Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency President Truman The Atomic Bomb 20240712

The end. I hope you enjoyed the presentation and im going to go right in and look at our first artifact which is actually not from july of 1945, but from april shortly after truman became president. Then we are going to look at some documents from july. You can see my time laying here of the first five documents we were going to show you. Then we will have another five to finish off what we get into august of 1945. Even some from later into the sixties. They connect to this topic. The first information that truman has about the Manhattan Project comes in april just 12 days after he becomes president on april 12th. This very famous letter, some of you are familiar with it, is when henry stints in, the secretary of war, rights to truman to write tell him about this highly secret matter. He had mentioned this to truman after has not duration on april 12th after fdrs death. However, just in passing and that they needed to talk about it in the future. Just two weeks later, stints in sends this letter to truman saying they have to get together quickly. So he can tell them about this project. You can see some interesting handwritten notes on here. At the bottom, the one i like to point out in Harry Trumans own handwriting, he writes tomorrow wednesday the 25th. Matt is matthew colony, is appointment secretary. Hes obviously telling mr. Connolly to get mr. Stinson on his counter the next day. Interesting the, tremendous come across the Manhattan Project when he was a senator in charge of the Truman Committee looking at overspending during world war ii. He did not really get into much detail as he started to see the budget numbers about the project. Stinson is the one who warned off and told him to not investigate that anymore. Now of course he is president and stinson tell us more about the project. Its interesting that in those 82 days as Vice President , tremendous not know about the Manhattan Project. It takes him becoming president before he is told about the project. Of course at this point, theyve not done a successful test but the work has been going on in two or three different locations as they start to develop the atomic bomb. This is the first document i want to share with you out of the ten artifacts i will show you tonight because it provides context of when truman first finds out about the Manhattan Project and those interesting anecdotes. He had come close to about a senator. Its about two weeks after he is president where stinson sits down and gives him all the details. Stinson worked in the fdr administration and is really the person that is in charge of the whole operation. Hes the one thats supervising the works. Stinson is the conduit between the white house and what is going on in new mexico. Hes an important key figure and all of this. The second document we will look at is from lieutenant groves. You can see the date at the top of the page. This is from july the 16th, 1945. This is after the first test in new mexico of the atomic bomb this is a sketch included in a 14page report that groves sense to stinson which is done relate to truman. We will learn more about this in a second. Of course, president truman at this time is at a conference in germany meeting with stalin and Winston Churchill before churchill is replaced after the british election. This 14page report is very detailed. Its not an official report and its actually quite casual and its writing. The excitement and the wonderment of the scientists and the military people involved in this First Successful test. It really comes through in the report. This catches on the last page of that 14page report. On the second page, lieutenant groves actually refers to the mushrooming a cloud. Thats the first time the d word Mushroom Cloud is really used in that concept. They describe the explosion as being beautiful with all the different colors in the sky that they see. Looking at this particular document, some of the hand written cursive might be tricky for some of us to read. If you go close in on this, underneath where it says cloud drawings, it says first atomic bomb explosion. Sketches from a b 29 playing a 37 defeat about 15 miles away. In fact, the b 29th that were set up for observation could not get as close as they would have liked because of the weather. You can also see the time dated there. You can see 5 30, 5 38 and so on. 5 42 at the bottom for the second part of the sketch. You can see theyve done this first thing in the morning. It was really dependent upon the weather when they were going to do this test. Then the report itself goes into more detail about the level of destruction and the impact it had. Truman uses those exact words from those reports and some other documents that we are going to see a bit later on. Namely his diary entries. It also talks about the colors. Dark brown, light gray and so on. It says seethrough here in the middle of the whole of the cloud. It also gives the elevation. Later on, we are able to see photographs and other footage of this atomic cloud. This is what truman receives while he is in germany and it is relate to him via stinson. Truman himself is very excited about the successful test. They could really now start to plan if and when to use this against the japanese just in a few short weeks. Two weeks later, its the end of july and we are getting close to what happens on august the 6th. I will let you study that a little bit more. Its a fascinating document and i would encourage you to read all 14 pages of the report. It sounds a little cumbersome. Its tight, its easy to read and its available on the Truman Library website. Its quite a fascinating read. The payoff is that you get the sketch on the last page. The next document is what i mentioned previously, trumans diaries. He has a number of different diary entries and i couldve chosen one of three that he writes in this time period. This one is july the 17th, 1945. Just the day after he gets that report. This is of course handwritten and it can be difficult to read. Those who work at the Truman Library have become familiar overtime of his handwriting. This is when his first meeting Joseph Stalin in this particular tire entry. We have other diary entries from july the 18th, the next day when he meets churchill. From july 25th when he goes into a lot more detail about the atomic bomb testing. He does mention it in this one page of his diary. Hes talking to stolen about the different negotiations that are going to come up and they are setting the agenda. This is very much at the beginning of the conference. They are talking about china and they are talking about the soviets coming into the japanese war on august 15th. Thats one of trumans goals, to get the soviets to join. But he has a kind of cryptic phrase in here. He asked him about the agenda and he says i told him to fire away. He did, and it is dynamite. Then truman says, but i have some dynamite to which im not exploding now. So he kind of has this cryptic reference to dynamite and not exploding now. Its not too surprising that he mentions this the day after finding out about a successful test. Im just using one of the diary entries today, but in the following day on the 18th, he says that he believes the japanese will surrender when the russians come in because stalin does agree to enter the war. Then he has this phrase on the 18th of july entry where he says, im sure they will when manhattan appears over their homeland. Truman doesnt really refer to manhattan very often in his writings home to his wife and other correspondents. But on his diary entry of july 18th, he speaks about manhattan appearing over the japanese homeland. He also goes on to say i will inform stolen about it on an opportune time. In fact, during the conference he does tell stalin briefly, not really in detail, about the fact that they have a new weapon that they can use against the japanese. Truman didnt take that stalin knew anything about that, but of course as we know now in 2020, the truth is stolen did in fact have spies and new mexico that were passing information about the Manhattan Project backed back to him. A week later on on july 25th, he goes into a lot more detail in his diary entry and speaks about how the weapon will be used against the japanese between now and august 10th. Those diary entries are really very revealing as truman expounds upon the information that he has been given by lieutenant groves. We have two contrasting documents here. One is a little misleading. We will do that in a second, im trying to keep them in Chronological Order if i can. This one is from the National Archives which the Truman Library is part of, rather than the collections of the Truman Library. This is the closest you would get to the ordering of the use of the atomic bomb. This is a memo from thomas hyundai, the acting chief of staff while marshall is at the conference. Hes writing to the commander general of the United States Army Strategic air force. You can see the date on this one is the 25th of july. Things are moving quickly as you can see. You can see this. Its not super sharp, but it basically has four points on a single page memo. It talks about the 5 09 composite group. The 20th air force will deliver its First Special bomb as soon as weather will permit. So they refer to it as the special bomb without saying or using the word atomic. It then talks about the various targets. The first one there is hiroshima and the fourth one is nagasaki. The second point says that the additional bombs will be delivered as soon as they are made ready by project step. We found out later that in the early part of august, only two bombs were ready and they used both of them. A third bomb wasnt going to be ready until around the 16th or 17th of august. The third point is that the dissemination of any information about this is reserved for the secretary of war and the president. So the military are not going to make any comment about this. Any new stories or people asking for information, they need to refer back to the second secretary of war or the president for them to respond to. The last point is that this is done with the approval of the secretary of war. It also mentions that a copy has been sent to general mcarthur and a copy has been sent to admiral nimitz. This is the closest you are going to get to the actual orders for the dropping of the bomb on hiroshima. That is dated the 25th of july. It does say about after august 3rd. It does give a date for that. At that point, they are waiting for a response from the declaration of the japanese. The other document that is often sometimes used incorrectly talks about the authorization of the bomb. This is from the secretary of war to truman. Its a few days later. Its the 30th of july. This one is harder to read. Some of these historic documents can be difficult to read. If you close in on this one, this is from stinson two the president s. Hes talking about the recent ultimatum made at the conference and the dramatic results of the test that weve heard about already. The suggestions made by the british and the secretary of state is well aware. Hes giving recommendations of what to do and im going to talk about the context of this in a moment. This is a two page or. You can see the tight type. Truman writes on the back of this memo, he says, secretary of war, suggestions approve, released one ready, but not sooner than august 2nd. Truman like two used his initials. Some people overtime have thought that when he says, released one ready, hes talking about the atomic bomb. In fact, this is about the statement that is going to be released. Like a press release rather than a release releasing of a bomb. Thats why theres confusion. I meant to do this before, but i wanted to point out that a number of the memo is with truman uses on the back. This is an interesting document and that the preparing the statements. There are saying we need to get the statement approved because once the bomb is dropped, we will need an immediate statement. They are a bit rushed because they have been going back and forth in terms of what to say to the world once this bomb is actually dropped. They are trying to get the suggestions approved by both the british and the suggestions from stinson and truman and burns. All those in the close circles of president truman at that time. Thats a fascinating one, put it can be used to mislead. Its more about statement rather than the bomb itself. Now we are going to get closer and closer to august 6th. The last one were going to look at from july is a letter home to his wife. He actually writes a number of letters to his wife, because it takes about two weeks to get to the conference via the uss augusta. He trusts the atlantic rather than flying. Hes under a lot of strain and used some of that time to rest as well and play poker and other things in the evening. He writes to bests from the uss augusta. When he finally gets to germany to potsdam potsdam, he continues to write to her. During that time, he says very little in his letters about the atomic bomb. Obviously, theres some concern about secrecy and letters being intercepted and things of that nature. But on the july 31st letter, he does make a rather cryptic reference to that. Then we are going to look at some video footage of the news reel of his announcement. We are then going to look at the artifact and the safety plug and the crane. We will then finish with a video on the screen gems. I will explain when we get to that footage. Heres the letter to his wife. This is just two pages. As i mentioned, it was written july 31st. Of course, trumans writing is not the easiest to read, the cursive. This is all digitized and on our website. It goes up every time i say these numbers. We have more than 1300 red letters written by harry truman to bests Wallace Truman over their lifetime from 1910 to 1957. In most cases, we have the envelopes which is amazing to have in the collection. All the letters that harry wrote to bess our digitized and available on our website. You can go straight to july and look at these other letters. This is the only one that really references the atomic bomb. Its rather cryptic when he does so. However, if you look at the bottom of the first page on the left and the beginnings of the second page on the right, he finishes up the bottom of the first page where he says, i rather think mr. Stalin is stalling because hes not so happy about the english elections. Just to remind you, Winston Churchill had lost the elections in Great Britain during the potsdam conference and he is replaced by the new labor Prime Minister. Truman then goes on to say at the bottom of the page, he doesnt know it, but i have an ace in the hole and another one showing. That base in the whole, we will look at the transcript here. Ace in the hole is cryptic, but we believe hes talking about the atomic bomb. Here we see the transcript. Its a little easier to read. He talks about the secretary of state burns and the soviet foreign minister and the new british Prime Minister as well as his foreign minister. I rather think stolen is stalling because hes not so happy. He doesnt know it, but i have an ace in the whole. To continue to that he says, and another one showing. Truman loves his card games. Unless he has threes or to pair, he does not and were sitting good. That is the one time he refers rather cryptically to the atomic bomb in his letters to his wife bess. I find that rather fascinating. Sometimes in historical documents, you are led from things that were not written. The other seven or eight letters that he writes, he really makes no reference to the atomic bomb. This same to his mother and sister at the same time. No references or rather cryptic. Moving on. Weve got a video clip for you now. This is truman announcing the surrender from the uss not the surrender, excuse me, announcing the dropping of the atomic bomb from the uss augustas. You can see the window in the background from the ship. A short time ago, and american airplane dropped one bomb on hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of tnt. The japanese began the war from the air at pearl harbor. They have been repaid many fold and the and is not yet. With this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase and destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form, these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loose against those who brought war to the far east. We are now prepared to destroy more rapidly and completely, every productive enterprise the japanese have in any city. Who shall destroy their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroyed japans power to make war. It was to spare the japanese people from other destruction that the ultimatum of july the 26th was issued at potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain a fire from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this attack will follow land and sea forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the findings skill of which they are already well aware. There we go. Im going to talk about this next artifact, but i wanted to make a couple of comments about the news real. Firstly, i think the quality is remarkable. The definition of the video i think is very spectacular and i feel very fortunate for the quality and five years later. The second part of that is very compelling when you get the closeup video. Truman looks at you with those eyes and you know he means business. They wonder about that when hes on the negotiating table with stolen and churchill and churches replacement. When he looked across that table, it seems like he had that same serious stare when he made these tough decisions at as president. The fact that you can see the window on the uss augusta behind him. Giving you that sense of time in place as hes getting ready to come home. We just as the atomic bomb has been dropped on hiroshima. The fact the one thing that comes across to me is that he really meets business. This next piece is an artifact, a three dimensional artifact, from our museum connection. Im going to do a closeup of the target is attached to this. Let me talk about the object first and then the tag that is with it off to the side. First of all, this green, black and silver plug is actually the safety plug taken out of the bomb fuse from the plutonium bomb that was dropped the nagasaki. The description in the tag tells that to. The green plug was removed and replaced with a red activating plug on the boxcar. The name of the b 29 to carry the bump on its mission. The planes commander, let me show you this. This was the safety plug. It was removed and they put in the activating plug which went up with the bomb. If you look on the next page here, you can see this more upright and its a little easier to read. 10th of august, 1945. I certify that this is one of the to green safety plugs used at nagasaki, japan, on 9th of august, 1945. This was the second atomic bomb dropped on the empire. The writing of the two gentlemen underneath, the second one is probably easier to read, i did some research on this, the commander whose name comes first is frederik ash worth. Hes one of the weapon ears. His assistant is lieutenant Philip Barnes. Those are the two people who signed off on that to provide its authenticity. So fascinating object. Im going to go back so you can see that plug again. I should say that this artifact and the tag will be on display in the renovated museum when we reopen the Truman Museum Truman Library museum later this year after our 30 Million Dollar renovation. The safety plug will be in a special gallery dealing with the atomic bomb. And another artifact i will show you a little later will be in the same gallery. A fascinating artifacts. We are very fortunate to have it and the tag that goes with it adds to the story. That is really special. The fact that frederik ash worth and Philip Barnes signed that, giving that authenticity, is very much appreciated. Really a fascinating object. The next is its counterpart. This is from a little bit later. Weve had this on display before the Truman Library and its going to be displayed again in the same gallery space as the safety plug. We are going to juxtapose one another. This is the paper crane made by society. Shes a japanese girl who was a victim of the atomic bombs in hiroshima when she was two years old. Her name was sasaki. She did survive and the story is that during her early part of life in august, 1955. She decided that she was going to start making these paper cranes as a symbol of peace. That was her risch. There is different stories that go back and forth whether she accomplished that. The more recent research is that she made more than 1000 cranes before her death. Theres Children Stories about this crane and this train is rather small. We blew it up on the powerpoint for you to see today. But its very small. This will be displayed in the museum when reopen. Along with approximately five to 600 paper cranes made by students in the kansas city area. They made paper cranes to go into the exhibit along side this original paper crane so we can help tell that story of sadako. This is part of the peace and reconciliation efforts made by truman sun in the last decade or more. He has been to japan and reached out. I think it is largely through his efforts that we were able to get one of the last surviving cranes from sadako donated to the Museums Library collection sadako those things have come full circle between. Peace efforts after, 1945. The fact that the sadako family allowed that to be donated to the library is very special. I think when you see the renovated museum when we reopen this year, with both the safety plugs and the sadako crane sharing the same space, its really going to be a very meaningful approach and interpretation to that episode in history. Moving on, we have one more video to show you. Before i press play, it might want to do it itself. Im trying to not let it do that. This is when truman looks back in the 1960s when hes asked about the atomic bomb. He never really wavered much from his belief that it was the right thing to do. In 1964 and 1965, there was a Television Series looking at trumans decisions and the Truman Library is very fortunate to have many of these outtakes now on our youtube channel. This is one of those. Its quite short. He talks about the decision to drop the atomic bomb. So when we issued the ultimatum to japan to surrender. The only answer we got was to go to the devil. Yet all this time, some of their people seem to be acting behind the backs of the cabinet trying to sue for peace and one underhand way or another. When they played that way, we knew there was only one of two things to do. We could advance on japan and lose 1 million of our own men or drop the atomic bomb. We dropped the bomb. Still, there is no reaction. We learned later that the japanese cabinet met and finally, there were enough to agree to surrender to split the cabinet in half. One half in favor of surrender, the other determined to fight on. In this spirit, the amber was finally called on to give his opinion. Unprecedented move. He did not want his people to die more than he did not want to surrender. The military still would not what if i have the capitulation. So we had to drop a second bomb on nagasaki. That did it. The cabinet met again and decided. That was in the end. They notified us that they would accept an unconditional surrender, but implied that the condition that the emperor might be retained in some way. The emperor pronouncing an announcement to the japanese people on the radio. The first time the japanese populace ever heard his voice. Yet, dont you think that one military group didnt speak into the try to head off the recording so could not be broadcast. They broadcasted it and they surrendered. I will tell you that without those two atomic bombs dropped on them to show that we meant business, it might never have surrendered even though they knew they would lose. They wouldve killed 3 million more people on both sides. That is why there is no question, that in view of the whole of the Japanese Military and their people, the dropping of the atom bomb was the only sensible thing to do. It was the only thing to do. Okay. Those are my ten artifacts. I think we are ready for questions. Excellent, thank you mark for an excellent presentation. If you have a question and have not added it, theres a cue and a feature at the bottom of your screen. Please do so now. We would also like a question that has already been submitted that you like to see answered. Our first question is where the targets listed in that document and priority order . If so, what moved up nagasaki to be the second location . I dont believe that they were in priority order, no. They were there and a lot of the decision was going to be based on the weather. I know that for nagasaki, the weather was much more cooperative than some other locations. As far as i understand it, i dont believe that those were priority. Thats a great question. I think it was more weather dependent. Our next question comes from zachary. He says, how did the museum get the plug . Is there a story about its provenance . I believe it was donated by commander ashworth and lieutenant binds, i can double check that, but that is what i understand. Just to clarify, it may have been passed from ashworth onto others. I dont think he directly met president truman, but it was passed along the chain to be given to president truman eventually. All right. Our next question comes from ed. Where the materials career in potsdam, trying to understand Document Exchange in earlier times. They were often career but they had telegraph systems. Our next question comes from thomas who asks, how is the report sent to truman . Sorry, i didnt read that intense. Its basically the same question. Next one from deborah. Where are the videos available . Great question. I love that question. The Truman Library has its own youtube channel. Probably the easiest way to get to it is if you go to true bare Truman Library. Gov, scroll to the very bottom of the page and you will see the little icon for youtube. A little plate button. You click on that button and you go all the way into. It will take you directly to the youtube page. What i really like about how that pages organized is there are playlists. You can look at play lists and find the area of history you are particularly interested in. If you are interested in the 1940 Election Campaign or trumans earlier live or post presidency, they are organized in that way so you can see different areas of trumans life and times and presidency through those playlists. We actually added quite a lot during the last few months. Excellent. Our next question comes from michael and it says, what is your response to the claim that we dropped the bomb to show the russians we meant business and not the japanese . Im going to sound a little like a politician here. Im a federal employee and we preserve and document all of the materials related to president truman in his life and times. Our goal is to let you to decide as a researcher, to come and look on the materials either on our website or in person when we reopen after covid19 ends. Decide for yourself based on the evidence. Of course, you might have individual opinions about things. But is a federal employee and federal institution, we encourage you to research and decide for yourself. We dont dictate with the opinion should be. Honestly, we hope that our new museum exhibits that open later this year are at the same tenant. You decide yourself on the accomplishments of president truman, good or bad. Excellent. The next question comes from kim. It says, will there be any documents about. In the old one, it did not have this. Do you know about the training of the japanese civilians to attack our soldiers . I believe that particular episode is not necessarily covered in the exhibits itself. It sounds like a great public program. We do have a number of audio pieces that look at the japanese perspective alongside the American Perspective on the reactions to the dropping of the bomb in the very balanced way. Both american and japanese perspectives on the use of the bomb are used in an Audio Program that we plan to have in that same gallery where we had the sadako crane and the safety plug. We obviously realize what an incredibly controversial decision it was by president truman. We are very well aware of the smithsonian and the analogy a controversy in the 1990s. Our goal is to present the information and allow the visitor to decide. We had comments in the past when dealing with the atomic bomb, and we will have it again so people can provide their opinions. We will try to provide all the information we can from both sides in that gallery space. Excellent. Our next question comes from bark. It says is there any evidence that president truman deliberated to use the weapons or not . Any history of any moral debate . There is some, but not a whole lot. I think truman had the main goal of ending the war as quickly as possible. There is a couple of things that are factoring in at the same time as the testing is taking place in new mexico and what they deemed as a successful test. In that same month in july, as you weigh well know, the United States had broken the codes of japanese intelligence. They were receiving, i think i am right on this, about around 1 million messages a month from the japanese. One of the crucial threats they were following was where the japanese buildup of troops were for a planned land invasion by the United States. The japanese were actually building up their troops in far greater numbers in exactly the locations the American Forces were landing or going to land in the fall and following spring. So there was certainly some hesitation about a land invasion once they started to read the interceptions. The other part of that was that they decided, after looking at those interceptions, although some of them were saying they wanted to negotiate a surrender through the russians, they really were not ready for an unconditional surrender. So i think that the intelligence code breaking really reinforced truman and secretary stinson opinion to use the weapon as quickly as possible and to end the war as quickly as possible. When truman was questioned about it later, you saw the video from the 1960s, he often reminded people about pearl harbor and the fact that the attack happened while they were not at war and arguments of that nature. Interesting. Our next question comes from cory. It says, how great of a role did secretary stinson have in this decision . It was secretary of war stinson just to be careful about the right title. He was crucial. Not only did he really head up the Manhattan Project and overseeing it. He was groves supervisor in a sense. He was very much the first person to find out what was happening with the Manhattan Project, but he was also a very close confidant to truman. You some my first document in the presentation. Hes the one that tells truman about it. When the interim Committee Meets in the summer, stints and is really the one that is certainly at the forefront of those decisions. He was a really key player. I would not say one person over another made those decisions, but stinson its certainly among those who truman goes to for advice and leans on for suggestions on what to do. Stinson is involved in discussions about sharing the information with the soviets and the setup of the Atomic Energy commission. All these things that stinson was already seeing the world would look like with this new power. Stinson was rather far reaching in that regard. All right. We have time for a few more questions. Our next one comes from. It says, how did trumans family react to the dropping of the atomic bomb . I think this is a harder question. As far as im aware, theres not a great deal of evidence that we have. As historians and architects and educators, we like to rely on evidence as a response. From everything that i have read her, they were entirely supportive of truman. There is not too many decisions that i have found that they may have disagreed with truman on. If they did, they did not express it publicly. Unfortunately, i mentioned all of those letters the truman wrote that we have in the museum and library collection. We really do not have letters after the time that he senator. When hes Vice President and president , we dont have any of bess letters. She burned them. So we dont have that evidence to see exactly what you thought about it, but i can only imagine that she was supportive of him and that the war was over very quickly after that. So i can imagine that there was any criticism of what he did as president in this particular case. All right. Our last question comes from pat. He asks, were there any thoughts on the bomb in tokyo . There was some early discussions of that. One of the reasons hiroshima and nagasaki, along with the weather, they wanted to use the balm on cities that had not received any kind of destruction. Hes hes not the right word, but its the only word i can think of right now. It was easier to see the level of destruction. Tokyo had received a lot of firebombings and napalm and other attacks. It would have been a little more difficult to show the level of destruction that the atomic bomb was capable of doing. Its one of the reasons why tokyo was not chosen. It had already received damage in the past. These are Great Questions by the way. Keep them going. Lets do a few more than. All right. Our next question comes from the lean, she says i always heard the truman felt remorse after the dropping of the bump. Did he revisit that decision later in life . That was one of the reasons i showed that video clip in the and from 1964 and 1965. He did not seem to show much remorse there and he lives for another seven years. What trumans son told a story about he questioned that towards the end of his life in 1972. There is some conversations he has at Research Hospital in kansas city where he passes away on december 22nd, 1972. He kind of has his has some discussions about im obviously not privy to those conversations, but from what i can tell there was perhaps some second guessing or clarification. Did i do the right thing . Was it the right thing to do towards the end . As far as i can tell. Clifton Truman Daniel has relate a story about that in the past. Some comments in the last year or two of his life where he wonders about that at the very end which seems quite natural to me. Most of the time he makes his decision as president and he was responsible for so many in those seven and a half years as president. Its not too surprising that he may have questioned it. When he was questioned publicly, whether it was on the Television Series or in writing, he often referred back to pearl harbor and the attack by the japanese as a large part of his justification. The second part was that he was saving lives. The other part about saving lives that richard frank, historian brings up, he saved a number of asian lives because of Japanese Occupation of asian countries. Richard frank estimates about 400,000 japanese were saved a month by the fact the japanese just surrendered and were no longer causing those atrocities in asia. Thats another set of lives that were saved by the speedy surrender that are otherwise would not have happened. Excellent. Our next question is from james. He says, did truman ever visit japan . No he did not. I mentioned before that his grandson, clifton Truman Daniel, has visited numerous times. But truman did not visit japan, no. All right. Short answers. I think this is definitely the most questions weve ever answered during a program. Its a big topic and a big anniversary. Yeah. William asks, what was the timeline of decisionmaking by president truman between the first and the second use of the atomic bomb . There really wasnt a second decision. The way it has been explained to me is that he authorized the military use of the bomb. So they had this new weapon and they were able to use it. Once the reports came in of the amount of devastation and things like that, then after the second bomb, truman said no for the future use of this. He goes back to the executive. It goes back to the president as commanderinchief. So when he gave the first authorization for hiroshima, there was no second order needed. It was used as necessary. You have this new weapon. There were only two, the third wasnt going to be ready until august 16th or 17th according to groves. There was not a further decision to be made. If they were ready to use one and japan had not already surrendered, it would have been trumans decision again. The first two, it was only one decision. Thats often misunderstood. There was only one decision for the first two bombs. All right. Edward asks, what would be your recommendation for the best book dealing with the decision to drop the bombs . Richard frank. Downfall of the Imperial Japanese empire or Something Like that i think. Downfall is the main name and it has the subheading. Richard franks book because, even though it is a little old now, it does include the information about the ultra and magic intercepts which some of the earliest studies did not include. A lot of those came out later on. He also did a lot of his research with japanese and soviet archives as well. All right. Next question comes from debra. It says, was anyone was there anyone in congress that knew about the Manhattan Project . Youve got me. Probably. Probably. Very few though. It was a very tight circle, but i would hate to say no. Because there was a very tight circle. Its hard to say. I think you would have to go back and look at the interim Committee Notes and see who served on that committee. I dont think it got much further than that. Those minutes and notes are on our website. I would have to go back and look. I would imagine there was a few League Senators that were involved in those discussions, but very very few. Im not going to say no, i think there was a few. Sorry that i cant be so precise on that one. All right. Our last question comes from robin. Did truman and open high more ever meet . Gosh. You got me. Im stumped. I dont know that actually. We will get back to you on that. One of our archivists might have to look that up. We have appointment counters online. If i was cooking my fingers, i would do a search for oppenheimer an hour appointment calendar and see if his name pops up. Its in the database. That might just be president ial appointments. What i actually dont know off the top of my head whether he did meet oppenheimer or not . I would guess that he did, but im just guessing. There may have been secret meetings that were not recorded to. Its not an all exclusive answer for that. I would say off the top of my head, im sorry but i cant answer that question accurately. Im going to look it up as soon as we get done. We will take a final question then. This one is from dave. He says, do you have any information on the traded soviet spies in new mexico during the Manhattan Project . We do. Its a whole other topic of discussion. We have been on record that the spies were in new mexico. Truman did not know about them at the time. A lot of it came out later on about those spies. Thats a whole other presentation. Later on it was found that the worst spies in new mexico, and i believe it was in 1949, that the soviets by that time had their atomic bomb. Its another four years later. Its shortly after. There is a lot of information at the Truman Library about that and other sources as well about the soviet spies. Theres been books written about it as well. On august 6 and Army Air Force b29 on august 6th at zero 8 15 japanese time, and Army Air Force b 29th dropped atomic from number two on hiroshima, japan seventh largest japan city. Seventh largest city, communications military and Industrial Center of considerable importance. A stunning universe now learned that man had a new weapon of shocking destructiveness