Documents and a sketch of a test explosion. We will also see the president s announcement of the bomb dropping. The Truman Library institute provided this video. What i would like to do tonight is to show you a number of artifacts, photographs, documents related to the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb. I will present them digitally and then well have some questions in the chat box at the end. I hope you enjoyed the presentation. Enjoy the presentation. I will go right in. This is not from july of 1945 but from april shortly after truman became president. Then we will look at some documents from july to see my timeline here. Then we will have another five to finish off. Even some from later into the 60s that 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 12. This very famous letter that some of you are very familiar with is when Henry Stimson writes to truman to tell him about this highly secret matter as it is mentioned in that first paragraph. He mentioned this to truman after his inauguration on april 12 after fdrs death. Just in passing, something they need to talk about in the future. A few weeks later, stinson sent this letter to truman, telling him that they need to get together quickly. You can see some interesting handwritten notes. Harry writes matt, tomorrow. He is telling mr. Connelly to get Henry Stenson on his cabinet for the next day. Truman did come across. He did not get into much detail as he started to see the budget numbers about the project but stinson said you cant investigate that anymore. Now he is president and stimson tells her more about it. Truman did not know about the Manhattan Project. It takes him becoming president before he is told about the project. There had not been a successful test but the work has been going on in two or three different locations. They started to develop the atomic bomb. This is the first document i wanted to share with you out of the 10 artifacts that i will share tonight. It really provides the context of when truman first finds out about the Manhattan Project and those interesting anecdotes. He did not know why he was Vice President. He had come closer to it as a senator. It is about two weeks after he is president where stimson sits down and give him all of the detail. He worked in the fdr administration and is the person that is in charge of the whole operation. He is the one that is supervising the development of drones. Stimson has come between the white house and what is going on in new mexico. He is an important, key figure in all of this. The second document we will look at you can see the date at the top of the page. This is july 16, 1945. This is after the first test in new mexico of the atomic bomb. This is a sketch that was included in a 14 page report that was sent to stimson. That was related to truman. We will learn more about this in a second. President truman at this time is at the pot stem conference in germany, meeting with stalin and initially, Winston Churchill before churchill is replaced after the british election. This 14 page report is very detailed. It is not an official report. It is actually quite casual in his writing. That is 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 sketch is on the last page, the 14 page report. On the second page, lieutenant rose refers to the mushrooming cloud. That is the first time the Mushroom Cloud is used in that concept. They describe the explosion as being beautiful, all the different colors in the sky they say. Looking at this particular document, some of the handwritten cursive might be tricky for some of us to read but if you go closer, underneath where it says cloud drawings, it is a little faint. It does say first atomic bomb explosion, sketches from a b29 flying at 30,000 feet about 15 miles away. The b29s that were sent up there for observation could not get as close as they would have liked because of the weather. You can see the time dated, 5 30, 5 38, 5 42. The report 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 will see a little bit later on. Namely, his diary entries. It talks about the colors, dark brown, light gray. Later on, we are able to see photographs and other footage of this atomic cloud. This is what truman receives in germany. It is related to him by stimpson. Truman is excited about the successful test. They will talk about if and when to use this against the japanese. This is the end of july. It is a fascinating document. I would encourage you to read all 14 pages. It is tight, it is easy to read and it is available on the Truman Library website. It is a fascinating read. The payoff is you get this sketch on the last page. The next document is one i mentioned previously. Sherman truman has a couple of different diary entries. I could have chosen one of three that he writes in this time. This is july 17, 1945. The day after he gets back to port. It is handwritten. It can be hard to read. Those who have done the work at the Truman Library have become familiar with trumans handwriting. This is when he is first meeting Joseph Stalin in this particular diary entry. We have other diary entries from july the 18th where he meets churchill. From july 25, he goes to a lot more detail about the atomic bomb testing. He does mention it in this one page of his diary. He is talking to stalin about the different negotiations. This is very much at the beginning of the potsdam conference. This is one of trumans goals of potsdam, to get the soviets to join. He has a cryptic phrase in here. He asked them about the agenda. He told him to fire away and it is dynamite but truman says i have some dynamite too that i am not exploding now. He has this cryptic reference to dynamite. It is not too surprising that he mentions this the day after finding out about the successful test. I am just using one of the diary entries today. In the following day, on the 18th, he says that he believes the japanese will surrender when the russians come in. Then he has this phrase on the 18th of july entry where he says i am sure they will win manhattan appears over their homeland. Truman does not write to manhattan often in his writings. But on this diary entry of july 18, he talks about manhattan appearing over the japanese homeland. He also goes on to say that i will inform stalin about it at an opportune time. During the potsdam conference, he tells stalin briefly but not in detail that they have a weapon they can use against the japanese. In 2020, it is true that stalin did have spies in new mexico that were passing the information about the Manhattan Project back to him. Oh week later on july 25, on this diary entry there, he goes into a lot more detail and talks about how the weapon is to be used against the japanese between now and august 10. Those diary entries were very revealing as truman expands on the information he has been given by lieutenant groves. We have two contrasting documents here. One is a little misleading. We will do that one second. I am trying to keep them in chronological order. This is the closest you would get to the ordering of the use of the atomic bomb. This is a memo from thomas handy who is the acting chief of staff while marshall is at pop stem postsdam with truman. You can see the date on this one. It is the 25th of july. Teens are moving quickly as you can see. You can see this, it is not super sharp but basically it has four points on the single page memo. It talks about the 509 composite group. The 20th air force will deliver its First Special bomb as soon as weather will permit. They refer to it as the special bomb without using the word atomic. It talks about the various targets and the first one there is hiroshima. The fourth one is nagasaki. The second point says that the additional bombs would be delivered on the above targets as soon they are made ready by project staff. We found out later that in the early part of august, only two bombs were ready. They used both of them. The third bomb was not probably 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. The military will not make any comments about this, in any new stories, any people asking for information, you to refer back to that were for them to respond to. The last point this is done with the approval of the secretary of war. It also mentions that a copy has been sent to general macarthur. This is the closest you will get to the actual orders for the dropping of the bomb on hiroshima. That is dated the 25th of july. It says after august 3 on there, it does give a date for that. At that point, theyre waiting for a response from the pop stem potsdam declaration to the japanese. This memo is from the secretary of war to truman. It is a few days later. It is 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 stimson to the president. He is talking about the recent ultimatum that was made on potsdam. Also, the dramatic results of the test that we have heard already. Also, the suggestion made by the british of which secretary of state burns is well aware. He is giving this is a two pager. Truman writes on the back of this memo, he says secretary of war, reply, this is the number of the memo. Suggestions are released when ready. He is talking about the atomic bomb. This is about the statement that is going to be released rather than the releasing of a bomb. Thats why the confusion. I meant to do this before. This is an interesting document. We better get the statement approved because once a bomb is dropped, we will need a statement immediately. That is why there is a little bit of a rush here. It is going backandforth in terms of what to say to the world wants this bomb is dropped. They are trying to get the suggestions approved by both the british suggestions and the suggestions from stimson himself and from truman and burns and all in the close circle of president truman at that time. That is fascinating but it should not be used here, it is more about statements rather than the bomb itself. The last one we will look at from july is a letter to tibet. He takes about two weeks to get to potsdam and he goes across the atlantic rather than flying. Many people argue that he did that to get ready to prepare to read the materials. He writes from the uss augusta. When he gets to germany, to potsdam, he continues to write to her. During that time, he says very little in his letters about the atomic bomb. Obviously, there is some concern about secrecy, things are being excepted, things of that nature. But on july 31, he makes a rather cryptic message. Then we will look at some video footage of the newsreel. Then we will look at the artifact that is the safety plug. We will finish with the video on the screen. This is the letter to bess. It was mentioned it was written july 31. Trumans writing is not the easiest to read. It is all digitized on our website. It goes up every time i say these numbers. We have more than 1300 letters written by harry truman to bess. They are all available on our website. This is the only one that really references the atomic bomb. It is rather cryptic when he does so. If you look at the bottom of the first page on the left and the beginning of the second page on the right, he finishes the bottom of this first page where he says i think mr. Stalin was stalling because he is not so happy about the english elections. He is replaced by the new climate administer. Truman says he does not know it but i have an ace in the hole and another one is showing. That ace in the hole is cryptic but we believe he is talking about the atomic bomb. We see the transcript is a little easier to read. He talks about secretary of state bytn byrnes. They think that stellan is stalling. He does not know if i have an ace in the hole. Another one is showing. You know that truman loves his card games. That is the one time that he refers rather cryptically to the atomic bomb in his letters to his wife, bess Wallace Truman. Sometimes in historic documents, you learn about things that are not written. The other seven or eight letters that he writes, he makes no reference to the atomic bomb. Nor in his letters to his mothers and sisters at the time. The letters at the time are rather cryptic. Moving on. We have a video clip for you. This is truman announcing the surrender from the announcing the dropping of the atomic bomb from the uss aggressors uss augustus. [video clip] a short time ago, an american airplane dropped one bomb on hiroshima and showed the usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more than 20,000 tons of tnt more power than 20,000 tons of tnt. The end is not yet. With this bomb, we have added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In the present form, these bombs are now in production and even more powerful bombs are in development. It is an atomic bomb. The harnessing of the basic power of the universe. It has been used against those that brought wards to the far east. We are now prepared to destroy more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the japanese have in every city any city. We will destroy their factories and their communications. Let there be no mistake, we will completely destroy japans power to make war. It is to spare the japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum will be issued at potsdam. They promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may exct rain from the air that has not been seen in this earth. This will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen. And with the fighting skills of which they are already well aware. I will talk about this one but i want to make a couple of comments about that newsreel. I think the quality is remarkable. The definition of the video is very spectacular. We are very fortunate that it is of that quality 75 years later. The second part is very compelling. You have the close of video. Truman looks at you with those eyes and you know he means business. I wonder about that when he is at the negotiating table with stalin and churchill. When he looks across the table, it looks like you have that same serious stare when he makes those tough decisions as president. It is a fascinating video. The fact that you can see the window behind him, giving you the sense of time and place as he gets ready to come home. The one thing that really comes up comes across to me is that he really means business. This next piece has been a threedimensional artifact from our museum. I will do a closeup of the tag attached. Let me talk about the object first and then the tag off to the side. First of all, this green, black and silver plug is the safety plug taken out of the bomb fuse from the plutonium bomb dropped on nagasaki. The green plug was removed and replaced with a red activating plug on the boxcar. The name of the b29 that carried the ball. This is the safety plug. It was removed. If you look on the next page, you can see this more upright and other them were easy to read, the 10th of august, 1945. And a little more easy to read, the 10th of august 1945. The second one is probably a little easier to read. The commander whose name comes first is here. Then he has the assistant. Those other two people that sign off on that provide to provide authenticity. I should say that this artifact and the tag will be on display in the renovated museum when we reopen the Truman Museum later this year after our renovation. This will be in a special gallery dealing with the atomic bomb. Another artifact we will show you a little later on will be in the same gallery. A fascinating artifact, we are very fortunate to have it. That is really special. The fact that Frederick Ashworth and philip bonds signed that, giving it authenticity is really appreciated a great object. Next is its counterpart. This is from other later. We have had this on display before at the Truman Library. It will be displayed in the same gallery space as the safety plug they used to juxtapose one another. This is the paper crane made by the doctor. She was a japanese girl who was a victim of the atomic bombs in hiroshima when she was two years old. She did survive. The story is that during the early part of her life, she decided to start making these paper cranes as a sign of peace. Different stories go back and forth on whether she accomplished that. The more recent Research Shows that she made more than 1000 cranes before her death. This crane is rather small. It is very small. This is going to be displayed in a museum when we reopen, along with approximately five or 600 paper cranes made by students in the kansas city area. They made paper cranes to go in the exhibit alongside this original paper crane so we can help tell that story. The reason that it is also really appropriate is this is part of the peace and reconciliation efforts made by trumans grandson in the last decade or more where he is has been to japan and reached out. It was largely through his efforts that we were able to get one of the last surviving cranes donated to the librarys museum collection. All of those things have come full circle with the connection between truman, clifton, daniel and the peace after 1945 and the fact that the family would allow that to be donated to the library is very special. I think when you see the renovated museum with both the safety plug and the sudoku crane sharing the same space, it will be a very meaningful addition to that episode in history. Moving on, we have one more video to show you. Before i press play, it might go itself. Im trying to not let her do that. This is truman back in the 60s when he is asked about the atomic bomb. He never wavered much from his belief that it was the right thing to do. In 1964 and 1965, it was a Television Series looking at trumans decisions and the Truman Library is very fortunate that many of these outtakes this is one of those. It is quite short. He talks about the decision to drop the atomic bomb. When we issued the ultimatum to japan to surrender, the only answer we got was to go to the devil. Yet, all this time, their people seemed to be acting behind their backs, trying to salute for peace in one underhanded way or another. We knew that there was one of only two things to do. This is losing a million of our own men. There was no reaction, we learned later the other is in terms to fight on. In this. , the effort was finally called on. An unprecedented move. He did not want his people to die more than he wanted to surrender. Yet, the military still would not notify us of their capitulation. We had to drop the second bomb on nagasaki. That did it, the cabinet met again and really decided that wasnt the end. They notified us that they would accept an unconditional surrender. Dont you think that one military group did not speak break into the offices and try to record head off that record so it cannot be broadcast. They did broadcasted and they surrendered. Broadcast it and they surrendered. If we did not drop those bombs on them to show them that we meant business, they may have never surrendered. It would have killed 3 million more people on both sides. That is why there is no question that the dropping of the atom bomb was the only sensible thing to do. It was the only thing to do. Those are my 10 artifacts. I think we are ready for questions. If you have a question and you have not edited, please go ahead and do so now. Also, a question has already been submitted that you would like to see entered. Our first question is where the targets listed in the document in priority order . If so, but moved up negative sake nagasaki to be the second location . I dont think they were in priority order. I think he was going to be based on the weather. In nagasaki, the weather was much more cooperative than some other locations. As far as i understand it, i dont believe those were priority order. It was more weather dependent. Our next question comes from zachary. It says how did the museum get the plug . Is there a story about that . Mark i believe it was donated by commander ashworth but i can double check that. 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. Our next question comes from ed. Just trying to understand the manner of Document Exchange at potsdam. Mark they did have telegraph systems. There were not. They were not courierred. That is basically the same question. Next one from deborah. Where are the videos available . Mark the Truman Library has its own youtube channel. It would probably be the easiest way to get to it rather than give you a long url. If you go to Truman Library. Com, that should be easy to remember. Scroll to the bottom of the page, youll see the little icon, a little play button, you click on that button and that will take you directly to the Truman Library youtube page. What i like about the way that page is organized is there are all playlists. You can look at playlists and find the area of history that youre interested in. If youre interested in the 1940 Election Campaign or truman, they are organized in that way so you should you can see the different lives and that presidency. Our next question comes from michael. It is what is your response to the clan that we drop to the bomb to show the russians that we meant business and not the japanese . Mark i will sound a little like a politician here but i am a federal employee. We preserve the documents, all of the materials related to president truman and his life and times. Our goal is to let you decide as the researcher to come and look at the materials that are on our website when we reopen after covid19 and decide for yourself based on the evidence. We might have individual opinions about things but the dead as a federal institution, we encourage you to research and decide for yourself. We dont dictate what the opinion should be. We hope our new museum exhibits that are open later this eve year, we hope you can decide on your own about the accomplishments of president truman, good or bad. The next question comes from tim. It is will there be any documents in the old one, the rumor about the bomb did not happen. You guys know about the training of japanese civilians to attack our schoolrooms. Mark i believe that particular episode is not necessarily covered in the exhibits itself although it is on a great Public Program where 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 a 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 have the sudoku crane and the safety plug. We have obviously realized what an incredibly controversial decision it was by president truman. We are very well aware of the controversy in the 1990s. Our goal is to present the information and allow the visitor to decide. We have a comment book that we have had in the past when we dealt with the atomic bomb. We will have it again so that people can reflect their own opinions there but we will try to provide all the information we can from both sides, multiple opinions, more than two sides in the gallery space. Our next question comes from bart. Is there any evidence that residential meant to liberated teams . Mark some but not a whole lot. Truman had the main goal of ending the war as quickly as possible. There are a couple of things that are factoring in at the same time that the testing is taking place in new mexico. In that same month in july, as you may well know, the United States had broken the codes of japanese intelligence. They were receiving around about one million messages a month from the japanese. One of the crucial threads they were following is where the japanese buildup of troops were for a planned land invasion by the United States. There are land invasion intercepts, the japanese were building up their troops in far greater numbers in the exact same locations the American Forces were going to land where the invasion would and then the following spring. There was some hesitation about a land invasion. The other part of that was they decided after that the japanese, although some of those said they wanted to negotiate a surrender through the russians, they were really not ready for an unconditional surrender. I think the in televisions intelligence reinforced truman and secretary stimsons intentions to end the war as quickly as possible. You saw that video from the 1960s he reminded people about pearl harbor and that that attack happened when they were not at work over argument of that nature. Our next question is from cory. How great of a role did secretary stimson have in this decision . Mark secretary of war stimson was crucial. Not only did he head up the Manhattan Project, he was the supervisor in a sense. He was obviously 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. He is the one that tells truman about it. Stimson is really the one that is not making the decisions but at the forefront of those decisions and was a really key player. I would not say one person over another meadows decisions but it is in the top five. He leans on him for suggestions on what to do. Stimson is involved in discussions later on about sharing information with the associates. Stimson was already seeing what the world would look like after the war was over, what would we do with this power . Stimson was rather farreaching in that regard. A few more questions. Our next one says how did trumans family react to the dropping of the atomic bomb . Mark this is a harder question. There is not a great deal of evidence. We as historians and educators like to rely on evidence. They were entirely supportive of truman, there are not too many decisions that i found that they may have disagreed with truman on or if they did, they did not express it publicly. I mentioned all of those letters that truman wrote that we have in the elect in the museum. But we dont have best Wallace Truman bess Wallace Trumans letters. They were burned, she burned them. We dont have that evidence to say exactly what she thought about it but i can only imagine she was supportive of him ending the war, it was over very quickly after that. I cant imagine there was any criticism of what he did as president in this particular case. Our last question comes from pat. He asks if there was any thought about using the bomb on tokyo . Mark there were some early discussions of that. The reason that hiroshima and nagasaki, they wanted to use the bomb on cities that had not received any kind of destruction. It was easier to see the level of destruction, tokyo had received a lot of firebombings and a lot of napalm and other attacks. It would have been a lot more difficult to show the level of destruction that the atomic bomb was capable of doing. That was one of the reasons why tokyo was not chosen. It already received damage in the past. These are great questions, keep them going. Lets do a few more than. The next question comes from here. I always heard that truman felt remorse after dropping the bomb. Mark that was one of the reasons i showed that clip. He did not seem to show much remorse there. He questions that toward the end of his life. There are some conversations that he had where he passed away on december 26, 9072. He kind of had some 1972. He had some discussions about that. I am not party to those conversations but from what i can tell, there was maybe some i dont want to say secondguessing is but some powerful thinking about whether it was the right thing to do. But they relayed the story about that in the past about maybe some comments in the last year or two of his life where he wonders about that at the and, that seems very natural to me. Most of the time he makes those decisions as president. He did not really look back at them but it was not too surprising that he may have questioned this one. What he wants question publicly whether it was on the Television Series or writing, he often referred back to pearl harbor and the attack by the japanese as a large part of his justification. The other part about saving lives, even though it was not trumans intended but he saved a lot of asian lives because of Japanese Occupation of Asian Company countries. Over 4000 words over 4000 japanese were saved per month because the japanese were no longer occupying. That is another sect of lives that were saved. Our next question is from james, he asks if truman ever visited japan. Mark he did not. Clifton truman visited numerous times truman did not visit japan, no. Short answers. This is the most questions we have ever answered during a program. It is a big topic and big anniversary. Mark there was not a second decision, the way it has been explained to me is that he authorized the military use of the bomb. They had this new weapon and they were able to use it. Once the reports came in of the amount of devastation, after the second bomb, truman said use this, he goes back to the president as commanderinchief. 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 2 that even existed at that time. The third was not going to be ready until august 16. There was not a third decision that he made. But if they were ready to use one and japan had not surrendered, that would have been trumans decision again. But the first two, there was only one decision. That is often misunderstood. Only one decision for the two bombs. Edward asks what would be the recommendation . Richard frank, the downfall of the Imperial Japanese empire. Downfall is the main name. Richard franks book. Even though it is a little old now, it includes the information about the intercepts that some of the earlier studies did not include. A lot of this came out later on. He also did a lot of his research with japanese and soviet archives as well. The next question comes from deborah. It says was there anyone in congress that knew about the Manhattan Project . Mark you got me, probably. It was a very tight circle. I would hate to say no. There was a very tight circle. It is hard to say. You have to go back and look at who served on the committee. I dont thick it got much further than that. Those minutes on our website. I would imagine there was a few lead centers senators involved in that discussion. I think there were a few. Sorry i cant be so precise on that one. Our last question comes from robin who says did truman and oppenheimer ever meet . Mark gosh, you got me. I dont know that, actually. We will get back to you on that. One of our archivists may have to look that up. We have a calendar online, if i was quick with my fingers, i would look it up. That would just be his president ial appointment. I dont know off the top of my hand my head whether he met oppenheimer or not. I would guess that he did but im just guessing. Our appointment calendar could probably tell you. There may have been secret meetings not recorded. There is not and always close of answer for that. I would say i am very sorry i cant answer that question accurately. I am going to look it up as soon as we get done. We will take a final question. Do you have any archives on the atom bomb development in new mexico . Mark we do. We know 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. That is a whole other presentation. Later on it was found that there were spies in new mexico. I believe it was in 1949 that the soviets had their atomic bomb. It is another four years later but it is shortly after. There have been books written about it as well. From George Washington to george w. Bush, we feature the presidency, or weekly series exploring the president , their politics, policy and legacies. About the leadership skills that make for a successful presidency. Year, this collection offers perspectives into the lives and events that forged each president s leadership style. To learn more about all our president s and the books featured historians, visit cspan. Org the president. Available wherever books are sold. The eve of this summers Democratic National convention, we will show several acceptance speeches from president ial nominees. The footage appears courtesy of nbc news archives. [applause] we will do that because they are wrong and we are right and i will prove it to you and just two minutes. This convention met to express the will and reaffirm the beliefs of the Democratic Party. There have been differences of opinion, and thats the democratic way. Those differences have been shelved. Now it is time for us to get together and beat the common enemy. Thats up to you. [applause] we are working together for victory on a great cause. Become a habit of our party. It has been elected four times in succession and i am convinced it will be elected the fifth time in november. [applause] the reason is, the people know that the Democratic Party is the peoples party. The Republican Party is the party a special interest and it always has been, always will be. [applause] the record of the democratic written in the accomplishment of the last 16 years. I dont need to repeat them. They had been very ably placed before this convention by the keynote speaker, candidate for Vice President , and by the permanent chairman. The acceptancef speeches this sunday. Here on American History tv. Next on American History tv, leave issue a hiroshima nagasaki atomic bomb exhibit at American University in washington, d. C. This american Artifacts Program was recorded in 2015. Mr. Kuznick hi. I am peter kuznick, professor of history at American University and director of American Universitys Nuclear Studies institute. And i began our institute back in 1995