Bombs, including a white house documents, a sketch of a test explosion. We see mr. Trumans recorded announcement that the hiroshima bomb. Explained years later why he used the weapon. The Truman Library institute provided this video. What i would like to do tonight is to show you a number of artifacts, objects, photographs, three dimensional related to the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb. Each of those are going to present to digitally. We will have questions and answers on the chat box. I hope you enjoy the presentation and i will go right in and look at our first artifact which is actually from 1945, not 1945 but from april shortly after he became president. They will look at documents from july. You can see my timeline here, documents we will show you. And will try to finish off as we get into august. And later into the sixties. They connect to this topic. First information that truman has about the Manhattan Project comes in april just 12 days after he becomes president on april 12th. It is very famous letters, some of you are familiar with, as one harry stance and who was the secretary of war rights to truman to tell him about his highly secret matter is he mentions in that first paragraph. Stance and mention it to truman after his inauguration on april 12th first and passing and tells and the need to talk about in the future. Two weeks later, he sent the letter to truman, telling him they need to get together quickly so he can tell him about his project. You can see some interesting handwritten notes at the bottom and what i like to point out with harry chumas own handwriting, he writes math, put on list tomorrow. Hst. His appointment secretary is obviously telling him to get harry stands on his calendar for the next day. Interesting lee, truman did come across the Manhattan Project while he was a senator and charge of the Truman Community during world war ii. He didnt really get into too much detail as he started to see the budget numbers about the project, its tense and as actually the person that warned him off and said you cannot investigate that anymore. Now of course he is president and he tells him more about the project. In those 82 days as Vice President truman did not know about the Manhattan Project. It takes him becoming president before he told about the project. This point, theyve not done a successful test, the work is been going on in two or three different locations as they start to develop the atomic bomb that we will hear more about during the rest of this evenings presentation. This is the first documentation wanted to show you. The ten artifacts. It provides context of when truman first finds out about the project and theres interest an anecdote as a senator and its about two weeks after hes president where stimson sits down and gives them all the detail. Stimson had worked in the fdr administration. He is in charge of the whole operation. Hes the one that is supervising the work of groves that we will come across later on. Stepson is the conduit between the white house and what is going on and new mexico. He is an important key figure in all of this. The second document we will look at this from lieutenant groves and you can see the date at the top of the page july 16th, 1945. This is after the first test in u. S. Mexico the atomic bomb. This is a sketch that was included in the 14page report that groves sense to stepson stimson and relate to truman. We will learn more about this in a second, of course truman at this time isnt potsdam Conference Meeting with stalin and western churchill. Churchill is replaced after the british election. It is 14page report is very detailed. It is not an official report. It is actually quite casual in its writing. Excitement and wonderment of the scientists and military people involved in this First Successful test. It really comes through and the report, but the sketch is on the last page of that 14page report. And the second page, lieutenant groves refers to the Mushroom Cloud, and that is the first time that the word Mushroom Cloud is really used in the concept, and it describes explosions being beautiful and all the different colors in the skies that they see. Looking at this particular document, some of the handwriting is tricky for some of us to read, but if you go close, underneath where it says cloud its a little faint. First atomic bomb explosion, new mexico, sketches from a b219 b92 flying b29 flying at 20,000 feet. You can see theyve done this first thing in the morning. I was really dependent upon the weather where they were going to do this test. Then the report itself goes into more detail about destruction and the impact it had. Truman uses those exact words from those reports and some of the documents that were going to see a little bit iran in his diary entries. It talks about dark brown, light gray. Seethrough here in the hollow in the middle of the cloud. It gives the elevation. Later on, were able to see photographs another footage of this atomic cloud. This is what human receives while hes in germany and its really to him by stimson. Truman is excited about the successful test and they can start to plan whether they will use this against japanese within the first short weeks end of july getting close to when it happens in august. I let you study that a little bit more. Its a fascinating document. I encourage you to read all 14 pages of that report. It sounds cumbersome. Its tight, its easy to read. Its available on the Truman Library website. It is quite fascinating as a read. The payoff is the sketch of the last page. The next document is what i mentioned previously on trumans diaries. It has a number of different entries. I could have chosen one of three that he writes in this period. This one is july 17th, 1945. Just a day after he gets that report, and of course this is hand written and it could be hard to read. This of course is when his first meeting jealous of stolen in his particularly diary entry. We have other entries from july 18th, the next day, when he meets churchill till july 25th when he goes into more detail about the atomic bomb testing. We mention it in this one page of this diary and hes talking to stalin about the different negotiations theyre gonna come up with. Its the beginning of the potsdam conference. Theyre talking about china. The soviets coming into the japanese and one of trumans ghouls at potsdam, to get the soviets to join. There is a cryptic phrase in here. He has time about the agenda and truman says, halfway down, i told him to fire away. He did and it is dynamite. And truman says, but i have some dynamite as well, which im not exploding now. He has this cryptic reference to dynamite and explosions. It is not too surprising that he mentions this the day after finding out about the successful test. Im just using one of the diary entries today, but in the following day of the 18th, he says that he believes the japanese will surrender when the russians come in yet stalin does agree to enter the war. And you have this freeze on the 18th of july entry where he says, i am sure they will when manhattan appears. Chairman does not refer to manhattan very often in his writings. But in his diary object to july 18th the talks about manhattan. He goes on to say i will inform stalin about it at an opportune time. He does tell style and briefly, not really in detail, about the fact they have a new weapon they could use against japanese. Truman did not think that stalin knew anything about that, but as we know now, in 2020, stalin did in fact have spies in new mexico. They were passing information about the Manhattan Project back to him. A week later on july 25th and his injury, he goes into a lot more detail and talks about how the weapon needs to be used against the japanese. The diary entries are very revealing as truman expounds upon the information that he has been given by lieutenant groves. We have got to contrasting documents here. One is a little misleading and we will do that in one second. I will try to things are moving quickly as you can see. You can see this. It additional bombs would be delivered on the above target system is 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 gonna be ready until the 16th or 17th of august. The third point there 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 news stories, any people asking for information, to refer back to that or 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 mcarthur, and a copy has been sent to this is the closest youre going to get to the actual orders for the dropping of the bomb on hiroshima. That is dated the 25th of july. After about august 3rd, so they just give a date for that. At that point, they are waiting for a response from the potsdam declaration to the japanese. The other document that is often sometimes used incorrectly, to talk about the other position of the bomb. This is from the secretary of war to truman, and its a few days later. It is the 30th of the lie. This one is harder to read. We have these historic documents and they can be difficult to read. But if you close in on this one, it is from stimson to the president. He is talking about the recent ultimatum that was made at potsdam and the dramatic results of the tests. Suggestions made by the british of which the secretary of state burns is well aware. He is giving a recommendation of what to do. Im going to talk about the context of this in a minute. This is a two page are, because you can see and dark type, truman writes on the back of this memo. He says the secretary of war, reply, this is the number of the memo. Suggestions are released one 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 bond. Thats why the confusion. I meant to do this before. Thats why the confusion. And then to do this before. Form one zero one one. Thats the number of the memo. Truman uses puts that in the back. We better get the statement approved because once the bomb is dropped we will need a statement immediately. That is why there is a bit of a rush here. 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 suggestions and the suggestions from stimson himself and from truman and all the others in the close circles of president ial and at that time. That is a fascinating one but it should not be used to mislead but its more about statement rather than the bomb itself. Now we will get closer and closer to august. We will look from july he writes a number of letters to to bet. 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 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 intercepted, things of that nature. But on july 31st, he makes a rather cryptic message and reference to that. We will look at some video footage of the news reel of his announcement. And we will look at the artifact of the safety plug. We will finish with the video on the screen. Footage which i will explain when we get to. Here is the letter to bess. This is just two pages of this and it was written on july 31st, and of course trumans writing is not the easiest to read. This is all digitized. And goes up every time i say hes numbers. We had more than 1300 letters written by harry truman. From 1910 to 1957, and most cases including the envelopes, which is amazing to have that in our collection. All of those letters that harry have written two bess are all digitized on our website and chronological order. You could go straight to july and look at those letters. 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 at the bottom of the first page on the left in the beginning of the second page on the right, he finishes the bottom of his first page where he says, i think mr. Stalin was stalling, because he is not so happy about the english elections. Just to remind you, Winston Churchill had lost the elections in great britain. Joining the potsdam conference. Hes replaced by new labor prime minister. Truman goes on to say at the bottom of the page, he does not know it, but i have an ace in the hole and another one is showing. That ace in the whole, we will look at the transcript here. That ace in the hole is cryptic, but we believe he is talking about the atomic bomb. Here we see the transcript. It is a little easier to read. He talks about secretary of state burns. At lynn, a new british prime minister. All worked and accomplished a great deal. Stalin is not so happy. He does not know if i have an ace in the hall, another one is showing you know that truman loves his card games. That is the one time and he refers rather quick cryptically to the atomic bomb in his letters to his wife, bess truman. I find it fascinating sometimes in Historical Documents you learn things through letters. In some of the letters he makes no reference to the atomic bomb. And the same with letters to his mother and sister at the same. Time the letters that the time are rather cryptic. Moving on. We have a video clip for you. This is truman announcing the surrender from the uss, no, the dropping of the atomic bomb from the uss augustas. You can see the window in the background. A short time ago, an american airplane dropped one bomb on hiroshima, and showed the 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 end is not yet. With this bomb, we have now 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. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. It has been loose against those that 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. We shall destroy their factories, their communications. Let there be no mistakes. We will completely destroy japans power to make war. It was to spare the japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of july the 26th was issued at potsdam. Their leaders rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect the rain from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this arrow tech will follow sea and land forces in such numbers, and power, and they have not yet seen. And with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware. Whips. Im going to talk about this next artifact. Firstly, i think the qualities remarkable. The definition of the videos really spectacular. Were very fortunate that it is amazing 75 years later in terms of quality. The second part is very compelling. We get the closeup video and truman looks at you with those eyes and you know he means business. When churchill is replaced looks across the table and he has that same series stare that when he made those tough decisions as president. Its a fascinating video. And the fact that you can see the window on the uss augusta behind, giving you a sense of time and place to go just he really means business. This next piece, the three dimension artifact from our museum collection, and i will do a closeup of the tag that is attached to this. Let me talk about the object first and then attack. We will look at that in a minute. First of all, this green black and silver plug is the safety plug taken out of the bomb fuse from the bomb that was dropped on nagasaki. The inscription on the tag tells us that as well. The green plug was removed and replaced with the red activating plug on the boxcar. The name of the b29 that carried the bomb on its mission. The planes commander and let me show you. This is the safety plug. It was removed the activating plug which of course went with the bomb. If you look at the next page here, you can see more upright. A little easier to read. 10th of august, 1945. This is one of the two green safety plugs used at nagasaki japan on the night of august 1945. This was the second the atomic bomb dropped. The second one is probably look easier to read. I did some research on this. The commander is frederick ash well. His assistant is lieutenant philip bonds. Those are the two people that signed off on that to provide its authenticity. Fascinating object. I will 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 use him when we open the Truman Museum later this year after our multi Million Dollar revelation. This will be in a special gallery dealing with the atomic bomb. Another artifact we will show you a little bit later on will be in the same gallery. A fascinating artifact. We are very fortunate to have it. The tag that goes with it just really adds to the story. That is really special. The fact that frederik ashworth giving in both authenticity is really appreciated. Its a fascinating object. Next is its counter part. This is from a little bit later, and we have this on display before at the Truman Library. It will be displayed again at the same gallery space. To juxtapose one another and this is the paper crane made by madams izaki. She was a japanese girl that was a victim of the atomic bomb when she was two years old. She did survive, and the story is that during the early part of their life in august 1955, she decided that she was going to start making paper cranes as a symbol of peace. That was her wish. Whether she accomplish that the more recent research she made more than 1000 cranes before her death, but there are Children Stories about this crane. This crane is rather small. We put it on powerpoint for you to see. Its very small. This is going to be displayed in the museum when we reopen. Along with approximately five to 600 paper cranes made by students in the kansas city area that have made paper cranes to go in the exhibit along side this original paper crane so we can help tell that story. The reason it is also really appropriate is this