He's like, no, we're going to take it down.

Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, really, the big turning point is the fall of the Mariana Islands in the summer of 44.

And I think at that point, it really because the Mariana Islands were and that's Guam, Saipan and Tinian.

Of course, Guam had been an American colony.

possession from the Spanish-American War, but the Japanese had had Saipan and Tinian after the end of World War I.

And these were used extensively for Japanese sugar cane production.

was driven

But even before then, he's pushing out the peace feelers, isn't he? So why is he doing that?

As we know, the fall of the Mariana Islands in the summer of 1944 is really a pretty shocking military event for the Japanese.

Of course, Saipan and Tinian had been possessions that Japan had had for many years.

They'd actually developed them into sugar cane fields.

And so they were really kind of considered part of the Japanese empire.

And they were also put Japan, you know, the loss of those would put Japan within range of American bombers.

So in the summer of 1944, when Japan loses that, it's a pretty big shock, not only to the Japanese military, but also to the Japanese public, who for the first time really realized that Japan is losing the war.

The

I'm sure there were some moral debates going on within that group, that cabal, right? So what was the ultimate, I mean, obviously, but what was going on? Do you have an idea?

Yeah, I know.

So Robert Oppenheimer, you know, he's sort of a, he gets a lot of attention, obviously.

Christopher Nolan's film sort of does.

Yeah.

Oppenheimer really is an important figure, but I think in many ways he has sort of an outsized presence in sort of the public recollection of the Manhattan Project compared to Leslie Groves.

Of course, Leslie Groves was the general who effectively ran it all.

a lot

Describe him a bit more because the character study on him that you present is very interesting.

Yeah, and I find Hirohi to be really fascinating.

And you're right, he physically resembles Oppenheimer in many ways.

I mean, he's a very slender individual.

He's got stooped shoulders.

He's twitchy, has a high-pitched voice.

When he gets nervous, he talks to himself.

Tell me about this stage and how does it finally get over the lines?

James, what is the Potsdam Declaration? What are the 13 points?

Absolutely.

It is a very vital moment in the history because effectively, as you noted, George Marshall tells Truman, look, now that you've got this weapon, you can't just blindside the Japanese with them or history will not look kindly upon you for that.

Like you've got to give them some form of warning.

Now, what's been happening in the background, of course, is the State Department and the War Department and the Navy have kind of already been sort of agonizing over, all right, what kind of conditions can we offer to the Japanese to sort of show them, like, you know, what is, like, this last declaration going to look like? And it basically, and that becomes the pot stand declaration.

And it effectively, as Stimson says, it offers them a carrot and a stick.

And on the carrot side of things are, we will not enslave you as a nation, which the Japanese have been preaching to their people, we'll be enslaved by them.

What did he write? I love

You know,

I find Leslie Groves to be one of the most fascinating figures of World War II, much like General Curtis LeMay, who I wrote about in my previous book.

He was just a tireless worker who got things done.

And it's funny because Oppenheimer gets the big movie about Christopher Nolan, but the reality is it's Leslie Groves who gets it all done.

But let's be honest, who wants to see a movie about an engineer who's really good at his job? Or do you want to see something about a morally confused physicist who dabbles in communism? But Groves, as you noted, he built the Pentagon in 16 months.

And to give people an idea of just what an undertaking that was, The Pentagon has the same square footage as three Empire State Buildings.

And yet they were able to get all that done.

Did you ever sense that?

I mean, I assume, well, you tell me, how difficult was it to get the buy-in to use this atomic weapon, and was there someone behind the scenes that pushed Truman in that direction?

Yeah, so there was a big debate inside the, uh, particularly inside the Manhattan Project in the summer of 1945, and it largely came from the scientists themselves, and that, uh, was really driven by a guy by the name of Dr. Leó Szilárd.

And so he was really [laughs] in a lot of ways the father of the atomic bomb.

He was the one that first recognized in the 1930s that atomic energy was gonna lead down this path, and got Einstein involved to help push FDR to really begin the, the genesis for the Manhattan Project.

But by 1945, he's c- become completely, uh, opposed to it, because he recognizes that it's likely gonna create an arms race, that whoever unleashes it first into the world, you know, is gonna sort of have to deal with that.

Uh, and, and, and so he's pushing, you know, p- for p- the politicians to not use the weapon, or to use it as a test.

And so Truman has to navigate through that.

How much juice did that give him during this period of time, and to make a consequential decision like he ultimately made with the atomic bomb?

So of course,

Hirohito operates in a world in which that overshadows everything.

And it's not really until 1945, I think, that he kind of wakes up to the realization of what his own power is in an effort to try and bring about it into the war.

And even then, his early moves are done in secrecy because of his fears over his own safety.

I mean, his efforts to sort of reach out to former political leaders to sort of find out, gauge what their interest is and sort of whether or not Japan should consider surrendering or not.

He has to do that sort of incognito to prevent upsetting the army.

It's not really until June, I think, of 45 that you kind of see him rise to the occasion and become much, much stronger.

But did they imagine that something different had happened, that somehow the heavens had opened or hell had come to earth?

Why did you particularly choose to do so? You almost framed the book around this.

Well, in a lot of ways, I mean, that's the history, you know, in that they're both.

And I think one of the things that really jumped out at me is that both these figures in so many ways are kind of marginalized.

And it sounds weird to say that because, I mean, you're talking about the president, you're talking about the emperor.

But in general, they they were kind of bystanders until this pivotal moment.

I mean, Truman is, you know, you see him here on the screen, of course, is this great American figure.

You know, he is famous.

the decision for the Soviets to get involved, why Truman was trying to do this.

... hadn't, didn't know about or, uh, hadn't thought about or, um, uh, hadn't, hadn't contemplated with all the other research and reading and, and study that you've done in the past?

Yeah.

No, I think it did.

I think, you know what, I, I have a greater appreciation for just how precarious the end of the war really was.

And that, you know, for so long in the, in the post-war era, people have tried to debate the atomic bomb.

Well, Japan was already defeated.

It shouldn't have been used, or no, it had to be used.

... implication is that we didn't need to drop these, uh, these bombs, um, that-

What options were truly under discussion inside the new Truman administration?

Absolutely.

And Eisenhower, quite frankly, he's not quite accurate there.

And Japanese records really show that.

Japan, you know, Japan was really, its Navy had pretty much been destroyed.

Its Air Force was largely destroyed.

What was left of it was being turned into kamikaze fighters and attack planes.

I'm sorry, those projections, were those just made up? What were they based on? Yeah,

Why not?

Yeah, you know, I mean, i-in, in part, I mean, quite frankly, LeMay does a pretty good service in the early rise of Vietnam in trying to, trying to block McNamara from sort of going down the road that he does, but LeMay's not a politician.

His aides and f- former colleagues said, look, he was not the kind of guy that was ever gonna succeed in, with a diplomatic setting like Washington.

You know, he was used to, you know, being in charge in the Mariana Islands or in Nebraska with SAC is a very different beast than having to work amongst politicians and consensus.

And so he is like a fish out of water in Washington, and he just butts heads with everybody, uh, with McNamara, and, uh, you know, they're desperately trying to get him out, and Kennedy and, and whatnot.

So he's not-- His career is not successful in, in DC.

H-how, how so, James? Tell the story.

Yeah, you know, he gets cr-- He says, you know, about the Vietnamese, you know, "We'll, we'll bomb them back to the Stone Ages." And of course, the American public has a, a, a very bristling, uh, reaction to that, and it's almost exactly what he says about the Japanese, 'cause he says about the Japanese, "We're gonna bomb them back to the Dark Ages." I mean, it's the almost the exact same type of line.

What is his mission? What are the challenges for Haywood Hansell? What do we need to know about him? Good evening to you, James.

John, thanks so much for having me on your program again.

It's a real, uh, treat to be with you and your listeners.

So, um, Haywood Hansell is a fascinating figure in that not only is he a combat commander in both Europe and the Pacific, but he's also a, um, air pioneer and strategic thinker during the interwar period, in which it's important to remember, you know, aviation is a pretty new addition to the battlefield by the time World War II rolls around.

I mean, it sort of, it sort of has its combat debut in the end of World War I, and that time between World War I and World War II is when a lot of thinkers start looking at how can we bring this new technology to bear in a modern war.

And Hansell was one of the pioneers of that.

And so he is a big believer in what's called high altitude daylight strategic bombing, and the idea behind that is that they are...

And then the disappointment, James.