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 StatesArmy 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