchair. And reporters would not write anything about roosevelts disability. Can you imagine that happening [laughter] today everybody half the press would be writing about his disability to show him as weak, and the other half would be saying that his disability was a hoax and fake news. [laughter] thats what would happen today. I, as a member of the press, i can say it. Now, truman got along with the press for two reasons. One is he understood the Critical Role the press plays in democracy or is supposed to play, right . The press is supposed to be part of our checks and balances. A press controlled by leadership leads to autocracy and dictatorship. A press that gets filtered through social media, i dont even know what to make of that. Truman once wrote when our forefathers established special guarantees for the freedom of the press, they did so not for the personal aggrandizement of the publishers, but to serve the public. Now the other reason why the press loved truman is because he didnt lie to them, right . If he couldnt answer a question, he said i cant answer that question. He wrote his mother when i found this, i was researching, and i found this letter, and i just loved this moment. It was one of those eureka moments. He wrote his mother during the first week of his presidency, he wrote her i told my press secretary that my family all told the truth all the time. Truman respected the press, he valued the press, and he didnt lie to the press. Thats how you earn respect in washington. Now, let me come back to this picture. Does anybody know whats going on in this picture . Its fascinating. So the gentleman sitting down right behind truman is james burns, whos secretary of state, and truman is holding a document in his hands. And burns had just traveled through the city to deliver this document into trumans hands, and truman calls the press in. Its 7 00 p. M. , i think its august 14, 1945, and truman is announcing the Unconditional Surrender of japan. This is the end of the greatest catastrophe in human history. Right smack in the middle of the picture is, of course, the first lady, and directly to her right is her assistant. Did i pronounce her name right . [laughter] yes, i think its theres bess. So this is the extraordinary moment. This is actually like the third to last page of this book, because it is about four months, from april 12 to the end of the war. This is another extraordinary moment in our nations history. Whats going on here, its april 16, i think, its monday, and truman has just climbed the four stairs to the podium, and hes making his debut before the nation as the president. Hes very nervous. So he stands up, he looks up into the gallery, he sees his wife sitting there, and shes sobbing. His wife is crying. Why is she crying . Again, the nations in shock. President roosevelt is dead. And its the day roosevelts funeral sort of went over a saturday and a sunday, and this is the monday, and truman has to go up there and inspire confidence in the American People, in the military and young soldiers on the front lines, and in the allies of the United States that america was going to continue the course. It was an extraordinary amount of pressure. Now, bess it was revealed, margaret wrote in her memoirs that the first lady, even the first lady doubted in her conversations with her husband, even she doubted that this guy had the chops to do the job. So to get up there and make this speech was a very difficult moment. Lets have a listen. This is [inaudible] both germany and japan can be certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that america will continue the fight for freedom until no vestige of resistance remains. [applause] our demand has been and it remains Unconditional Surrender. [applause] aj so a point i want to make is that this happened in the mid early afternoon. The stock market soared right after his speech. What does that tell you . I think he did a good job. [laughter] so truman inspired, he did, he pulled it off. It was a beautiful speech. One of my favorite quotes that i found during my research was in the new yorker where right after this speech the new yorkerer wrote roosevelt was for the people, truman is the people. Right . People really identified with this man. They identified with the fact that he was an underdog, and they identified with the fact that he was one of them. Now, theres another picture. This doesnt fit so neatly into my sort of narrative here, but americans think about it for a second here. Theres no television, theres no social media, theres no cell phones. Americans are reading newspapers. Thats where theyre getting their news, and theyre listening to the radio. And theres, all the media, theres intense scrutiny about this man. Everyones wanting to find out who this guy is, and it was verying to find out that he had very comforting to find out that he had fought on the front lines, it was very important to people in wartime this was a man who had fought in the military. I love this picture. Love this picture. Two months into the truman presidency, a National Poll found that an overwhelming majority of americans, 63 , favored him as the democratic nominee for the 1948 election. Think about that. Two months in. Two months. People didnt really know who he was two months earlier. And whats even greater, 40 points behind the number two man with 40 points behind him, was henry wallace. So 63 of americans favored him to be the democratic nominee in 1948. In that same poll, americans were asked to choose words to describe truman two months into his administration, and this is what they said. He was, quote, fairminded, he was a hard worker, he was a realist who looked squarely at things and seeks good advice. This is my favorite. He has no crackpot ideas. [laughter] he has no crackpot ideas. Three months into the administration, a gallup poll sets trumans Approval Rating at 87 . Thats extraordinary. Can you imagine that number today, 87 . The rest of that story says 10 were undecided, 3 of americans disapproved of the job that the president was doing. Thats extraordinary. Three months in. Thats how you earn respect in washington, right . Ok. Now we come back to where we started. So this is the trinity shot. July 16, just before dawn. Now, one thing i figured out in my research that ive never seen in any other book is that as this is happening, this is happening at just about the exact same time because of the time difference. Truman is at pottsdam, hes gone to europe, hes very uncomfortable. His diaries and his letters to his wife are fascinating about how he feels about having to go to potsdam and negotiate the history of the world the future of the world essentially with churchill and stalin. Churchill and truman toast whiskey glasses at almost the precise moment as this is happening. Of course he doesnt know what because its such a secret that hes in the dark. He doesnt know whats happening. Thats the nagasaki bomb. Now, here comes the painful part of the discussion. The u. S. Department of energy has estimated that the hiroshima bomb killed probably 200,000 people and maybe more. And i thought long and hard if i should say this to the hometown crowd, but you know, its probably a fact that if we had lost the war, the Hometown Hero would have been executed for war crimes. Think about it. If we had lost the war, thats what would have happened. As it is, we won. We like to think ourselves as the good thing, and i think its pretty clear in this war that we were. Now still today this decision is the most controversial that any president has ever made. And we know, again as i said earlier, that truman really didnt know anything about this the night he became president. When he was with the truman committee, running the truman committee, he knew there was some strange experiment going on in washington, and he sent fred cansill out to investigate, fred cansill, fascinating character. Secretary of war called him and said, please, dont investigate, and truman said, ok. He really didnt know. The night he became president , the secretary of war sat with him after hed recited the 35word oath and said, by the way, we have this secret project going on, you should probably know about it. The next day james burns comes to the white house, and truman says i think i want you to be the secretary of state, and burns says, you should probably know about this secret project thats happening. Its a big weapon, and i think its going to be very useful politically as well as in terms of this war. So its not until april 25, trumans 13th day, that hes fully briefed on the bomb. On that day secretary of war Henry Stimson comes to the white house for a secret meeting with truman, and on that day stimson, secretary of war, had the document in his hand, and this is that document. It begins the first sentence is this. Within four months, we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible bomb ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city. This is trumans diary. Hes at potsdam. Now, we know i mean, we have all the documentation, so were very aware of what he knew, what the other people around him knew and what was being communicated to him. This document here, its july 25, we know he pretty much made the actual decision and gave the orders on july 24, which happens to be my birthday, and this is his diary on july 25. The operative sentence here is the weapon is to be used against japan between now and august 10. I have told the secretary of war, mr. Stimson, to use it so military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Now, as writers and historians and thinkers and all of us here, there are always pieces of the puzzles missing. Theres always pieces that we have to interpret. And how do we interpret those moments . You know, some people are going to say, well, theres a god. And some people say, well, im an atheist, and are those decisions hardwired into us . Do we think of those things because of who we are . Do we make those decisions the same way we find out the color of our eyes and the size of our feet . I dont know. But we know what happened. And we can never know 100 what was going through the president s mind. But once again, its amazing to think that this man who became, who fell into this position had this weapon in his hands, right . Now entire tomes have been written about the decision to drop the bomb. This book is not one of them, because that book had been written many times. But obviously, the narrative of the bomb figures through the first four months in the truman administration. I want to try to reduce as simply as i can my interpretation of what was going on in that mans mind at that time. In the amount of time that i have here with you today. So we know critics have said that maybe truman gave the command because americans had a gut reaction racism against japan. Maybe, you know, people have said, well, we were raised as you look at the literature of the time, and you know, you can see why people might think that. Critics have said that the bomb is less about japan than it was about power politics of the crudest kind, that we were shooting a warning shot across the bow of the ussr in the early days of the cold war. Now, lets look at this as simply as we can. The u. S. Had at the time fought savagely and won at okinawa and iwo jima, and we knew i mean, im sorry, the japanese had fought savagely. We knew that they refused to surrender at iwo jima and okinawa. General marshall wrote after the war, speaking of the fire bombing of tokyo on march 9 and 10th, quote, we had had 100,000 People Killed in tokyo in one night of bombs, and it had seemingly no effect whatsoever. It destroyed the japanese cities, yes, but the morale was not affected as far as we could tell, not at all. So we thought that they were not going to surrender. At potsdam we issued an ultimatum to japan, the three powers officially at war china, the United Kingdom and the u. S. In that document, the potsdam declaration, we said if japan doesnt surrender unconditionally, quote, the alternative for japan is prompt and other destruction. Utter destruction. And whats fascinating about that is, what i explore in the book is that document sort of came down to a single word. There was one word in that document that might have separated war from peace, and that word was unconditional. There was a huge debate about the term Unconditional Surrender. We were reading we had intercepted japanese communications, and we knew, we knew that if we put Unconditional Surrender in that document, they werent going to surrender, we were going to drop the bomb. If we took the word unconditional out, they might have surrendered. We knew that. Truman was being advised by the people around him, james burns was the loudest voice in his ear, and it was clear to truman that we didnt know for sure, we didnt know whether they would surrender or not. We knew there was going to be a political uproar in the United States, and truman was being advised by james burns and the previous fdrs secretary of state cordell hull, definitely dont take that word out. It would be perceived by the American People as a stab in the back to the fallen president , roosevelt. So the u. S. Was planning a Ground Invasion of japan. June 18, 1945, truman called the meeting, brought together everybody, his best advisers, and he said how are we going to end this war with japan . And in that meeting, everybody agreed that we were going to invade japan with a Ground Invasion. The invasion was going to start on november 1, and it was going to involve 766,700 american soldiers. Thats a lot of people. We knew from okinawa and iwo jima that it was going to be very bloody. In that meeting the secretary of war raised his hand, and he said a lot of people in japan dont care about this war, but if we invade the homeland, women and children he didnt use that term, but he said, basically, everybody in japan was going to take up arms and fight. It was going to be awful. Also in the meeting by the way, in the minutes of that meeting, you can read them online from the Truman Library website. Theyre fascinating, fascinating. Nowhere in that document is the bomb mentioned because it was so secret that they were not permitted to put those discussions in the meeting minutes. We didnt know they discussed it. We didnt know at the time if it was going to work. Soon after we found out it was going to work. So truman does the math. Hes looking at 766,700 american soldiers. He also has this weapon in his hand. He later wrote, it occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood were worth a couple japanese cities, and i still think they were and are. Churchill later wrote that this, quote, supernational weapon could mean, quote, the end of japanese cities, and i still the war in one or two violent shocks. We might not merely destroy cities, but save the lives of friend and foe. The point of the bomb was to save lives. Isnt that extraordinary . This is one of the two documents that truman received while the uss augusta on his way home. Its to the president from the secretary of war. Big bomb dropped on hiroshima august 5 at 7 15 p. M. Washington time. 7 15 washington time on august 5 is, of course, august 6 in japan. It wasnt until truman got back to the white house that he began seeing pictures of what had happened. Now, for the rest of his life, this decision weighed on him. I think i dont think it was as hard to make as people would imagine because it seemed like the obvious way to end the war, and thats exactly what happened. A lot of things that truman did during his presidency he said its going to take 50 years for people to understand whether these decisions are good or bad. And this was certainly one of them. This one we still cant agree, not all of us, as to whether it saved lives or not, we cant know. As the secretary of law, Henry Stimson, later said the face of war is the face of death. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over 100,000 japanese a lot more than that. No explanation can change that fact, but i do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. Our least abhorrent choice. Point is, it was a choice. I cant end this chapter of this talk with this is how you earn respect in washington, because theres so many people im sure there are people in this crowd who disagree. Maybe they think that was the wrong decision to make. But what i can say is leaders, strong leaders, they make decisions, and they live with them for the rest of their lives. I want to end with a quote. When i was doing my research, i remember reading this, and this is like this great moment for me because i was like, yes, this is so brilliant and so relevant. Three months into the truman administration, the Washington Post described the countrys reaction to the new president in a story called whole nation reflects era of good feeling inspired by president. Whole nation reflects era of good feeling inspired by president. And, yeah, that story began the mood of the United States is one of extraordinary friendliness. Americans appear to be more at ease with each other. They are more inclined to talk about national affairs, less inclined to argue. In short, there is a cordiality in the air that this country hasnt known in years. So i leave you, ill end my talk and just think wouldnt we could use, we could use president truman again. [laughter] we could use that man. [applause] thank you very much, thank you. [applause] i encourage questions. If i cant answer them, ill try. [inaudible] there was a lot of discussion about the [inaudible] truman was very [inaudible] aj this was an important moment. President ial succession, as we know, from looking at trump and obama sitting next to each other, its a very tense moment always. Even if it doesnt appear so. And i think that thats one of these situations where you have a religious man [laughter] and an atheist. I dont mean that literally at all. But my point is they were two people who were looking at the same situation in very different ways. I think truman was snubbed in certain ways by eisenhower, and eisenhower felt very differently. Im interested to hear what you think, actually, about that. Well, i [inaudible] aj and if i remember correctly repeat the question. Aj oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, thats a good point. So the gentleman was asking when eisenhower took over, there was an uncomfortable relationship between truman and, and eisenhower at that time, right . From my reading, what i understand was that eisenhower was upset because truman had invited eisenhowers son to appear at the inauguration, i think, without eisenhowers knowledge as a surprise. And eisenhower, i think, was offended am i getting this correct . Because [inaudible] aj we need the mic. [inaudible conversations] what actually happened was during the campaign, eisenhower was visiting wisconsin, and senator joe mccarthy denounced George Marshall who president truman felt was the greatest living american at the time. He said there wasnt a medal big enough for George Marshall. He had tremendous respect for him. And joe mccarthy and we all know who joe mccarthy was he denounced George Marshall as a communist sympathizer, etc. , etc. So truman was very upset that eisenhower running he was the republican candidate for president did not stand up and defend George Marshall. Who is the fella that made eisenhower the allied supreme director during world war ii. Aj at the same time this was the origin of the confusion of their relationship deteriorating. Because up to that point, president truman had Great Respect for eisenhower and made him the head of nato in 1950. Aj sure. I mean, theres a great moment in this book where truman is, he has a day off from the potsdam conference because churchill has to go back and find out in london if hes, in fact, still the Prime Minister because there was an election going on. So he flies up to frankfurt, and he spends this wonderful day with eisenhower. Eisenhower just, you know, was this massive American Hero at the time. And he says to eisenhower in the car, i would do anything for you. I would give anything for you, i would do anything im trying to remember the quote exactly. I would give you anything do anything for you and that includes making you the president of the United States. And he said i would give it to you now if i could. [laughter] which is fascinating. But there is more to i mean, theres a long, there was a lot going on there. And theres this great picture in the library, in the Truman Library, of eisenhower giving his inaugural address, and truman is sitting next to him, and trumans posture, you can tell that hes fuming. Theres smoke coming out of his ears. It was not a comfortable relationship. One thing i was going to say, its interesting that half of all casualties in the Pacific Theater of war starting with pearl harbor occurred in trumans first three months as president. So thats a pretty remarkable number. So probably he was thinking should we let this trend continue, or should we avoid as you pointed out an invasion in the home islands of japan . Aj and thats a very good point. I mean, truman became president on april 12, and the battle of okinawa, if memory serves me correctly, was april 1. And we sent our troops in there, and it was a disaster to begin with. I mean, it was bill sloan wrote a wonderful book about this. He called it the last great human battle of this kind in our history. It was a very bloody ordeal, and i think, you know, you can read the documents of what the information that the president was receiving, and you can imagine how he would not want to put 766,700 american troops through that. Sir . Truman authorized the bomb without really knowing what its effects would be. Do you think those in washington today understand that these are not toys . [laughter] [applause] aj let me speak bluntly. [laughter] as someone who let me just say this. I have never in my lifetime been so shocked than i was by reading the communications between the president of the United States and the leader of north korea right now. Potentially hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of lives at stake. My kids are growing up in california. Were not far. And when i see tweets, you know, that are with, that are provoking an insane, nucleararmed man, i dont even thats as much as i have to say on the subject. Theres nothing more to say. Thank you for your question. [applause] prior to 1944 when truman accepted the nomination for Vice President in the democratic party, did mr. Truman ever express, to your knowledge, any ambition to be anything other than just a senator from the state of missouri . For example, did he want to become majority leader . Did he will express a desire to become president or governor of missouri, or was he satisfied at that time simply to be ad good to be a good senate from missouri . Aj he was adamant that he did not want to be the Vice President ial candidate. When you read theres tons of oral histories, and there is so much written about this, and you can see there are a lot of people who will say, well, he didnt say it. I dont think so. I mean, he was adamant that he didnt want that job. And i think that his crowning moment was the truman committee. The work that that committee did ok, so the truman committee, most of us know, was this special committee to investigate the National Defense effort. Truman created this committee to figure out how ok. How do i condense this . We were recreating our massive economy to make our economy something it had never been before, to join free enterprise, government and military into one fighting force so our whole nation would be this fighting force. And his committee was this investigative body to make sure that that happened the best that it could. And i think at the time he was very stressed out. He worked so hard that he ended up in the hospital. Through the Truman Library, we even have the doctors reports in 1943. We know what his Blood Pressure was, we know what his heart rate was, the jottings of the doctor is fascinating. He was so satisfied with the work that he had done with that committee, to my knowledge, he had no desire, none, to move on from that. And neither did his wife, i can tell you that. [laughter] aj, this is our last question. [inaudible] just a little more context on the dropping of the bomb. General curtis lemay had a big program of fire bombing the cities of japan. And so, i mean, you spoke that it was sort of an exceptional, horrible thing that we dropped the bomb. Well, we were doing lots of horrible things. And should you i dont have the numbers, but could, i suspect perhaps you do . Could you discuss general Curtis Lemays program . Aj thats a great question, and i do go deep in this book because so the question was about general Curtis Lemays fire bombing, fire bombings. One of my favorite parts of my research was going through lemays papers and finding these documents where hes talking about prior to them happening very deliberate documents of instructing pilots how to drop these canisters of these fire bombs so that the fires set by all of the canisters would join. And so the pilots were told how much acreage each bomb could burn so that all of the bombs would join and burn tokyo to the ground. And there were fire bombings on the [inaudible] aj right. So at the beginning it was the 9th and 10th of march, and then i think on the 19th of march, i think. And then they ran out of fire bombs. And it so happened that the day truman became president , lemay had a new stock of fire bombs, and we dropped them. So as he was taking the president ial oath, tokyos on fire. That happens in chapter one. And i bring this up in the end the epilogue, and my point is there were critics, all of these critics, and i bring up in here the white house chief of staff, admiral leahy, who thought the atomic bomb was a bad idea. We had been fire bombing s in japanopulation all up until that point, so how do you say it was the wrong thing to do when we had already been doing this in a different format all through june and july . I dont know. The answer to that is the atomic bomb, the achievement of atomic science and weaponizing, it was such a shock that were still talking about it. But youre right, in fact, this was all happening all through the four month the first four , months of trumans already in a different format. So i dont know how you can criticize, you know, the atomic bomb when, you know, we were already burning these cities to the ground, city after city. Its an interesting point. Gives him a hand. [applause] [inaudible] for those of you [inaudible] please come down to the far wall. Thank you so much for coming by the way. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer 1 history bookshelf features the best known American History writers of the past decade talking about their books. You can watch our weekly series every saturday 4 00 p. M. Eastern here on American History tv on cspan3. You are watching American History tv, covering history cspan style with event coverage, i would, archival films, lectures in College Classrooms and visits to museums and historic places, all weekend, every weekend on cspan three. America, on reel f. D. R. In world war ii. Produced by the franklin d. Roosevelt that key wartime issues. Heres a preview. [music] we are now in this war. It. E all in all the way. Andy single man, woman child is a partner in the most of ourous undertaking American History. 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Which are, its bats, the original cause of where this virus lives, infects somebody, you then spread out the chain of transmission in humans. There is nothing about this that suggests anything other than a natural mutation and is a reminder that we dont need all kinds of series of biological warfare to really explain something that is natural. Be a wakeupould call to all of us. 9 p. M. Easternt on afterwards, netflix director u. N. Clusion and former official Michelle King with her fix. Ccoun the were often in denial about the challenges women face at work, that people assume workplaces are this belief that everybody is the same everybody is treated in the same way, and so people dont have different experiences work. With that kind of logic, were not only denying difference but denying inequality. Watch authors discussing 11 eastern. Night at and afterwards with michelle book tv on cspan2. [music] [music] second homebeloved at warm springs,