1 00:00:01,001 --> 00:00:03,037 Viewers like you make this program possible. 2 00:00:03,141 --> 00:00:05,177 Support your local PBS station. 3 00:00:26,647 --> 00:00:30,340 A short time ago, an American airplane 4 00:00:30,444 --> 00:00:33,171 dropped one bomb on Hiroshima 5 00:00:33,274 --> 00:00:36,208 and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. 6 00:00:40,178 --> 00:00:42,870 ♪ It's the drink that you don't pour ♪ 7 00:00:42,973 --> 00:00:45,459 ♪ Now, when you take one sip ♪ 8 00:00:45,562 --> 00:00:47,668 ♪ You won't need any more ♪ 9 00:00:47,771 --> 00:00:51,154 ♪ You're small as a beetle or big as a whale ♪ 10 00:00:51,258 --> 00:00:52,500 ♪ Boom ♪ 11 00:00:52,604 --> 00:00:54,192 ♪ Atomic cocktail ♪ 12 00:00:56,125 --> 00:00:57,505 There was such delight 13 00:00:57,609 --> 00:00:59,783 in the bomb, the atomic bomb, 14 00:00:59,887 --> 00:01:01,716 and it had ended the war, 15 00:01:01,820 --> 00:01:03,028 and this would be our major weapon. 16 00:01:06,307 --> 00:01:08,275 A number of polls asked Americans, 17 00:01:08,378 --> 00:01:11,623 "Do you approve of the use of the atomic bombs?" 18 00:01:11,726 --> 00:01:13,866 And the answer was, "Yeah." 19 00:01:13,970 --> 00:01:17,180 There was a small number of people who really wished 20 00:01:17,284 --> 00:01:19,700 that more atomic bombs could've been dropped on Japan. 21 00:01:19,803 --> 00:01:21,943 America's first impression about the bomb-- 22 00:01:22,047 --> 00:01:24,532 no matter the news source-- 23 00:01:24,636 --> 00:01:25,982 comes from press releases 24 00:01:26,086 --> 00:01:28,881 written by a single "New York Times" journalist 25 00:01:28,985 --> 00:01:32,092 working undercover for the War Department. 26 00:01:32,195 --> 00:01:35,750 I saw a world blow up in a burst of cosmic fire... 27 00:01:38,374 --> 00:01:42,274 ...and a new one born from its ashes. 28 00:01:42,378 --> 00:01:44,069 A lot of the coverage was 29 00:01:44,173 --> 00:01:46,623 as if it was like a gigantic conventional bomb, 30 00:01:46,727 --> 00:01:48,246 just much more powerful 31 00:01:48,349 --> 00:01:49,764 than the ones that had been used before. 32 00:01:49,868 --> 00:01:53,734 There was very little written about the radiation. 33 00:01:55,977 --> 00:01:57,600 As long as we're talking 34 00:01:57,703 --> 00:01:59,705 about getting atomic rings in your cereal box 35 00:01:59,809 --> 00:02:02,674 or school mascots, 36 00:02:02,777 --> 00:02:04,883 we're not thinking 37 00:02:04,986 --> 00:02:07,023 about skin falling off of human beings. 38 00:02:07,127 --> 00:02:08,197 We're not thinking of, 39 00:02:08,300 --> 00:02:10,371 "Could that happen to us in an arms race?" 40 00:02:12,753 --> 00:02:14,962 As the U.S. and Soviet Union 41 00:02:15,065 --> 00:02:16,929 compete for nuclear supremacy, 42 00:02:17,033 --> 00:02:19,863 the Truman administration downplays 43 00:02:19,967 --> 00:02:22,590 the weapon's poisonous radioactive effects 44 00:02:22,694 --> 00:02:24,005 to shore up public support 45 00:02:24,109 --> 00:02:25,938 for the bomb. 46 00:02:26,042 --> 00:02:29,045 You want them to think that nuclear bombs are okay. 47 00:02:30,771 --> 00:02:33,532 A few journalists look beyond the propaganda 48 00:02:33,636 --> 00:02:35,431 to raise ethical concerns 49 00:02:35,534 --> 00:02:37,640 the government does not acknowledge. 50 00:02:37,743 --> 00:02:40,815 I felt staggered by what I'd seen. 51 00:02:40,919 --> 00:02:43,542 I write this as a warning to the world. 52 00:02:43,646 --> 00:02:45,303 But the government fights back 53 00:02:45,406 --> 00:02:49,686 to reestablish its version of the story. 54 00:02:49,790 --> 00:02:51,792 GODFREY TEARLE [as Roosevelt]: More than an end to war, 55 00:02:51,895 --> 00:02:55,830 we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. 56 00:02:55,934 --> 00:02:57,763 And if the bomb shortens the war, 57 00:02:57,867 --> 00:03:00,525 it will save many thousands of American lives. 58 00:03:00,628 --> 00:03:02,458 Bomb away. 59 00:03:04,322 --> 00:03:06,047 These initial narratives 60 00:03:06,151 --> 00:03:09,189 that get set up between 1945 and 1947, 61 00:03:09,292 --> 00:03:13,123 these are still the terms in which people, by default, 62 00:03:13,227 --> 00:03:15,540 talk about the atomic bomb, 63 00:03:15,643 --> 00:03:17,335 to the point where, if you tell somebody this narrative, 64 00:03:17,438 --> 00:03:18,957 they'll say, "Right, that's the story, right?" 65 00:03:19,060 --> 00:03:21,546 And, in many ways, it's not true. 66 00:03:58,099 --> 00:04:01,448 By 1938, Adolf Hitler 67 00:04:01,551 --> 00:04:04,727 is consolidating Nazi power in Germany 68 00:04:04,830 --> 00:04:07,177 and marshaling the force needed for the Nazis 69 00:04:07,281 --> 00:04:08,869 to control all of Europe. 70 00:04:08,972 --> 00:04:14,081 Hitler's intentions on the battlefield are clear. 71 00:04:14,184 --> 00:04:17,326 Less obvious, but just as important, 72 00:04:17,429 --> 00:04:21,778 German and Austrian scientists split a uranium atom in two. 73 00:04:21,882 --> 00:04:25,886 The process, called fission, gives Germany a head start 74 00:04:25,989 --> 00:04:29,441 toward a new type of weapon-- the atomic bomb. 75 00:04:31,374 --> 00:04:32,962 The nucleus explodes, 76 00:04:33,065 --> 00:04:35,205 giving off dangerous radiations and heat. 77 00:04:35,309 --> 00:04:36,621 When you split atoms, 78 00:04:36,724 --> 00:04:39,140 you're left with these two half-atoms, 79 00:04:39,244 --> 00:04:40,970 and they are intensely radioactive. 80 00:04:41,073 --> 00:04:43,110 By the end of the '20s, 81 00:04:43,213 --> 00:04:46,009 people know that radiation equals death. 82 00:04:46,113 --> 00:04:49,081 And it's a horrible death, it's a wasting death. 83 00:04:50,324 --> 00:04:51,705 This is the first time 84 00:04:51,808 --> 00:04:55,018 that an atom has been broken in two. 85 00:04:55,122 --> 00:04:57,780 But almost no one paid attention to fission 86 00:04:57,883 --> 00:05:00,265 when it happened in December of '38. 87 00:05:00,369 --> 00:05:02,923 This new model, however, the scientists... 88 00:05:03,026 --> 00:05:04,683 One of the few paying close attention 89 00:05:04,787 --> 00:05:07,030 is "New York Times" science writer 90 00:05:07,134 --> 00:05:08,825 William Leonard Laurence. 91 00:05:08,929 --> 00:05:09,930 It may be said 92 00:05:10,033 --> 00:05:11,966 that the Atomic Age 93 00:05:12,070 --> 00:05:14,106 is here to stay. 94 00:05:14,210 --> 00:05:17,455 The question is: are we? 95 00:05:17,558 --> 00:05:19,146 Laurence is excited 96 00:05:19,249 --> 00:05:21,079 when there are reports coming out of Germany 97 00:05:21,182 --> 00:05:24,324 that chemists have split the uranium atom. 98 00:05:26,395 --> 00:05:28,535 He makes that front-page material 99 00:05:28,638 --> 00:05:30,433 for "The New York Times." 100 00:05:30,537 --> 00:05:32,297 Laurence thought, "This is amazing. 101 00:05:32,401 --> 00:05:34,161 This could be a source of energy." 102 00:05:34,264 --> 00:05:37,785 But he also thought that maybe it could be used as a weapon. 103 00:05:38,821 --> 00:05:41,306 The Germans have extremely good scientists, 104 00:05:41,410 --> 00:05:42,997 they're on a war footing, 105 00:05:43,101 --> 00:05:46,207 and they're very good at organizing large-scale projects. 106 00:05:48,969 --> 00:05:52,352 Afraid of Germany's nuclear intentions, 107 00:05:52,455 --> 00:05:56,010 in August 1939, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard 108 00:05:56,114 --> 00:05:58,806 visits Albert Einstein on Long Island. 109 00:05:58,910 --> 00:06:01,740 Einstein signs Szilard's letter 110 00:06:01,844 --> 00:06:03,984 which urges President Franklin D. Roosevelt 111 00:06:04,087 --> 00:06:07,953 to create an American atomic weapons program. 112 00:06:08,057 --> 00:06:10,128 The letter convinces Roosevelt 113 00:06:10,231 --> 00:06:13,234 to establish a secret advisory committee on uranium. 114 00:06:13,338 --> 00:06:16,514 Publicly, he pledges the U.S. will stay out 115 00:06:16,617 --> 00:06:18,861 of any European conflict. 116 00:06:18,964 --> 00:06:21,726 This nation will remain a neutral nation. 117 00:06:21,829 --> 00:06:23,486 But even a neutral nation 118 00:06:23,590 --> 00:06:26,558 has a right to take account of facts. 119 00:06:27,594 --> 00:06:29,906 HITLER [speaking German]: 120 00:06:50,582 --> 00:06:52,032 By 1941, 121 00:06:52,135 --> 00:06:54,241 on the opposite side of the globe, 122 00:06:54,344 --> 00:06:56,416 Japanese military aggression 123 00:06:56,519 --> 00:06:58,625 has led to the takeover of all Manchuria 124 00:06:58,728 --> 00:07:02,352 and brutal control of other parts of Asia. 125 00:07:04,044 --> 00:07:05,321 Hitler welcomes 126 00:07:05,425 --> 00:07:07,185 Japan's foreign minister in Berlin 127 00:07:07,288 --> 00:07:11,638 to celebrate the two countries' alliance as Axis powers. 128 00:07:11,741 --> 00:07:14,330 Heil! Heil! 129 00:07:14,434 --> 00:07:15,745 And, in December 1941, 130 00:07:15,849 --> 00:07:20,474 Japan reveals it has designs on more than just Asia. 131 00:07:32,693 --> 00:07:36,076 December 7, 1941, 132 00:07:36,179 --> 00:07:40,563 a date which will live in infamy. 133 00:07:40,667 --> 00:07:43,083 When the U.S. enters the war, 134 00:07:43,186 --> 00:07:44,809 the Germans have a three-year lead 135 00:07:44,912 --> 00:07:47,432 in the race to build an atomic bomb. 136 00:07:47,536 --> 00:07:50,090 Roosevelt gambles $2 billion 137 00:07:50,193 --> 00:07:52,920 to build the weapon before the Germans do. 138 00:07:53,024 --> 00:07:57,166 This secret science experiment is known by its code name: 139 00:07:57,269 --> 00:07:58,857 The Manhattan Project. 140 00:08:00,203 --> 00:08:03,103 It will be headed by an ambitious officer 141 00:08:03,206 --> 00:08:05,346 from the Army Corps of Engineers. 142 00:08:07,003 --> 00:08:10,179 Leslie Groves is first and foremost an engineer. 143 00:08:10,282 --> 00:08:13,631 He made his reputation in building the Pentagon. 144 00:08:13,734 --> 00:08:16,910 He built the Pentagon ahead of schedule and under budget. 145 00:08:18,221 --> 00:08:21,328 Groves had really wanted to join the war effort. 146 00:08:21,431 --> 00:08:24,124 And he was disappointed that he never got that. 147 00:08:26,644 --> 00:08:28,784 So, when he was asked to lead the bomb project, 148 00:08:28,887 --> 00:08:31,752 this was a dream come true for him. 149 00:08:33,858 --> 00:08:36,723 Leslie Groves saw the Manhattan Project 150 00:08:36,826 --> 00:08:39,311 as an industrial project, not a scientific project. 151 00:08:40,796 --> 00:08:42,383 There were scientists involved, 152 00:08:42,487 --> 00:08:44,316 but it was really about industry. 153 00:08:49,287 --> 00:08:51,565 To direct the project's scientific research, 154 00:08:51,669 --> 00:08:55,051 Groves chooses a 39-year-old physicist 155 00:08:55,155 --> 00:08:56,501 from Berkeley, California: 156 00:08:56,605 --> 00:08:59,021 J. Robert Oppenheimer. 157 00:08:59,124 --> 00:09:02,024 Groves shocked people when he chose Oppenheimer, 158 00:09:02,127 --> 00:09:06,062 but it was a brilliant appointment. 159 00:09:06,166 --> 00:09:09,445 Oppenheimer could keep in his head 160 00:09:09,549 --> 00:09:12,828 the incredible complications of the science, 161 00:09:12,931 --> 00:09:14,830 but also handle the people. 162 00:09:16,590 --> 00:09:18,109 The biggest tool they had 163 00:09:18,212 --> 00:09:20,180 for keeping the Manhattan Project secret 164 00:09:20,283 --> 00:09:22,147 was taking all of the scientists 165 00:09:22,251 --> 00:09:23,666 who had worked on the subject 166 00:09:23,770 --> 00:09:26,082 and putting them under government oaths 167 00:09:26,186 --> 00:09:28,740 and secrecy arrangements. 168 00:09:28,844 --> 00:09:31,260 That deprived journalists 169 00:09:31,363 --> 00:09:33,573 of stories that they might've written 170 00:09:33,676 --> 00:09:35,644 about atomic bombs or something like that. 171 00:09:35,747 --> 00:09:37,438 And the journalists noticed this. 172 00:09:39,509 --> 00:09:41,235 At "The New York Times," 173 00:09:41,339 --> 00:09:43,065 William Leonard Laurence had a very good idea 174 00:09:43,168 --> 00:09:44,791 of what was going on. 175 00:09:44,894 --> 00:09:47,656 He had been putting together bits of string for months. 176 00:09:47,759 --> 00:09:49,485 Years later, 177 00:09:49,589 --> 00:09:51,970 Laurence would recall his early suspicions. 178 00:09:52,074 --> 00:09:54,455 "I noticed a strange phenomenon. 179 00:09:54,559 --> 00:09:57,389 "I would come to a meeting, and a couple of top scientists 180 00:09:57,493 --> 00:09:59,495 "who had always been there were missing. 181 00:09:59,599 --> 00:10:01,773 "I would call up their universities 182 00:10:01,877 --> 00:10:04,051 "and I would get evasive answers. 183 00:10:04,155 --> 00:10:05,121 "'They weren't there,' 184 00:10:05,225 --> 00:10:06,778 "'We don't know,' 185 00:10:06,882 --> 00:10:09,781 or, 'They're not coming back.'" 186 00:10:12,439 --> 00:10:14,165 William Leonard Laurence 187 00:10:14,268 --> 00:10:15,925 was born in Imperial Russia. 188 00:10:18,652 --> 00:10:21,413 And then he moves to the United States. 189 00:10:21,517 --> 00:10:24,658 He talked his way into Harvard, 190 00:10:24,762 --> 00:10:26,108 but he was caught up in a cheating scandal 191 00:10:26,211 --> 00:10:27,454 and never earned a degree. 192 00:10:27,557 --> 00:10:30,181 He came to New York and fell into a job 193 00:10:30,284 --> 00:10:31,389 at "The New York World" 194 00:10:31,492 --> 00:10:33,494 that was very sensationalistic. 195 00:10:36,221 --> 00:10:37,809 It was a great home for Laurence, 196 00:10:37,913 --> 00:10:39,811 who had wanted to be a playwright 197 00:10:39,915 --> 00:10:41,261 and had a great flair for drama. 198 00:10:44,920 --> 00:10:46,991 He wrote several stories about a researcher 199 00:10:47,094 --> 00:10:48,509 who claimed to have disproven 200 00:10:48,613 --> 00:10:50,235 Einstein's theory of relativity. 201 00:10:55,482 --> 00:10:57,518 "The New York Times" saw this story, 202 00:10:57,622 --> 00:11:00,832 hired him away, and they promoted him publicly 203 00:11:00,936 --> 00:11:03,524 as the first daily science writer. 204 00:11:07,459 --> 00:11:08,875 Which meant that he was under pressure 205 00:11:08,978 --> 00:11:11,463 to be constantly producing science stories. 206 00:11:13,776 --> 00:11:16,089 Laurence is part of a group of journalists 207 00:11:16,192 --> 00:11:17,884 who collectively win a Pulitzer Prize 208 00:11:17,987 --> 00:11:20,956 for creating this field of science journalism. 209 00:11:22,958 --> 00:11:25,408 Laurence had come to Groves's attention 210 00:11:25,512 --> 00:11:27,376 not in a positive way. 211 00:11:27,479 --> 00:11:28,757 He came to Groves' attention 212 00:11:28,860 --> 00:11:31,829 because he was writing stories about atomic energy. 213 00:11:33,762 --> 00:11:35,315 Groves didn't like that. 214 00:11:35,418 --> 00:11:38,525 Groves didn't want anybody to be writing about these matters. 215 00:11:42,736 --> 00:11:44,186 Laurence ached to write more 216 00:11:44,289 --> 00:11:46,567 about atomic science, atomic power. 217 00:11:48,293 --> 00:11:51,089 But he was frequently shut down by the government. 218 00:11:51,193 --> 00:11:53,471 But both he and the "Times" 219 00:11:53,574 --> 00:11:55,162 went along with that, 220 00:11:55,266 --> 00:11:57,233 because they needed to be on the team 221 00:11:57,337 --> 00:12:00,029 to promote victory in this total war. 222 00:12:16,459 --> 00:12:19,600 World War II was seen 223 00:12:19,704 --> 00:12:22,086 as a live-or-die affair for the United States. 224 00:12:30,957 --> 00:12:33,269 And given that total commitment, 225 00:12:33,373 --> 00:12:35,962 journalists found themselves on the team. 226 00:12:38,999 --> 00:12:43,279 They were eating the same food, under the same fire, 227 00:12:43,383 --> 00:12:45,178 wearing the same clothing and uniforms and helmets 228 00:12:45,281 --> 00:12:46,800 as the people they were covering. 229 00:12:49,147 --> 00:12:51,046 They wouldn't do anything 230 00:12:51,149 --> 00:12:53,738 that would jeopardize America's chances of winning. 231 00:12:55,602 --> 00:12:57,742 That meant that they went along 232 00:12:57,846 --> 00:13:00,538 with a voluntary code of censorship. 233 00:13:00,641 --> 00:13:02,609 The press corps in Europe 234 00:13:02,712 --> 00:13:05,612 includes 30-year-old freelancer John Hersey. 235 00:13:07,856 --> 00:13:10,513 Hersey was overseas as a war correspondent. 236 00:13:10,617 --> 00:13:13,240 He worked both for "Time" and "Life." 237 00:13:23,699 --> 00:13:26,667 Hersey had been covering the Italian campaign. 238 00:13:29,118 --> 00:13:31,603 He'd seen war ruins. 239 00:13:31,707 --> 00:13:33,916 He had seen terrible destruction. 240 00:13:34,020 --> 00:13:36,954 He'd covered war from all different perspectives. 241 00:13:37,057 --> 00:13:39,025 Near the end of the war, 242 00:13:39,128 --> 00:13:40,958 he had already covered a lot of combat, 243 00:13:41,061 --> 00:13:43,512 and he had published a novel that had won a Pulitzer Prize. 244 00:13:45,686 --> 00:13:48,828 Hersey, under obviously difficult conditions, 245 00:13:48,931 --> 00:13:51,175 just did remarkable work. 246 00:13:52,970 --> 00:13:55,041 And in the Pacific theater, 247 00:13:55,144 --> 00:13:57,319 the "Cleveland Call and Post" editor, Charles Loeb, 248 00:13:57,422 --> 00:13:59,839 embeds with segregated troops 249 00:13:59,942 --> 00:14:01,737 as a pool reporter and photographer 250 00:14:01,841 --> 00:14:04,809 for the Black press. 251 00:14:04,913 --> 00:14:07,018 Charles Loeb logs more than 4,000 miles. 252 00:14:09,331 --> 00:14:11,471 He goes to Okinawa, 253 00:14:11,574 --> 00:14:13,335 to Guam... 254 00:14:16,683 --> 00:14:17,891 ...covering the activities 255 00:14:17,995 --> 00:14:20,583 of the 93rd unit, the all-Black unit. 256 00:14:23,863 --> 00:14:27,659 The Black community, they get to see how their son, 257 00:14:27,763 --> 00:14:30,766 or their brother, or their husband is doing. 258 00:14:32,250 --> 00:14:34,494 It gives them a sense of pride. 259 00:14:34,597 --> 00:14:36,876 Now, one of our functions is 260 00:14:36,979 --> 00:14:39,637 to tell the Black side of any story, 261 00:14:39,740 --> 00:14:41,984 because the white media still suffers 262 00:14:42,088 --> 00:14:44,987 from a lack of believability in the Black community. 263 00:14:47,162 --> 00:14:49,440 While journalists like Loeb and Hersey 264 00:14:49,543 --> 00:14:52,719 cover the war from the front lines, at home, 265 00:14:52,822 --> 00:14:54,755 General Groves makes sure 266 00:14:54,859 --> 00:14:57,241 that no word about the bomb project leaks, 267 00:14:57,344 --> 00:14:59,519 especially to the press, 268 00:14:59,622 --> 00:15:01,486 or even to Congress. 269 00:15:02,971 --> 00:15:05,249 Groves values secrecy. 270 00:15:05,352 --> 00:15:07,285 He wants this project controlled, 271 00:15:07,389 --> 00:15:09,080 and the basic principle of security 272 00:15:09,184 --> 00:15:10,530 is compartmentalization. 273 00:15:10,633 --> 00:15:11,807 Everybody knows what they need to know 274 00:15:11,911 --> 00:15:12,946 and not any more than that. 275 00:15:16,432 --> 00:15:18,055 Groves builds three big cities... 276 00:15:18,158 --> 00:15:20,436 At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 277 00:15:20,540 --> 00:15:21,921 at Hanford, Washington, 278 00:15:22,024 --> 00:15:23,646 and at Los Alamos, New Mexico... 279 00:15:23,750 --> 00:15:24,820 ...because there are 280 00:15:24,924 --> 00:15:26,201 three big aspects of the project. 281 00:15:26,304 --> 00:15:28,789 One is to separate uranium. 282 00:15:31,137 --> 00:15:32,897 You need to do it in secret and you need to do it 283 00:15:33,001 --> 00:15:34,726 with a lot of electricity. 284 00:15:34,830 --> 00:15:36,211 There aren't that many remote places 285 00:15:36,314 --> 00:15:37,522 that have a lot of electricity, 286 00:15:37,626 --> 00:15:38,696 but there is one, 287 00:15:38,799 --> 00:15:41,319 which is Tennessee. 288 00:15:42,872 --> 00:15:44,633 Because the Tennessee Valley Authority 289 00:15:44,736 --> 00:15:46,635 produced a huge amount of electricity, 290 00:15:46,738 --> 00:15:49,534 and that electricity gets poured into Oak Ridge. 291 00:15:51,605 --> 00:15:52,641 There's no precedent 292 00:15:52,744 --> 00:15:55,506 for something like Oak Ridge. 293 00:15:55,609 --> 00:15:57,473 This is genuinely a secret city. 294 00:16:03,376 --> 00:16:05,757 Tens of thousands of people and their families 295 00:16:05,861 --> 00:16:08,001 are living there. 296 00:16:08,105 --> 00:16:10,762 They have intramural sports leagues, 297 00:16:10,866 --> 00:16:13,179 baseball and football. 298 00:16:18,287 --> 00:16:20,013 The number of people 299 00:16:20,117 --> 00:16:22,222 who, at one point, worked on the Manhattan Project 300 00:16:22,326 --> 00:16:24,086 is about 500,000 people. 301 00:16:24,190 --> 00:16:26,813 So if you were not a soldier 302 00:16:26,916 --> 00:16:28,470 or too old or too young to work, 303 00:16:28,573 --> 00:16:30,575 there's about a one-in-100 chance 304 00:16:30,679 --> 00:16:32,129 you worked on the Manhattan Project 305 00:16:32,232 --> 00:16:33,130 and probably didn't know it. 306 00:16:37,030 --> 00:16:40,033 There were 7,000 Black workers 307 00:16:40,137 --> 00:16:42,587 at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plant. 308 00:16:42,691 --> 00:16:44,486 They did maintenance work, 309 00:16:44,589 --> 00:16:45,866 they did construction work. 310 00:16:45,970 --> 00:16:47,385 And for three years, 311 00:16:47,489 --> 00:16:49,353 these workers did not know 312 00:16:49,456 --> 00:16:50,768 that they were at a plant 313 00:16:50,871 --> 00:16:54,392 that was involved in making the atomic bomb. 314 00:16:57,326 --> 00:16:58,707 Then, when plutonium is discovered 315 00:16:58,810 --> 00:17:01,399 and people realize that that could power a bomb, 316 00:17:01,503 --> 00:17:03,574 for that, you need to have a lot of water, 317 00:17:03,677 --> 00:17:05,645 and you need to be isolated. 318 00:17:05,748 --> 00:17:07,474 So they put it on the Columbia River 319 00:17:07,578 --> 00:17:09,545 in Washington state. 320 00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:13,860 Then you need a place for your bomb designers, 321 00:17:13,963 --> 00:17:16,345 and bomb design requires isolation 322 00:17:16,449 --> 00:17:19,417 and a lot of very temperamental scientists. 323 00:17:19,521 --> 00:17:22,972 Oppenheimer, who'd spent time in New Mexico, 324 00:17:23,076 --> 00:17:26,735 selects a remote spot in the desert outside of Santa Fe, 325 00:17:26,838 --> 00:17:29,703 in a little town called Los Alamos. 326 00:17:29,807 --> 00:17:32,706 More than 5,000 scientists and their families 327 00:17:32,810 --> 00:17:35,537 relocate there. 328 00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:37,401 Groves had a pretty bad relationship 329 00:17:37,504 --> 00:17:38,643 with most of the scientists. 330 00:17:39,955 --> 00:17:42,302 He regarded them as prima donnas, 331 00:17:42,406 --> 00:17:44,408 over-educated eggheads. 332 00:17:45,857 --> 00:17:48,791 You didn't want their advice on almost any other thing. 333 00:17:48,895 --> 00:17:50,793 You didn't want them to think about the politics. 334 00:17:50,897 --> 00:17:52,554 They were bad at that, in his mind. 335 00:17:54,832 --> 00:17:57,110 Los Alamos is a bit of a security risk, 336 00:17:57,214 --> 00:17:59,043 because you have lots of scientists talking to each other 337 00:17:59,147 --> 00:18:02,943 about work that's going on in other groups on the mesa. 338 00:18:03,047 --> 00:18:04,738 Groves tries to restrict that, 339 00:18:04,842 --> 00:18:07,189 and Oppenheimer says, "No, we need that. 340 00:18:07,293 --> 00:18:09,088 "It's important for progress. 341 00:18:09,191 --> 00:18:10,986 We have to have that kind of thing happen." 342 00:18:12,436 --> 00:18:16,267 It's hard to believe that secrets didn't come out. 343 00:18:16,371 --> 00:18:17,441 Groves is afraid 344 00:18:17,544 --> 00:18:18,683 Congress would cancel the project 345 00:18:18,787 --> 00:18:20,513 if they knew about it, 346 00:18:20,616 --> 00:18:22,791 because they wouldn't understand 347 00:18:22,894 --> 00:18:26,035 that this science fiction thing was a good plan. 348 00:18:28,037 --> 00:18:31,386 That's why Groves is committed to keeping so much secrecy. 349 00:18:35,769 --> 00:18:37,564 General Groves knew 350 00:18:37,668 --> 00:18:39,911 that this was going to be, if it happened, 351 00:18:40,015 --> 00:18:41,672 a shocking event, 352 00:18:41,775 --> 00:18:43,984 and people would have to be prepared 353 00:18:44,088 --> 00:18:46,815 for their entrance into a new world, 354 00:18:46,918 --> 00:18:48,092 the Atomic Age. 355 00:18:50,474 --> 00:18:53,615 Starting in spring of 1945, 356 00:18:53,718 --> 00:18:58,102 Groves knows he has to manage the public release of it, 357 00:18:58,206 --> 00:18:59,793 because the whole point of this bomb 358 00:18:59,897 --> 00:19:01,830 is to change the equation. 359 00:19:04,833 --> 00:19:07,249 What do you tell people about this? 360 00:19:07,353 --> 00:19:09,872 What should they know? What shouldn't they know? 361 00:19:09,976 --> 00:19:14,532 This becomes a major official goal 362 00:19:14,636 --> 00:19:16,948 of the Manhattan Project. 363 00:19:17,052 --> 00:19:19,158 And so they're going to have to shift gears 364 00:19:19,261 --> 00:19:21,194 from absolute secrecy 365 00:19:21,298 --> 00:19:23,886 to a incredible amount of publicity. 366 00:19:25,129 --> 00:19:28,201 There's no way to do the publicity of the bomb 367 00:19:28,305 --> 00:19:30,238 without somebody who understands some physics. 368 00:19:30,341 --> 00:19:31,963 They need to explain it 369 00:19:32,067 --> 00:19:34,690 in a way that is both accurate and obfuscating enough 370 00:19:34,794 --> 00:19:36,796 so that you don't reveal anything you don't want to. 371 00:19:38,038 --> 00:19:41,041 Groves knows the right man for the job. 372 00:19:41,145 --> 00:19:43,320 He goes to "The New York Times" 373 00:19:43,423 --> 00:19:46,392 with hopes of recruiting its science journalist. 374 00:19:47,496 --> 00:19:49,947 Groves went to William Laurence's editor, 375 00:19:50,050 --> 00:19:52,536 and, behind closed doors, asked to use Laurence 376 00:19:52,639 --> 00:19:55,055 for a military project of some importance. 377 00:19:56,471 --> 00:19:59,163 I was privileged to be tapped on the shoulder 378 00:19:59,267 --> 00:20:01,959 by the Army and given the assignment 379 00:20:02,062 --> 00:20:04,306 that every newspaperman dreams of. 380 00:20:05,583 --> 00:20:07,413 Laurence is plugged in. 381 00:20:07,516 --> 00:20:09,000 He knows about the topic. 382 00:20:09,104 --> 00:20:10,588 He knows many of these scientists. 383 00:20:10,692 --> 00:20:11,865 And so they agreed 384 00:20:11,969 --> 00:20:14,316 on this relationship with "The New York Times" 385 00:20:14,420 --> 00:20:17,354 to basically loan them William Laurence 386 00:20:17,457 --> 00:20:19,735 as a person who would write press releases. 387 00:20:23,291 --> 00:20:25,465 Journalism was still in the process 388 00:20:25,569 --> 00:20:29,228 of developing its ethical code during World War II. 389 00:20:31,609 --> 00:20:33,991 For the publisher of "The New York Times," 390 00:20:34,094 --> 00:20:36,165 the fact that one of their reporters 391 00:20:36,269 --> 00:20:38,444 could help with the war effort 392 00:20:38,547 --> 00:20:42,344 seemed to override any potential conflict of interest 393 00:20:42,448 --> 00:20:44,104 in this dual role. 394 00:20:46,417 --> 00:20:48,247 Laurence didn't need any prodding 395 00:20:48,350 --> 00:20:51,146 to picture it in the most positive way. 396 00:20:52,492 --> 00:20:54,701 The "Times" got a really good deal. 397 00:20:54,805 --> 00:20:57,704 Their star science reporter got sole access 398 00:20:57,808 --> 00:20:59,568 to all sorts of information 399 00:20:59,672 --> 00:21:02,951 that he was able to use for years afterward. 400 00:21:03,054 --> 00:21:05,643 What he did not get was a lot of money. 401 00:21:07,024 --> 00:21:09,060 And it remains as a source of debate 402 00:21:09,164 --> 00:21:12,823 exactly how he was compensated, but the bottom line is, 403 00:21:12,926 --> 00:21:16,758 he largely worked for the Manhattan Project for free. 404 00:21:16,861 --> 00:21:19,416 Laurence's main task was to write press releases 405 00:21:19,519 --> 00:21:21,521 in the months before the bomb was dropped. 406 00:21:23,868 --> 00:21:25,318 They didn't really know 407 00:21:25,422 --> 00:21:26,768 when the bomb would be ready to be used, 408 00:21:26,871 --> 00:21:29,426 and so the need for all these background articles 409 00:21:29,529 --> 00:21:30,565 was profound. 410 00:21:32,498 --> 00:21:34,638 Groves gave Laurence great license 411 00:21:34,741 --> 00:21:38,124 to go virtually anywhere he wanted to. 412 00:21:38,227 --> 00:21:41,265 Doors were unlocked for him 413 00:21:41,369 --> 00:21:44,303 that weren't unlocked for other reporters. 414 00:21:50,343 --> 00:21:52,587 Because they knew that he would produce 415 00:21:52,690 --> 00:21:55,175 the story that they wanted. 416 00:22:05,807 --> 00:22:09,293 He describes Hanford as "Atomland-on-Mars." 417 00:22:09,397 --> 00:22:12,020 It's so alien, it's not even on this planet, 418 00:22:12,123 --> 00:22:14,885 and that's good-- that's progress. 419 00:22:16,887 --> 00:22:19,061 Laurence was effusive, 420 00:22:19,165 --> 00:22:21,340 perhaps more effusive than they wanted him to be. 421 00:22:25,792 --> 00:22:29,106 These stories, they're wild and woolly and enthusiastic, 422 00:22:29,209 --> 00:22:30,901 and that is not what these Army lawyers 423 00:22:31,004 --> 00:22:32,316 who are reviewing them want to see. 424 00:22:34,422 --> 00:22:36,078 They tone them way, way, way down. 425 00:22:41,083 --> 00:22:44,224 But for him, this is the story of the century. 426 00:22:44,328 --> 00:22:47,055 He is the one built to write this story. 427 00:23:01,103 --> 00:23:03,934 In the spring of 1945, 428 00:23:04,037 --> 00:23:07,109 the U.S. suffers a staggering loss: 429 00:23:07,213 --> 00:23:10,389 the sudden death of its commander-in-chief, 430 00:23:10,492 --> 00:23:13,012 President Roosevelt. 431 00:23:13,115 --> 00:23:15,704 His successor is the little-known vice president, 432 00:23:15,808 --> 00:23:18,362 Harry S. Truman. 433 00:23:18,466 --> 00:23:19,846 Truman was succeeding 434 00:23:19,950 --> 00:23:22,573 this historically transformative president, 435 00:23:22,677 --> 00:23:24,230 Franklin Roosevelt, 436 00:23:24,333 --> 00:23:26,128 who had reshaped the country in so many ways. 437 00:23:29,062 --> 00:23:31,617 And Truman was basically a machine politician 438 00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:33,032 from Kansas City, Missouri, 439 00:23:33,135 --> 00:23:35,103 whose only foreign policy experience 440 00:23:35,206 --> 00:23:38,209 was being a G.I. in World War I. 441 00:23:38,313 --> 00:23:39,866 As vice president, 442 00:23:39,970 --> 00:23:41,627 Truman had not even been told 443 00:23:41,730 --> 00:23:44,388 of the existence of the Manhattan Project. 444 00:23:44,492 --> 00:23:46,217 He first learns of it 445 00:23:46,321 --> 00:23:49,048 two weeks after taking his new oath. 446 00:23:53,017 --> 00:23:56,849 In Europe, the Allies from the West 447 00:23:56,952 --> 00:23:58,506 and Soviets from the East 448 00:23:58,609 --> 00:24:00,922 keep advancing on the German capital. 449 00:24:02,406 --> 00:24:05,961 When the Soviets take Berlin, the Nazis surrender. 450 00:24:09,068 --> 00:24:10,241 Back home, 451 00:24:10,345 --> 00:24:12,589 Americans are jubilant. 452 00:24:14,970 --> 00:24:18,457 But Truman warns them not to celebrate too soon... 453 00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:19,837 This is a solemn 454 00:24:19,941 --> 00:24:21,943 but glorious hour. 455 00:24:24,497 --> 00:24:26,637 ...as U.S. forces fight their way 456 00:24:26,741 --> 00:24:30,123 from island to island toward Japan. 457 00:24:30,227 --> 00:24:31,849 Much remains to be done. 458 00:24:31,953 --> 00:24:34,438 The victory won in the West 459 00:24:34,542 --> 00:24:37,786 must now be won in the East. 460 00:24:37,890 --> 00:24:41,341 With the surrender of Germany, 461 00:24:41,445 --> 00:24:43,965 suddenly, Japan becomes a potential target 462 00:24:44,068 --> 00:24:46,588 for the atomic bomb. 463 00:24:46,692 --> 00:24:47,796 Germans quit, 464 00:24:47,900 --> 00:24:49,488 but that doesn't mean the war is over. 465 00:24:54,423 --> 00:24:57,047 By the time the Marine Corps had got to Iwo Jima, 466 00:24:57,150 --> 00:24:58,324 a lot of blood had been spilled. 467 00:24:58,427 --> 00:25:00,671 We were going 468 00:25:00,775 --> 00:25:02,880 one island at a time, 469 00:25:02,984 --> 00:25:05,193 at considerable cost in lives. 470 00:25:05,296 --> 00:25:07,540 And there was talk 471 00:25:07,644 --> 00:25:09,128 Japan was not going to surrender, 472 00:25:09,231 --> 00:25:12,649 that we would have to invade Japan itself. 473 00:25:12,752 --> 00:25:14,616 I think it's hard 474 00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:16,515 for people today to project back... 475 00:25:18,586 --> 00:25:20,311 ...what it is like after four years 476 00:25:20,415 --> 00:25:23,970 of bone-crushing total war, 477 00:25:24,074 --> 00:25:26,110 what people are used to in terms of violence. 478 00:25:30,459 --> 00:25:32,703 The violence they read about, the violence they hear about. 479 00:25:34,981 --> 00:25:38,329 You have a very battle-weary home population. 480 00:25:44,439 --> 00:25:46,752 We await eagerly and passionately 481 00:25:46,855 --> 00:25:49,858 the sacred honor of dying to halt you. 482 00:25:49,962 --> 00:25:52,274 We will stop at nothing to crush you. 483 00:25:52,378 --> 00:25:56,037 The Japanese were represented in American media 484 00:25:56,140 --> 00:25:59,178 as a savage horde. 485 00:26:00,179 --> 00:26:01,767 They committed plenty of atrocities. 486 00:26:01,870 --> 00:26:03,562 There's no question about that. 487 00:26:03,665 --> 00:26:05,356 But it was almost cartoonish, racist, 488 00:26:05,460 --> 00:26:07,842 an often dehumanizing enemy. 489 00:26:07,945 --> 00:26:09,119 And a terrifying one. 490 00:26:10,603 --> 00:26:11,915 People were very nervous 491 00:26:12,018 --> 00:26:13,019 about the invasion of Japan. 492 00:26:13,123 --> 00:26:15,021 This was going to be 493 00:26:15,125 --> 00:26:17,092 a long and bitter struggle. 494 00:26:17,196 --> 00:26:18,715 When is it going to end? 495 00:26:18,818 --> 00:26:20,337 So that was the mood of the country, you know? 496 00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:23,409 Glad that victory was in sight, 497 00:26:23,512 --> 00:26:24,997 but what were you going to have to do 498 00:26:25,100 --> 00:26:26,585 to get your hands on that victory? 499 00:26:32,211 --> 00:26:33,764 In the closing stages of World War II, 500 00:26:33,868 --> 00:26:35,594 a historic conference was called 501 00:26:35,697 --> 00:26:38,079 between the leaders of the Big Three nations of the allies. 502 00:26:38,182 --> 00:26:40,288 Harry S. Truman arrived 503 00:26:40,391 --> 00:26:42,393 aboard the cruiser Augusta as the replacement 504 00:26:42,497 --> 00:26:44,533 for the late Franklin D. Roosevelt. 505 00:26:44,637 --> 00:26:46,743 Two months after the Nazis surrender, 506 00:26:46,846 --> 00:26:49,435 President Truman sails to Potsdam, Germany, 507 00:26:49,538 --> 00:26:52,576 to meet with his allies and divide up the spoils of Europe 508 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,097 between the communist East and the capitalist West. 509 00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:59,203 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 510 00:26:59,307 --> 00:27:03,794 wants to gain full control of all Eastern Europe. 511 00:27:03,898 --> 00:27:07,246 Truman wants to avoid a similar outcome in Asia. 512 00:27:07,349 --> 00:27:11,768 Truman was in a very difficult place in 1945. 513 00:27:11,871 --> 00:27:15,150 He's in charge of negotiating with Joseph Stalin, 514 00:27:15,254 --> 00:27:17,049 who has been controlling the Soviet Union 515 00:27:17,152 --> 00:27:18,326 for as, almost as long 516 00:27:18,429 --> 00:27:20,500 as Truman has been aware of the Soviet Union. 517 00:27:22,537 --> 00:27:26,092 Truman doesn't quite know where he is. 518 00:27:26,196 --> 00:27:27,715 But he knows one thing, 519 00:27:27,818 --> 00:27:29,164 which is, he's a person who makes decisions. 520 00:27:32,789 --> 00:27:35,654 Publicly, Truman asks Stalin 521 00:27:35,757 --> 00:27:37,517 to join the invasion of Japan. 522 00:27:37,621 --> 00:27:42,039 Privately, he hopes the war ends before the Soviets invade. 523 00:27:42,143 --> 00:27:44,214 The Russians were going 524 00:27:44,317 --> 00:27:46,492 to sweep in and decimate the Japanese troops, 525 00:27:46,595 --> 00:27:47,631 and Truman knew that. 526 00:27:48,977 --> 00:27:50,220 He wanted to end the war 527 00:27:50,323 --> 00:27:53,602 before the Russians got into the war in a big way. 528 00:27:57,503 --> 00:27:59,401 Meanwhile, the first test 529 00:27:59,505 --> 00:28:01,818 of America's $2 billion superweapon 530 00:28:01,921 --> 00:28:04,717 is unfolding in the New Mexico desert. 531 00:28:06,719 --> 00:28:09,170 The Trinity nuclear test 532 00:28:09,273 --> 00:28:12,138 was to take place in Alamogordo, New Mexico. 533 00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:16,660 Truman needs the results quickly 534 00:28:16,764 --> 00:28:19,145 to gain leverage over Stalin-- 535 00:28:19,249 --> 00:28:21,872 if the science works. 536 00:28:21,976 --> 00:28:23,771 This was a very tense period. 537 00:28:23,874 --> 00:28:27,671 They did not know whether this thing was going to work. 538 00:28:29,224 --> 00:28:31,537 Every time we tested some component 539 00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:33,746 that had to do with the test, it would fail. 540 00:28:35,748 --> 00:28:37,577 There had been some speculation 541 00:28:37,681 --> 00:28:40,270 that it might be possible to explode the atmosphere, 542 00:28:40,373 --> 00:28:43,687 in which case, the world disappears. 543 00:28:46,690 --> 00:28:48,968 Groves is worried about what happens 544 00:28:49,072 --> 00:28:50,073 if there's publicity. 545 00:28:50,176 --> 00:28:53,179 He needs to have some kind of account. 546 00:28:53,283 --> 00:28:54,594 This is where Laurence is useful. 547 00:28:56,182 --> 00:28:58,426 So, Laurence wrote a series of press releases 548 00:28:58,529 --> 00:29:00,980 of increasing level of mistruth. 549 00:29:04,604 --> 00:29:06,675 Release A was, 550 00:29:06,779 --> 00:29:08,194 "An ammunition dump exploded. 551 00:29:08,298 --> 00:29:10,576 "There were no problems, no casualties. 552 00:29:10,679 --> 00:29:11,232 Move on." 553 00:29:11,335 --> 00:29:12,647 And if you go down 554 00:29:12,751 --> 00:29:14,511 B, C, D, 555 00:29:14,614 --> 00:29:16,996 increasingly, things had gone wrong. 556 00:29:17,100 --> 00:29:19,240 And some of them had big spaces 557 00:29:19,343 --> 00:29:21,380 for, "Here's a list of people who are now dead, 558 00:29:21,483 --> 00:29:22,553 "because this was actually 559 00:29:22,657 --> 00:29:23,762 a scientific experiment gone awry." 560 00:29:55,552 --> 00:29:57,519 The test releases energy 561 00:29:57,623 --> 00:29:59,349 more than four times the power 562 00:29:59,452 --> 00:30:01,523 of what had been predicted. 563 00:30:04,112 --> 00:30:06,632 It felt like an earthquake. 564 00:30:06,735 --> 00:30:10,256 He got out of bed and he says, "I want you to come look. 565 00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,777 The sun's rising in the wrong direction." 566 00:30:13,881 --> 00:30:16,573 We were headed up to Albuquerque 567 00:30:16,676 --> 00:30:19,541 when we saw this great, big flash of light. 568 00:30:19,645 --> 00:30:23,269 And my sister, she said, "What happened?" 569 00:30:23,373 --> 00:30:24,995 Was there anything odd about your sister 570 00:30:25,099 --> 00:30:26,169 asking about the light? 571 00:30:26,272 --> 00:30:28,102 Yes, because she was blind. 572 00:30:30,656 --> 00:30:33,762 Some of these local people from dozens of miles away 573 00:30:33,866 --> 00:30:35,281 called their newspapers and said, 574 00:30:35,385 --> 00:30:36,489 "What, what happened?" 575 00:30:36,593 --> 00:30:38,353 The local papers 576 00:30:38,457 --> 00:30:40,010 asked the press office, 577 00:30:40,114 --> 00:30:41,874 "What was going on last night?" 578 00:30:41,978 --> 00:30:43,565 And they provided them 579 00:30:43,669 --> 00:30:47,811 with Laurence's lowest-level story. 580 00:31:01,790 --> 00:31:04,241 And the local media just accepted that, 581 00:31:04,345 --> 00:31:05,864 and that's what they wrote. 582 00:31:22,708 --> 00:31:24,503 Laurence does exactly what Groves wants. 583 00:31:24,606 --> 00:31:26,919 And he's perfectly happy 584 00:31:27,023 --> 00:31:30,198 to work within those constraints. 585 00:31:30,302 --> 00:31:33,339 Laurence's first act of loyalty 586 00:31:33,443 --> 00:31:35,755 was an act of lying, 587 00:31:35,859 --> 00:31:37,274 an act of mistruth, 588 00:31:37,378 --> 00:31:39,690 which is a cardinal sin for a journalist. 589 00:31:46,283 --> 00:31:47,767 It was known from the beginning 590 00:31:47,871 --> 00:31:51,012 that atomic energy posed risks of radiation. 591 00:31:53,290 --> 00:31:56,052 Before the Trinity test, there was much discussion about 592 00:31:56,155 --> 00:31:58,951 whether people who live nearby should be notified. 593 00:32:01,402 --> 00:32:03,991 To monitor the biochemical dangers 594 00:32:04,094 --> 00:32:05,613 of plutonium and uranium, 595 00:32:05,716 --> 00:32:08,719 Groves had hired Dr. Stafford Warren, 596 00:32:08,823 --> 00:32:11,170 a pioneer in the new field of radiology, 597 00:32:11,274 --> 00:32:14,656 to be the project's chief medical officer. 598 00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:17,452 Stafford Warren is little-known, 599 00:32:17,556 --> 00:32:21,456 but he was a major medical figure 600 00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:23,148 for the Manhattan Project. 601 00:32:24,873 --> 00:32:26,772 As Oak Ridge and Hanford 602 00:32:26,875 --> 00:32:29,809 were picking up uranium and plutonium production, 603 00:32:29,913 --> 00:32:32,640 they were very concerned, 604 00:32:32,743 --> 00:32:34,538 but-- this sounds so cynical-- 605 00:32:34,642 --> 00:32:37,300 their concern about the radiation poisoning 606 00:32:37,403 --> 00:32:41,166 was to keep the secret of the Manhattan Project. 607 00:32:41,269 --> 00:32:45,066 If all of a sudden, this strange sickness 608 00:32:45,170 --> 00:32:48,725 began to emerge from these secret sites, 609 00:32:48,828 --> 00:32:51,762 some reporter would reveal what was going on. 610 00:32:55,663 --> 00:32:58,148 Warren was good at secrets. 611 00:32:58,252 --> 00:32:59,874 Groves appreciated that. 612 00:32:59,978 --> 00:33:03,947 So, the two worked pretty well together. 613 00:33:06,225 --> 00:33:09,815 Prior to the Trinity test, Warren's team outlines 614 00:33:09,918 --> 00:33:13,957 the dangers of radiation in a memo to Groves. 615 00:33:14,061 --> 00:33:17,064 They wrote some alarming messages 616 00:33:17,167 --> 00:33:18,686 that Groves would have seen. 617 00:33:23,380 --> 00:33:26,280 That memo was basically ignored. 618 00:33:27,315 --> 00:33:28,868 A few days later, 619 00:33:28,972 --> 00:33:32,769 Warren sends a second memo, more to Groves' liking. 620 00:33:40,052 --> 00:33:42,227 In the following memo, 621 00:33:42,330 --> 00:33:46,231 Warren minimized the danger of radiation on the ground. 622 00:33:46,334 --> 00:33:49,234 He said, "If American combat troops 623 00:33:49,337 --> 00:33:51,443 "have to be sent into Japan, 624 00:33:51,546 --> 00:33:54,584 they're not going to be in danger from radiation." 625 00:33:55,654 --> 00:33:59,037 That's certainly what Groves wanted to hear. 626 00:33:59,140 --> 00:34:03,110 Somehow, Warren was able to... 627 00:34:05,250 --> 00:34:07,562 ...persuade himself, justify, 628 00:34:07,666 --> 00:34:11,014 forget, deny, uh, repress 629 00:34:11,118 --> 00:34:15,398 his own fears about the atomic bomb. 630 00:34:21,714 --> 00:34:23,854 After Trinity, the scientists 631 00:34:23,958 --> 00:34:26,857 went out and tracked the radioactive cloud. 632 00:34:30,309 --> 00:34:33,450 They were shocked to find it was spreading for many miles 633 00:34:33,554 --> 00:34:36,419 and at a higher level than they had anticipated. 634 00:34:39,077 --> 00:34:41,941 They soon found farm animals, cattle, with hair burned off. 635 00:34:43,322 --> 00:34:45,600 An old man, Mac Smith, had a black cat, 636 00:34:45,704 --> 00:34:47,775 just as black as the ace of spades. 637 00:34:47,878 --> 00:34:49,742 That thing had white spots all over it. 638 00:34:49,846 --> 00:34:51,054 By and large, 639 00:34:51,158 --> 00:34:56,059 this huge event escaped public commentary. 640 00:34:56,163 --> 00:34:58,199 And I think it speaks to the era. 641 00:34:58,303 --> 00:34:59,545 "This is wartime. 642 00:34:59,649 --> 00:35:01,892 Don't, don't talk about things." 643 00:35:03,998 --> 00:35:06,207 So, Groves knew that the radiation existed 644 00:35:06,311 --> 00:35:08,313 and that it was a problem. 645 00:35:08,416 --> 00:35:10,004 But it was not part of the narrative 646 00:35:10,108 --> 00:35:13,490 that he wanted to have out there. 647 00:35:13,594 --> 00:35:15,251 The radiation is the part 648 00:35:15,354 --> 00:35:17,805 that people are generally going to grasp onto 649 00:35:17,908 --> 00:35:20,325 as the special nature of the weapon. 650 00:35:20,428 --> 00:35:23,224 And it's also the one that's associated with the most horror. 651 00:35:25,192 --> 00:35:28,091 Because of the unique health effects of radiation, 652 00:35:28,195 --> 00:35:32,130 this puts it in a category more like chemical weapons. 653 00:35:32,233 --> 00:35:35,650 Groves did not want any association 654 00:35:35,754 --> 00:35:37,652 with chemical, biological warfare. 655 00:35:42,588 --> 00:35:46,109 The Germans used poison gas in World War I. 656 00:35:49,043 --> 00:35:52,184 Eventually, the British did, too. 657 00:36:06,785 --> 00:36:09,132 The world was revolted 658 00:36:09,236 --> 00:36:11,030 by that kind of warfare. 659 00:36:11,134 --> 00:36:14,896 It somehow didn't fit into what was moral in a war. 660 00:36:17,347 --> 00:36:19,832 There's a lot of concern 661 00:36:19,936 --> 00:36:23,698 about using it in World War II. 662 00:36:23,802 --> 00:36:26,114 Hitler doesn't, the British don't, the Soviets don't, 663 00:36:26,218 --> 00:36:27,288 the Americans don't, the French don't. 664 00:36:29,635 --> 00:36:32,293 So, Groves did not want the atomic bomb 665 00:36:32,397 --> 00:36:34,571 to be seen in that light. 666 00:36:37,643 --> 00:36:40,405 Groves could see what was coming down the road. 667 00:36:40,508 --> 00:36:44,340 They would have a bomb that they could use in war. 668 00:36:44,443 --> 00:36:47,860 Groves immediately reports to his superiors 669 00:36:47,964 --> 00:36:52,210 that the test surpasses all expectations. 670 00:36:59,769 --> 00:37:00,942 This news went 671 00:37:01,046 --> 00:37:04,670 to President Truman at the Potsdam Conference. 672 00:37:04,774 --> 00:37:07,673 He suddenly felt like he was in a place of great security. 673 00:37:07,777 --> 00:37:10,607 This influenced how he thought about Japan 674 00:37:10,711 --> 00:37:12,609 and the end of the war. 675 00:37:12,713 --> 00:37:14,232 He made the Potsdam Declaration, 676 00:37:14,335 --> 00:37:17,476 a harsher thing than he might have otherwise done. 677 00:37:20,445 --> 00:37:22,792 And it influenced how he thought about the Soviet Union, 678 00:37:22,895 --> 00:37:26,658 how he was going to deal with them in the postwar. 679 00:37:29,143 --> 00:37:32,353 The Americans don't want a divided government. 680 00:37:32,457 --> 00:37:33,906 It's an American weapon. 681 00:37:34,010 --> 00:37:35,218 It's not a Soviet weapon. 682 00:37:35,322 --> 00:37:38,083 And that means the postwar settlement in Japan 683 00:37:38,186 --> 00:37:40,672 will look like something rather different 684 00:37:40,775 --> 00:37:42,570 than Berlin and Vienna, which are carved up 685 00:37:42,674 --> 00:37:46,160 into Soviet, British, French, and American sectors. 686 00:37:47,782 --> 00:37:50,268 As soon as the Trinity test 687 00:37:50,371 --> 00:37:51,924 was a success, 688 00:37:52,028 --> 00:37:53,029 there were orders 689 00:37:53,132 --> 00:37:55,618 to bring the bomb to Tinian. 690 00:37:57,136 --> 00:38:00,416 1,500 miles off the coast of Japan, 691 00:38:00,519 --> 00:38:04,592 final steps are taken to ready and activate the bomb. 692 00:38:04,696 --> 00:38:07,181 Laurence is on the island of Tinian, 693 00:38:07,285 --> 00:38:10,805 hoping with all his heart to be on that plane, 694 00:38:10,909 --> 00:38:12,462 to be on that mission. 695 00:38:13,774 --> 00:38:16,811 He wanted to be there to see the use of the bomb, 696 00:38:16,915 --> 00:38:20,194 but he was not allowed to go. 697 00:38:20,298 --> 00:38:22,334 He was almost in tears that he was not allowed to be on. 698 00:38:22,438 --> 00:38:25,924 But he had watched it take off, 699 00:38:26,027 --> 00:38:28,167 and he was waiting for it to come back. 700 00:38:55,988 --> 00:38:57,714 There was a photographer 701 00:38:57,818 --> 00:38:59,647 for Hiroshima's main newspaper 702 00:38:59,751 --> 00:39:01,615 named Matsushige, 703 00:39:01,718 --> 00:39:05,204 who was not far from where the bomb went off. 704 00:39:06,378 --> 00:39:08,898 MATSUSHIGE 705 00:39:17,665 --> 00:39:21,048 He was so sickened by what he saw 706 00:39:21,151 --> 00:39:23,050 that he could only push the shutter 707 00:39:23,153 --> 00:39:25,259 about half a dozen times. 708 00:39:49,283 --> 00:39:51,147 These are the only photos that survived 709 00:39:51,250 --> 00:39:53,529 of that day in Hiroshima, 710 00:39:53,632 --> 00:39:56,324 and there was only a handful of them. 711 00:39:57,912 --> 00:40:00,743 His photos were seized when the Americans arrived. 712 00:40:03,918 --> 00:40:05,610 In 1945, 713 00:40:05,713 --> 00:40:08,682 Americans were only seeing the mushroom cloud, 714 00:40:08,785 --> 00:40:10,891 destroyed buildings, 715 00:40:10,994 --> 00:40:13,376 and not the human effects at all. 716 00:40:16,862 --> 00:40:20,452 On August 6, the day of the Hiroshima blast, 717 00:40:20,556 --> 00:40:22,972 President Truman is returning by ship 718 00:40:23,075 --> 00:40:25,250 from the Potsdam Conference. 719 00:40:25,353 --> 00:40:28,736 His public announcement is filmed on board. 720 00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:31,636 We are now prepared to destroy, 721 00:40:31,739 --> 00:40:34,052 more rapidly and completely, 722 00:40:34,155 --> 00:40:39,091 every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city. 723 00:40:39,195 --> 00:40:40,817 The release of the information 724 00:40:40,921 --> 00:40:42,440 is not neutral. 725 00:40:42,543 --> 00:40:45,166 The announcement is hyped up in order 726 00:40:45,270 --> 00:40:46,651 to induce the Japanese government to surrender, 727 00:40:46,754 --> 00:40:49,964 perhaps before the Soviets enter the war. 728 00:40:50,068 --> 00:40:52,898 We have spent more than $2 billion 729 00:40:53,002 --> 00:40:56,350 on the greatest scientific gamble in history, 730 00:40:56,454 --> 00:40:58,386 and we have won. 731 00:40:58,490 --> 00:41:00,699 The goal was to briefly announce 732 00:41:00,803 --> 00:41:02,114 the use of the bomb, 733 00:41:02,218 --> 00:41:03,840 and then describe the existence of the Manhattan Project, 734 00:41:03,944 --> 00:41:07,465 which would also be a bombshell for the American public. 735 00:41:07,568 --> 00:41:09,328 What has been done 736 00:41:09,432 --> 00:41:14,368 is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. 737 00:41:14,472 --> 00:41:16,025 It was really core 738 00:41:16,128 --> 00:41:18,510 that people suddenly know what had happened, 739 00:41:18,614 --> 00:41:20,478 because that was the sort of propaganda effect. 740 00:41:20,581 --> 00:41:22,790 That was going to be all the psychological effect. 741 00:41:24,205 --> 00:41:25,621 This was this moment 742 00:41:25,724 --> 00:41:26,760 in which they were going to go 743 00:41:26,863 --> 00:41:29,832 from total secrecy to partial openness. 744 00:41:30,902 --> 00:41:33,318 William Laurence's monthslong work 745 00:41:33,421 --> 00:41:36,770 suddenly hits front pages nationwide 746 00:41:36,873 --> 00:41:39,911 and would dominate the news for weeks to come. 747 00:41:47,263 --> 00:41:50,369 Laurence had written 14 press releases 748 00:41:50,473 --> 00:41:54,373 that were ready for release in a kind of a publicity blitz. 749 00:41:57,066 --> 00:41:59,689 Newspapers hungered for these press releases, 750 00:41:59,793 --> 00:42:03,900 and they disseminated them mostly verbatim. 751 00:42:04,004 --> 00:42:05,799 They're military press releases 752 00:42:05,902 --> 00:42:07,939 that are being sort of laundered through the press 753 00:42:08,042 --> 00:42:11,011 to make it look like it's organic independent reporting. 754 00:42:15,740 --> 00:42:17,500 Part of the PR effort 755 00:42:17,604 --> 00:42:19,675 was not just to explain it to people, 756 00:42:19,778 --> 00:42:22,470 but to control what people learned. 757 00:42:23,644 --> 00:42:25,025 So the philosophy was, 758 00:42:25,128 --> 00:42:28,546 "Let's give them everything we think is safe and useful. 759 00:42:30,030 --> 00:42:32,757 "And maybe that will satisfy their appetites 760 00:42:32,860 --> 00:42:35,898 and keep them from digging into places we don't want them to." 761 00:42:38,383 --> 00:42:40,074 The editors loved it-- they wanted this information, 762 00:42:40,178 --> 00:42:41,248 they wanted to get it out, 763 00:42:41,351 --> 00:42:42,560 they knew the public wanted it, 764 00:42:42,663 --> 00:42:44,769 and so they did not raise any issues about, 765 00:42:44,872 --> 00:42:46,218 "Well, this is government propaganda. 766 00:42:46,322 --> 00:42:48,807 Where's the other side of the story?" 767 00:42:50,637 --> 00:42:52,121 When you look at white newspapers 768 00:42:52,224 --> 00:42:53,605 after the bomb was dropped, 769 00:42:53,709 --> 00:42:55,089 they're basically just taking 770 00:42:55,193 --> 00:42:56,194 what the War Department publishes 771 00:42:56,297 --> 00:42:57,402 and publishing that. 772 00:42:57,505 --> 00:42:59,438 So there's very little variety or nuance. 773 00:43:00,543 --> 00:43:01,751 The Black press 774 00:43:01,855 --> 00:43:03,442 publishes the official narrative. 775 00:43:03,546 --> 00:43:06,756 But it also discovers stories overlooked 776 00:43:06,860 --> 00:43:08,586 by the mainstream press. 777 00:43:11,105 --> 00:43:12,279 And there's a sense of pride 778 00:43:12,382 --> 00:43:13,591 that shows up in those articles 779 00:43:13,694 --> 00:43:16,352 about the intelligence of these Black scientists. 780 00:43:17,802 --> 00:43:19,355 When the bomb was first dropped, 781 00:43:19,458 --> 00:43:21,253 you're going to have stories about Black scientists 782 00:43:21,357 --> 00:43:22,876 participating in the research on the bomb 783 00:43:22,979 --> 00:43:24,878 and participating in the making of the bomb. 784 00:43:26,396 --> 00:43:27,881 This is a moment where Black Americans 785 00:43:27,984 --> 00:43:29,883 are striving to break new boundaries 786 00:43:29,986 --> 00:43:31,712 and get entry into different professions. 787 00:43:33,196 --> 00:43:35,302 But what does it mean to integrate a profession 788 00:43:35,405 --> 00:43:37,787 that's about causing devastation at this scale? 789 00:43:37,891 --> 00:43:40,963 Shortly after the Hiroshima strike, 790 00:43:41,066 --> 00:43:43,724 Black leaders raise their voices. 791 00:43:43,828 --> 00:43:45,726 They're going to view the dropping of the bomb 792 00:43:45,830 --> 00:43:47,486 through a racial lens. 793 00:43:47,590 --> 00:43:49,109 And there's no reason why they wouldn't. 794 00:43:49,212 --> 00:43:50,869 If something bad was going to happen, 795 00:43:50,973 --> 00:43:52,837 it's going to happen to us first, right? 796 00:43:52,940 --> 00:43:54,839 If there's a bomb and it's going to be used, 797 00:43:54,942 --> 00:43:57,151 it's going to be used on a person of color first. 798 00:43:59,222 --> 00:44:00,810 The Japanese were people of color, 799 00:44:00,914 --> 00:44:02,087 just like they are. 800 00:44:03,502 --> 00:44:06,782 And so there's an understandable skepticism. 801 00:44:09,819 --> 00:44:11,649 One of the first to comment on the bomb 802 00:44:11,752 --> 00:44:15,514 was Langston Hughes, the great Black poet and writer. 803 00:44:15,618 --> 00:44:17,620 He had a column in Black newspapers 804 00:44:17,724 --> 00:44:19,173 called Jesse B. Semple. 805 00:44:20,761 --> 00:44:23,384 Kind of folk hero character that didn't have 806 00:44:23,488 --> 00:44:26,802 traditional education, but had kind of folk wisdom. 807 00:44:26,905 --> 00:44:28,700 Jesse B. Semple asks the questions 808 00:44:28,804 --> 00:44:30,357 that maybe nobody else wants to ask. 809 00:44:31,599 --> 00:44:34,706 He says, "We didn't want to use this on white folk. 810 00:44:34,810 --> 00:44:36,397 "We used this on colored folks. 811 00:44:36,501 --> 00:44:37,778 We used this on Japs." 812 00:44:39,159 --> 00:44:41,195 That is the same conversation, most likely, 813 00:44:41,299 --> 00:44:42,783 that's happening in households 814 00:44:42,887 --> 00:44:44,026 throughout the Black community. 815 00:44:48,513 --> 00:44:49,790 Black intellectuals and political leaders 816 00:44:49,894 --> 00:44:51,896 are outraged by the dropping of the bomb. 817 00:44:51,999 --> 00:44:55,416 Zora Neale Hurston called Truman the "Butcher of Asia." 818 00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:57,280 And W.E.B. Du Bois called Truman 819 00:44:57,384 --> 00:44:59,179 "one of the greatest killers of our time." 820 00:44:59,282 --> 00:45:01,975 W.E.B. Du Bois says 821 00:45:02,078 --> 00:45:04,563 that the merging of science and technology 822 00:45:04,667 --> 00:45:06,980 should be a good thing for the world. 823 00:45:07,083 --> 00:45:08,671 This is the opposite. 824 00:45:08,775 --> 00:45:11,191 The government has used science and technology, 825 00:45:11,294 --> 00:45:13,780 and so it's for the worst thing of mankind. 826 00:45:15,782 --> 00:45:17,853 And he says what we have done will set back 827 00:45:17,956 --> 00:45:21,649 the progress of "colored nations for decades to come." 828 00:45:26,896 --> 00:45:28,760 Black intellectuals are not alone 829 00:45:28,864 --> 00:45:32,591 in raising alarms about the bomb's effects. 830 00:45:34,490 --> 00:45:36,837 Harold Jacobson was 831 00:45:36,941 --> 00:45:40,047 a junior Manhattan Project scientist at Oak Ridge. 832 00:45:40,151 --> 00:45:41,739 No big deal, no key figure. 833 00:45:44,983 --> 00:45:46,295 But in August, 834 00:45:46,398 --> 00:45:49,712 he wrote an article that got a great deal of attention. 835 00:45:51,818 --> 00:45:54,544 "Hiroshima to be uninhabitable for 70 years." 836 00:46:00,723 --> 00:46:01,966 That's not the story 837 00:46:02,069 --> 00:46:04,589 the U.S. military wanted out. 838 00:46:05,970 --> 00:46:07,626 Groves wants to argue that it's not radioactivity 839 00:46:07,730 --> 00:46:09,594 that does the killing. 840 00:46:09,697 --> 00:46:11,941 The killing is caused by a big explosion. 841 00:46:12,045 --> 00:46:13,874 This is a different kind of big explosion, 842 00:46:13,978 --> 00:46:15,117 and it's really special, 843 00:46:15,220 --> 00:46:16,843 but it's not repulsively special. 844 00:46:20,847 --> 00:46:23,435 And here is Jacobson, one of our own scientists, 845 00:46:23,539 --> 00:46:27,577 saying Hiroshima would be uninhabitable for 70 years. 846 00:46:27,681 --> 00:46:30,028 I'm not quite sure how he arrived at exactly 70, 847 00:46:30,132 --> 00:46:32,341 but, uh, it made a great headline. 848 00:46:35,378 --> 00:46:37,035 Jacobson's prediction, 849 00:46:37,139 --> 00:46:39,520 which turns out to be inaccurate, 850 00:46:39,624 --> 00:46:42,040 doesn't garner nearly as much public attention 851 00:46:42,144 --> 00:46:45,561 as the government's heavy-handed response. 852 00:46:47,390 --> 00:46:50,048 They got a statement from Robert Oppenheimer 853 00:46:50,152 --> 00:46:53,396 saying that the lingering radiation would be minor. 854 00:46:58,746 --> 00:46:59,644 Oppenheimer was complicit 855 00:46:59,747 --> 00:47:01,266 in tamping down the radiation. 856 00:47:01,370 --> 00:47:03,303 I think he had hopes 857 00:47:03,406 --> 00:47:06,824 that atomic weapons could be contained after the war. 858 00:47:06,927 --> 00:47:08,687 I think he was denying the same thing 859 00:47:08,791 --> 00:47:11,759 that so many scientists were. 860 00:47:12,726 --> 00:47:15,004 They just didn't want 861 00:47:15,108 --> 00:47:18,490 to be connected to chemical warfare. 862 00:47:18,594 --> 00:47:20,492 Jacobson was certainly overstepping his knowledge, 863 00:47:20,596 --> 00:47:22,011 that's for sure. 864 00:47:22,115 --> 00:47:25,843 But the rebuttal, if it had been a little bit more truthful, 865 00:47:25,946 --> 00:47:27,914 would have said, "We don't really know, 866 00:47:28,017 --> 00:47:30,261 but we're pretty sure that isn't the case." 867 00:47:30,364 --> 00:47:32,090 And they didn't quite do that. 868 00:47:33,816 --> 00:47:36,508 This is the first real challenge they have 869 00:47:36,612 --> 00:47:39,546 to their control over the narrative of the bomb. 870 00:48:00,084 --> 00:48:02,880 Leslie Nakashima was a popular and celebrated 871 00:48:02,983 --> 00:48:06,090 Japanese American journalist in prewar Hawaii. 872 00:48:09,645 --> 00:48:13,580 He worked primarily as a sportswriter. 873 00:48:15,444 --> 00:48:18,930 But he also covered culture and politics, as well. 874 00:48:20,967 --> 00:48:22,244 Nakashima's parents 875 00:48:22,347 --> 00:48:24,556 both came from a very small fishing village 876 00:48:24,660 --> 00:48:26,386 in Hiroshima prefecture. 877 00:48:26,489 --> 00:48:30,286 And his father was part of the first wave 878 00:48:30,390 --> 00:48:34,532 of contract workers to work on Hawaii's sugar plantations. 879 00:48:36,637 --> 00:48:39,399 Many migrant workers had never intended to stay. 880 00:48:40,607 --> 00:48:43,058 This is the case for Leslie Nakashima's parents. 881 00:48:43,161 --> 00:48:45,715 They move back to Japan in the 1930s. 882 00:48:46,958 --> 00:48:48,684 And Nakashima gets offered a job 883 00:48:48,787 --> 00:48:51,342 working for the United Press in Tokyo. 884 00:48:54,103 --> 00:48:57,935 But when Pearl Harbor is bombed, Nakashima is out of a job. 885 00:48:58,038 --> 00:49:00,075 And he starts working for the Japanese press. 886 00:49:00,178 --> 00:49:01,455 So, he actually learns 887 00:49:01,559 --> 00:49:05,252 about the atomic bombing before the general public. 888 00:49:05,356 --> 00:49:09,947 And at the time, his mother was still living in Hiroshima. 889 00:49:10,050 --> 00:49:13,295 He immediately books the first train ticket he can get. 890 00:49:18,541 --> 00:49:19,577 The first thing he sees 891 00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:21,820 when he arrives at Hiroshima Station 892 00:49:21,924 --> 00:49:23,408 is a sea of destruction. 893 00:49:29,173 --> 00:49:31,658 He finds his mother alive. 894 00:49:33,763 --> 00:49:35,973 He knows this is a really big story. 895 00:49:37,595 --> 00:49:40,770 He instinctively starts to record what he's seeing. 896 00:49:42,531 --> 00:49:43,981 He's looking out 897 00:49:44,084 --> 00:49:47,432 and he sees this city of 300,000 people 898 00:49:47,536 --> 00:49:50,366 that, as Nakashima said, had vanished. 899 00:49:53,887 --> 00:49:56,510 He also visits a school near his mother's house 900 00:49:56,614 --> 00:49:59,582 that had been turned into a makeshift hospital. 901 00:49:59,686 --> 00:50:02,137 And he writes that every day, 902 00:50:02,240 --> 00:50:05,899 there's two or three people that are dying there, 903 00:50:06,003 --> 00:50:08,591 and not only that, but the majority of the cases 904 00:50:08,695 --> 00:50:10,731 that are being treated there 905 00:50:10,835 --> 00:50:13,562 are considered to be hopeless. 906 00:50:20,914 --> 00:50:23,020 Nagasaki, target 907 00:50:23,123 --> 00:50:24,745 for the second atomic bomb. 908 00:50:24,849 --> 00:50:28,922 Just three days after Hiroshima, this explosion... 909 00:50:29,026 --> 00:50:30,165 Before the Japanese leadership in Tokyo 910 00:50:30,268 --> 00:50:31,442 and the emperor 911 00:50:31,545 --> 00:50:33,927 had time to learn about and ponder the first one, 912 00:50:34,031 --> 00:50:36,136 the plutonium bomb was used against Nagasaki. 913 00:50:39,691 --> 00:50:43,454 So it really was a, as the U.S. press put it at the time, 914 00:50:43,557 --> 00:50:47,803 a one-two punch, the one-two knockout blow. 915 00:50:49,839 --> 00:50:52,256 William Laurence was on one of the chase planes 916 00:50:52,359 --> 00:50:54,741 that followed the bomber over Nagasaki. 917 00:50:54,844 --> 00:50:58,572 I saw a great city disappear 918 00:50:58,676 --> 00:51:00,678 in a mushroom cloud. 919 00:51:00,781 --> 00:51:02,749 "The New York Times" ran his piece 920 00:51:02,852 --> 00:51:05,510 about flying to Nagasaki on the mission. 921 00:51:06,856 --> 00:51:09,169 The paper proudly advertises 922 00:51:09,273 --> 00:51:12,172 Laurence's role in the Manhattan Project. 923 00:51:17,453 --> 00:51:19,248 He goes from being a chief publicist 924 00:51:19,352 --> 00:51:21,216 to almost overnight back at "The New York Times," 925 00:51:21,319 --> 00:51:22,527 and then wins a Pulitzer 926 00:51:22,631 --> 00:51:25,392 for writing pieces that are 927 00:51:25,496 --> 00:51:29,086 derived from his status at the Manhattan Project. 928 00:51:31,502 --> 00:51:34,470 Yet the reporter whose firsthand account 929 00:51:34,574 --> 00:51:35,885 actually breaks the story 930 00:51:35,989 --> 00:51:37,232 gets overlooked. 931 00:51:38,647 --> 00:51:41,581 Leslie Nakashima's story "Hiroshima As I Saw It" 932 00:51:41,684 --> 00:51:46,482 gets syndicated, but gets sort of lost. 933 00:51:49,347 --> 00:51:52,247 What I think are the most interesting parts of his story, 934 00:51:52,350 --> 00:51:56,009 the survivors' experiences, 935 00:51:56,113 --> 00:51:58,356 many of whom were acquaintances 936 00:51:58,460 --> 00:52:02,671 of his from Hawaii, 937 00:52:02,774 --> 00:52:06,157 as well as some of the more provocative language 938 00:52:06,261 --> 00:52:07,986 about radiation... 939 00:52:10,092 --> 00:52:13,854 ...many newspapers choose to excise that out. 940 00:52:13,958 --> 00:52:16,512 There was a question of credibility. 941 00:52:18,273 --> 00:52:20,309 So much of it has to do 942 00:52:20,413 --> 00:52:25,038 with the anti-Japanese racism of the time. 943 00:52:29,456 --> 00:52:30,906 "The New York Times," for example, 944 00:52:31,009 --> 00:52:33,460 buries it several pages in. 945 00:52:35,186 --> 00:52:37,119 Beneath Nakashima's article, 946 00:52:37,223 --> 00:52:39,259 the "Times" cites General Groves, 947 00:52:39,363 --> 00:52:43,574 who calls all reports out of Japan "pure propaganda." 948 00:52:50,063 --> 00:52:51,823 The battleship Missouri becomes 949 00:52:51,927 --> 00:52:53,998 the scene of an unforgettable ceremony. 950 00:52:54,101 --> 00:52:56,518 General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, 951 00:52:56,621 --> 00:52:58,968 supreme allied commander for the occupation of Japan, 952 00:52:59,072 --> 00:53:00,556 boards the Missouri. 953 00:53:04,905 --> 00:53:07,011 Cameramen and reporters of many countries 954 00:53:07,114 --> 00:53:09,151 record this historic moment... 955 00:53:09,255 --> 00:53:11,326 After the surrender, 956 00:53:11,429 --> 00:53:14,121 General Douglas MacArthur is determined 957 00:53:14,225 --> 00:53:16,331 to keep American journalists far away 958 00:53:16,434 --> 00:53:19,403 from the so-called "Atomic Cities." 959 00:53:23,924 --> 00:53:25,409 One of the first things MacArthur did 960 00:53:25,512 --> 00:53:27,687 was enact a strict press code, 961 00:53:27,790 --> 00:53:30,448 which applied to American reporters, 962 00:53:30,552 --> 00:53:33,934 who had to file their articles through his office. 963 00:53:35,798 --> 00:53:37,179 But at least one reporter 964 00:53:37,283 --> 00:53:38,836 defies his order. 965 00:53:38,939 --> 00:53:41,597 "Chicago Daily" newsman George Weller 966 00:53:41,701 --> 00:53:44,082 quietly slips away to Nagasaki. 967 00:53:45,843 --> 00:53:48,432 MacArthur didn't want anybody to go there 968 00:53:48,535 --> 00:53:52,159 because this would lead to a lot of very compassionate stories. 969 00:53:53,299 --> 00:53:57,130 When he got there, he found pitiful conditions 970 00:53:57,234 --> 00:54:00,927 and observed dozens of victims who seemed to be wasting away. 971 00:54:04,620 --> 00:54:06,001 And so he wrote about it. 972 00:54:20,049 --> 00:54:23,018 Weller was very patriotic. 973 00:54:23,121 --> 00:54:24,537 Didn't have an agenda. 974 00:54:26,193 --> 00:54:28,644 Weller sent his pieces directly 975 00:54:28,748 --> 00:54:31,026 to MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. 976 00:54:32,234 --> 00:54:34,305 MacArthur's office held those stories 977 00:54:34,409 --> 00:54:36,065 and they didn't surface for decades. 978 00:54:50,908 --> 00:54:52,392 A month after the blast, 979 00:54:52,496 --> 00:54:54,774 Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett 980 00:54:54,877 --> 00:54:57,190 catches a train to Hiroshima. 981 00:54:59,986 --> 00:55:01,298 Wilfred Burchett was 982 00:55:01,401 --> 00:55:03,955 an extremely enterprising journalist. 983 00:55:04,059 --> 00:55:05,509 He went to places he wasn't supposed to go. 984 00:55:07,373 --> 00:55:10,168 Burchett was taken to a leading hospital. 985 00:55:11,722 --> 00:55:14,000 These people are all in various states 986 00:55:14,103 --> 00:55:16,451 of physical disintegration. 987 00:55:16,554 --> 00:55:18,660 Then the flesh started to rot, 988 00:55:18,763 --> 00:55:20,800 and then gradually, bleedings, 989 00:55:20,903 --> 00:55:21,801 which they couldn't stop, 990 00:55:21,904 --> 00:55:24,355 and then the hair falling out. 991 00:55:24,459 --> 00:55:27,427 And the hair falling out was more or less the last stage. 992 00:55:33,813 --> 00:55:36,229 People were dying in a horrible, painful way 993 00:55:36,333 --> 00:55:38,783 that Americans back home were being told 994 00:55:38,887 --> 00:55:40,302 wasn't going on. 995 00:55:42,546 --> 00:55:45,756 Burchett's article appeared in the British press 996 00:55:45,859 --> 00:55:47,274 and then reprinted around the world 997 00:55:47,378 --> 00:55:49,863 with the headline "The Atomic Plague." 998 00:55:53,695 --> 00:55:56,801 Burchett's articles were not published in the U.S. 999 00:55:58,838 --> 00:56:01,737 They had to be published overseas, 1000 00:56:01,841 --> 00:56:04,982 in papers that were not subject to the rules 1001 00:56:05,085 --> 00:56:08,295 that the government was laying down for U.S. journalists. 1002 00:56:11,954 --> 00:56:14,060 Groves was tremendously concerned 1003 00:56:14,163 --> 00:56:17,995 about batting down claims of radiation disease. 1004 00:56:21,654 --> 00:56:23,414 Groves calls Dr. Charles Rea, 1005 00:56:23,518 --> 00:56:25,451 hospital director at Oak Ridge, 1006 00:56:25,554 --> 00:56:28,730 who has no expertise in radiology. 1007 00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:31,284 And a transcript has emerged, 1008 00:56:31,388 --> 00:56:33,390 which is horrifying in many ways. 1009 00:56:46,264 --> 00:56:49,820 The doctor at Oak Ridge does agree with Groves 1010 00:56:49,923 --> 00:56:51,718 that the Japanese, no doubt, are exaggerating, 1011 00:56:51,822 --> 00:56:54,411 that people really aren't dying from radiation. 1012 00:57:00,555 --> 00:57:03,592 It's interesting why Groves did this. 1013 00:57:08,494 --> 00:57:11,186 Rea was not an important part of the Manhattan Project. 1014 00:57:11,289 --> 00:57:14,223 He was not a known radiologist. 1015 00:57:16,433 --> 00:57:21,438 It shows how distraught Groves was about the way 1016 00:57:21,541 --> 00:57:24,095 the bomb was being seen. 1017 00:57:29,860 --> 00:57:31,206 A star-shaped crater 1018 00:57:31,309 --> 00:57:33,726 marks the New Mexican desert near Alamogordo 1019 00:57:33,829 --> 00:57:35,486 where the first atomic bomb was tested. 1020 00:57:35,590 --> 00:57:38,247 Press representatives get a personally conducted tour 1021 00:57:38,351 --> 00:57:39,663 by General Groves. 1022 00:57:39,766 --> 00:57:41,285 Alarmed by the growing accounts 1023 00:57:41,388 --> 00:57:42,769 of radiation sickness, 1024 00:57:42,873 --> 00:57:44,633 Groves invites friendly reporters 1025 00:57:44,737 --> 00:57:46,773 to visit the Trinity site 1026 00:57:46,877 --> 00:57:49,086 as further proof of no lingering radiation. 1027 00:57:49,189 --> 00:57:50,743 Groves invited 1028 00:57:50,846 --> 00:57:53,400 a number of journalists, including Laurence, 1029 00:57:53,504 --> 00:57:55,506 to show that there's no problem. 1030 00:57:55,610 --> 00:57:57,370 Radiation? What do you mean? 1031 00:57:58,440 --> 00:57:59,959 Geiger counters were brought out. 1032 00:58:00,062 --> 00:58:02,202 The readings are relatively low. 1033 00:58:02,306 --> 00:58:03,894 And so what are the Japanese talking about? 1034 00:58:04,929 --> 00:58:06,206 That's how it was reported. 1035 00:58:08,346 --> 00:58:11,246 Laurence thinks he is telling you the right story. 1036 00:58:14,180 --> 00:58:17,010 Everything he writes about how amazing this project is, 1037 00:58:17,114 --> 00:58:19,288 Laurence believes this-- he is a true believer. 1038 00:58:21,498 --> 00:58:24,742 Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, there's a press junket 1039 00:58:24,846 --> 00:58:26,710 organized by the military 1040 00:58:26,813 --> 00:58:30,886 to negate what they're calling Japanese propaganda 1041 00:58:30,990 --> 00:58:33,440 of lingering radiation effects. 1042 00:58:34,752 --> 00:58:37,272 After covering the surrender in Tokyo, 1043 00:58:37,375 --> 00:58:40,275 the pioneering African American journalist Charles Loeb 1044 00:58:40,378 --> 00:58:43,450 turns his attention to Hiroshima. 1045 00:58:49,180 --> 00:58:50,354 Charles Loeb 1046 00:58:50,457 --> 00:58:54,427 is born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1905. 1047 00:58:55,739 --> 00:58:57,637 He goes to Howard University 1048 00:58:57,741 --> 00:59:00,088 and studies pre-med. 1049 00:59:00,191 --> 00:59:02,469 He was not able to complete those studies 1050 00:59:02,573 --> 00:59:04,851 because of finances, 1051 00:59:04,955 --> 00:59:08,268 but he studied it long enough to understand science. 1052 00:59:09,718 --> 00:59:10,857 And so, 1053 00:59:10,961 --> 00:59:13,688 he was able to carry that knowledge with him 1054 00:59:13,791 --> 00:59:18,347 when he joined the "Cleveland Call and Post" in 1933. 1055 00:59:20,695 --> 00:59:24,146 Loeb was in Tokyo for the surrender ceremony in 1945. 1056 00:59:24,250 --> 00:59:25,251 And at that time, 1057 00:59:25,354 --> 00:59:26,597 a number of the other U.S. journalists 1058 00:59:26,701 --> 00:59:29,738 traveled to Hiroshima to report on the bomb impact. 1059 00:59:33,259 --> 00:59:34,847 When they came back, Loeb described them 1060 00:59:34,950 --> 00:59:36,814 as being "completely flabbergasted." 1061 00:59:38,782 --> 00:59:40,611 He didn't take that trip to Hiroshima himself. 1062 00:59:42,371 --> 00:59:44,201 Loeb starts reporting on this history 1063 00:59:44,304 --> 00:59:45,789 as it was unfolding. 1064 00:59:49,724 --> 00:59:51,415 He approached it clinically, 1065 00:59:51,518 --> 00:59:53,348 almost as though he was writing a scientific paper. 1066 00:59:55,143 --> 00:59:57,594 He understood and recognized the human costs of it. 1067 00:59:59,043 --> 01:00:01,598 But he was more focused on the long-term impact of radiation. 1068 01:00:04,670 --> 01:00:06,326 Charles Loeb wrote that article 1069 01:00:06,430 --> 01:00:10,054 in the newspaper in 1945 challenging the official story. 1070 01:00:10,158 --> 01:00:12,229 And one of the best ways 1071 01:00:12,332 --> 01:00:14,887 to challenge it was to quote Colonel Stafford Warren, 1072 01:00:14,990 --> 01:00:17,268 the top physician for the Manhattan Project. 1073 01:00:18,511 --> 01:00:21,031 Warren was responsible for evacuating Japanese wounded 1074 01:00:21,134 --> 01:00:23,205 and observing their actions. 1075 01:00:23,309 --> 01:00:24,690 The best thing he could have done 1076 01:00:24,793 --> 01:00:27,071 was to say that Warren was the one that was saying this. 1077 01:00:27,175 --> 01:00:29,487 "It's not me, it's not Charles-- I'm just a reporter." 1078 01:00:37,910 --> 01:00:39,670 Colonel Warren actually downplays 1079 01:00:39,774 --> 01:00:41,154 the potential impact of radiation, 1080 01:00:41,258 --> 01:00:43,363 but Loeb uses it in a very crafty way. 1081 01:00:43,467 --> 01:00:45,607 Just by the fact that he quotes Warren on this, 1082 01:00:45,711 --> 01:00:48,127 he introduces the possibility that radiation is present 1083 01:00:48,230 --> 01:00:50,854 and that it's impacting Japanese civilians after the bombing. 1084 01:00:52,994 --> 01:00:56,066 And so, Loeb structures the entire article in a way 1085 01:00:56,169 --> 01:00:58,137 that encourages readers to be reckoning 1086 01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:00,070 with the long-term impacts of the bomb 1087 01:01:00,173 --> 01:01:02,520 in ways that are years ahead of their time. 1088 01:01:12,910 --> 01:01:14,049 By November, 1089 01:01:14,153 --> 01:01:15,982 a month after Loeb's story runs, 1090 01:01:16,086 --> 01:01:18,778 General Groves can no longer deny 1091 01:01:18,882 --> 01:01:22,437 that radiation from the bomb is killing people. 1092 01:01:23,610 --> 01:01:25,371 In November 1945, 1093 01:01:25,474 --> 01:01:27,960 there were a lot of congressional hearings 1094 01:01:28,063 --> 01:01:30,479 on the Manhattan Project, 1095 01:01:30,583 --> 01:01:32,999 and so Groves was asked to testify many times. 1096 01:01:33,103 --> 01:01:36,969 It is essential in the highest national interest 1097 01:01:37,072 --> 01:01:40,248 that further development in the field of atomic energy 1098 01:01:40,351 --> 01:01:42,319 be pursued... 1099 01:01:42,422 --> 01:01:45,218 Groves was being asked in particular 1100 01:01:45,322 --> 01:01:48,325 about the radiation effects-- what actually happened. 1101 01:01:50,258 --> 01:01:52,743 And he admitted that the Japanese reports 1102 01:01:52,847 --> 01:01:55,159 of radiation sicknesses were correct. 1103 01:01:55,263 --> 01:01:57,852 But Groves tried to put the most positive spin on that 1104 01:01:57,955 --> 01:01:59,370 that he could. 1105 01:01:59,474 --> 01:02:01,614 And he reported that, according to the experts he talked to, 1106 01:02:01,718 --> 01:02:03,996 it was a "pleasant" way to die. 1107 01:02:05,238 --> 01:02:06,239 Many people 1108 01:02:06,343 --> 01:02:08,621 never forgave him for that. 1109 01:02:08,725 --> 01:02:11,210 And it's colored his reputation. 1110 01:02:28,883 --> 01:02:30,194 "The New Yorker" was known 1111 01:02:30,298 --> 01:02:32,679 as a light, humorous magazine. 1112 01:02:34,612 --> 01:02:36,545 But as the war went on... 1113 01:02:38,685 --> 01:02:41,102 ...people started to take note 1114 01:02:41,205 --> 01:02:42,897 of the seriousness and extent 1115 01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:44,519 of "The New Yorker" war coverage. 1116 01:02:47,418 --> 01:02:49,800 In the months following the atomic bombings, 1117 01:02:49,904 --> 01:02:53,562 "The New Yorker" commissions an article on Hiroshima. 1118 01:02:53,666 --> 01:02:55,495 Editor William Shawn meets 1119 01:02:55,599 --> 01:02:59,258 with freelance journalist John Hersey. 1120 01:02:59,361 --> 01:03:01,985 Everything written about the bomb at that point 1121 01:03:02,088 --> 01:03:04,470 was focused on the property damage. 1122 01:03:04,573 --> 01:03:06,886 That's what they were interested in. 1123 01:03:06,990 --> 01:03:09,199 Well, John Hersey wasn't like that. 1124 01:03:12,789 --> 01:03:14,791 When he sat down with William Shawn, 1125 01:03:14,894 --> 01:03:16,482 he said, "I don't really want to do 1126 01:03:16,585 --> 01:03:18,795 "another piece on the level of destruction. 1127 01:03:18,898 --> 01:03:21,142 I want to do it on how it affects people." 1128 01:03:22,315 --> 01:03:24,697 John Hersey was a quite remarkable writer 1129 01:03:24,801 --> 01:03:27,010 with a very long career ahead of him. 1130 01:03:31,014 --> 01:03:33,223 Hersey was born in 1914. 1131 01:03:33,326 --> 01:03:36,088 He was the son of American missionaries in China. 1132 01:03:37,123 --> 01:03:38,815 Being a mish kid, 1133 01:03:38,918 --> 01:03:41,921 they're a very distinct kind of person, he thinks. 1134 01:03:42,991 --> 01:03:45,131 Mish kids, as we call ourselves, 1135 01:03:45,235 --> 01:03:47,685 are a strange lot. 1136 01:03:47,789 --> 01:03:49,929 By and large, they turned out either to be 1137 01:03:50,033 --> 01:03:54,209 very interesting scholars, preachers, doctors, 1138 01:03:54,313 --> 01:03:56,039 or drunks. 1139 01:03:56,142 --> 01:03:59,180 Hersey was an extremely moral person 1140 01:03:59,283 --> 01:04:01,078 with humanistic principles. 1141 01:04:01,182 --> 01:04:03,770 He wasn't religious in the conventional sense, 1142 01:04:03,874 --> 01:04:05,565 but deeply, deeply moral. 1143 01:04:07,119 --> 01:04:09,880 By the spring of 1946, 1144 01:04:09,984 --> 01:04:12,227 America's nuclear program is ramping up... 1145 01:04:14,885 --> 01:04:17,025 ...with more testing in the Pacific. 1146 01:04:18,785 --> 01:04:21,996 Hersey is finishing up an assignment in China 1147 01:04:22,099 --> 01:04:24,239 when he learns of pending nuclear tests 1148 01:04:24,343 --> 01:04:26,276 in the Bikini Atoll. 1149 01:04:27,622 --> 01:04:28,968 Hersey was feeling cold feet 1150 01:04:29,072 --> 01:04:30,556 about "The New Yorker" assignment. 1151 01:04:30,659 --> 01:04:33,248 He thought, "Timing is wrong," and there were going to be 1152 01:04:33,352 --> 01:04:35,630 more nuclear tests on the Bikini Atoll. 1153 01:04:37,528 --> 01:04:39,082 He wondered and cabled to Shawn 1154 01:04:39,185 --> 01:04:41,153 whether that might be such an important news peg 1155 01:04:41,256 --> 01:04:43,810 that writing about Hiroshima 1156 01:04:43,914 --> 01:04:46,641 would no longer be of interest to people. 1157 01:04:47,676 --> 01:04:49,402 Shawn cabled him back, and he said, 1158 01:04:49,506 --> 01:04:52,129 "The more time that passes, the more convinced we are 1159 01:04:52,233 --> 01:04:54,752 "that piece has wonderful possibilities. 1160 01:04:54,856 --> 01:04:57,928 Think it best, time it for anniversary." 1161 01:04:59,826 --> 01:05:01,621 With just four months to go 1162 01:05:01,725 --> 01:05:03,900 before the anniversary of August 6, 1163 01:05:04,003 --> 01:05:07,904 Hersey hops on a naval destroyer for Japan. 1164 01:05:08,007 --> 01:05:09,388 When Hersey was on the ship, 1165 01:05:09,491 --> 01:05:10,561 he was sort of thinking, like... 1166 01:05:10,665 --> 01:05:13,081 "This Hiroshima thing. 1167 01:05:13,185 --> 01:05:14,911 "I can't get my mind around how on Earth 1168 01:05:15,014 --> 01:05:17,223 I want to do this." 1169 01:05:17,327 --> 01:05:19,398 While I was on the destroyer, 1170 01:05:19,501 --> 01:05:20,917 I came down with the flu. 1171 01:05:23,850 --> 01:05:26,267 And they brought me some books from the ship's library. 1172 01:05:26,370 --> 01:05:28,269 One of them was "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," 1173 01:05:28,372 --> 01:05:33,101 which is about five people who are on a rope bridge. 1174 01:05:34,551 --> 01:05:36,967 The novel had just been adapted 1175 01:05:37,071 --> 01:05:38,382 into a Hollywood film. 1176 01:05:38,486 --> 01:05:41,006 And the book weaves together each one's story 1177 01:05:41,109 --> 01:05:43,077 that led them to be randomly 1178 01:05:43,180 --> 01:05:44,906 on this bridge at the same moment. 1179 01:05:45,010 --> 01:05:48,737 And a light bulb went off in Hersey's head. 1180 01:05:51,671 --> 01:05:54,088 The bomb-- the bomb has a moment 1181 01:05:54,191 --> 01:05:57,056 when it affects everybody all within a split second. 1182 01:06:00,163 --> 01:06:01,578 And I saw, reading that, 1183 01:06:01,681 --> 01:06:03,580 a way of approaching Hiroshima 1184 01:06:03,683 --> 01:06:05,858 by settling on a few people 1185 01:06:05,962 --> 01:06:10,035 and trying to make their lives real to the reader. 1186 01:06:12,175 --> 01:06:16,938 Journalism would be enriched by using the methods of fiction, 1187 01:06:17,042 --> 01:06:20,252 because the reader can identify with the character 1188 01:06:20,355 --> 01:06:23,910 and almost feel what the character's experiencing. 1189 01:06:41,618 --> 01:06:43,896 Shortly after getting to Hiroshima, 1190 01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:46,588 he met Father Kleinsorge, 1191 01:06:46,692 --> 01:06:49,764 who proved to be a wonderful subject for interview. 1192 01:06:51,559 --> 01:06:53,664 One of the things reporters do when they do an interview, 1193 01:06:53,768 --> 01:06:55,252 they say, "Who else should I talk to?" 1194 01:06:55,356 --> 01:06:57,599 Father Kleinsorge introduced me 1195 01:06:57,703 --> 01:07:00,671 to Mr. Tanimoto, the Methodist preacher, 1196 01:07:00,775 --> 01:07:03,467 and he then introduced me to others. 1197 01:07:05,814 --> 01:07:08,093 He wanted people whose lives 1198 01:07:08,196 --> 01:07:11,717 had somehow intersected in those immediate days. 1199 01:07:13,857 --> 01:07:16,066 He'd found his six subjects. 1200 01:07:17,757 --> 01:07:20,450 Without a doubt, they took to Hersey. 1201 01:07:23,108 --> 01:07:26,007 He doesn't have many of the American prejudices 1202 01:07:26,111 --> 01:07:28,975 towards East Asians or East Asian societies. 1203 01:07:29,079 --> 01:07:31,392 He sees them as people. 1204 01:07:31,495 --> 01:07:33,152 And that's how they appear in the text. 1205 01:07:34,671 --> 01:07:36,845 They appear as people who are confronted 1206 01:07:36,949 --> 01:07:39,089 by an enormous horror of war. 1207 01:07:39,193 --> 01:07:43,335 He was telling each person's story in their voice, 1208 01:07:43,438 --> 01:07:45,958 just strictly what happened. 1209 01:07:46,993 --> 01:07:49,479 "At exactly 15 minutes past 8:00 in the morning 1210 01:07:49,582 --> 01:07:52,378 "on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, 1211 01:07:52,482 --> 01:07:55,278 "at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, 1212 01:07:55,381 --> 01:07:57,349 "Miss Toshiko Sasaki, 1213 01:07:57,452 --> 01:07:58,833 "a clerk in the personnel department 1214 01:07:58,936 --> 01:08:00,455 "of the East Asia Tin Works, 1215 01:08:00,559 --> 01:08:03,182 "had just sat down at her place in the plant office 1216 01:08:03,286 --> 01:08:04,597 "and was turning her head to speak 1217 01:08:04,701 --> 01:08:06,565 to the girl at the next desk." 1218 01:08:13,227 --> 01:08:15,574 He's less interested in how they remember it 1219 01:08:15,677 --> 01:08:17,783 than in reconstructing 1220 01:08:17,886 --> 01:08:20,130 the experience of having no idea what was going on. 1221 01:08:20,234 --> 01:08:22,788 "As Mrs. Nakamura started frantically 1222 01:08:22,891 --> 01:08:24,962 "to claw her way toward the baby, 1223 01:08:25,066 --> 01:08:27,413 she could see or hear nothing of her other children." 1224 01:08:29,726 --> 01:08:32,487 You, the reader, are being told for the first time 1225 01:08:32,591 --> 01:08:37,665 what it's actually like to experience a nuclear bomb blast. 1226 01:08:39,425 --> 01:08:42,221 "Everything fell and Miss Sasaki lost consciousness. 1227 01:08:42,325 --> 01:08:45,224 "The bookcases right behind her swooped forward 1228 01:08:45,328 --> 01:08:48,054 "and the contents threw her down, 1229 01:08:48,158 --> 01:08:49,711 "with her left leg horribly twisted 1230 01:08:49,815 --> 01:08:51,023 "and breaking underneath her. 1231 01:08:52,162 --> 01:08:53,784 "There, in the tin factory, 1232 01:08:53,888 --> 01:08:55,959 "in the first moment of the Atomic Age, 1233 01:08:56,062 --> 01:08:59,169 a human being was crushed by books." 1234 01:09:10,007 --> 01:09:13,010 Hersey comes back and then holes himself away, 1235 01:09:13,114 --> 01:09:15,254 takes about a month to write this piece. 1236 01:09:16,911 --> 01:09:18,430 He had originally thought he was writing 1237 01:09:18,533 --> 01:09:21,157 a standard "New Yorker" piece of about 7,500 words, 1238 01:09:21,260 --> 01:09:23,159 which is a decent-sized length. 1239 01:09:24,919 --> 01:09:28,612 But when he started typing, he ended up with 30,000 words. 1240 01:09:30,027 --> 01:09:32,237 The editor had the idea 1241 01:09:32,340 --> 01:09:35,171 that we'd publish it all in one piece. 1242 01:09:35,274 --> 01:09:37,380 So if it was gonna be in one issue, 1243 01:09:37,483 --> 01:09:40,452 it would have to be the entire issue, 1244 01:09:40,555 --> 01:09:43,213 which had never happened before. 1245 01:09:45,319 --> 01:09:47,355 Harold Ross, who started "The New Yorker," 1246 01:09:47,459 --> 01:09:48,977 liked the idea of emptying the magazine 1247 01:09:49,081 --> 01:09:51,221 and putting in this one thing, but it was also, like, 1248 01:09:51,325 --> 01:09:52,774 is that too at odds 1249 01:09:52,878 --> 01:09:54,983 with the larger identity of "The New Yorker"? 1250 01:09:56,675 --> 01:09:58,504 And he went back and looked at the original 1251 01:09:58,608 --> 01:10:00,230 statement of purpose he had put out 1252 01:10:00,334 --> 01:10:02,336 when he started the magazine in 1925. 1253 01:10:08,204 --> 01:10:10,758 And it said, "'The New Yorker' is an undertaking 1254 01:10:10,861 --> 01:10:13,139 of serious purpose," and he thought, 1255 01:10:13,243 --> 01:10:14,934 "That's it"-- like, "Serious is enough for me. 1256 01:10:15,038 --> 01:10:16,419 I can do this." 1257 01:10:18,559 --> 01:10:21,182 The illustration had been commissioned weeks before. 1258 01:10:23,288 --> 01:10:26,291 So Ross and Shawn decided that they would 1259 01:10:26,394 --> 01:10:28,327 put words on the cover. 1260 01:10:29,432 --> 01:10:31,951 Then they sent it off to the printers. 1261 01:10:34,644 --> 01:10:36,128 Shawn sent someone 1262 01:10:36,232 --> 01:10:38,406 to Grand Central Station to see if people were buying it. 1263 01:10:38,510 --> 01:10:39,718 He was a little concerned. 1264 01:10:40,719 --> 01:10:43,411 It was people walking past the newsstand, 1265 01:10:43,515 --> 01:10:45,896 and word of mouth within a day 1266 01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:47,829 sold out the entire newsstand run. 1267 01:10:50,280 --> 01:10:53,076 Everybody at "The New Yorker" was astonished. 1268 01:10:53,179 --> 01:10:55,803 Nobody expected this. 1269 01:10:57,218 --> 01:10:58,426 Einstein tried to buy 1270 01:10:58,530 --> 01:11:00,428 a thousand copies of the magazine, 1271 01:11:00,532 --> 01:11:02,258 and couldn't get any because it sold out 1272 01:11:02,361 --> 01:11:04,121 the day it hit the stands. 1273 01:11:08,574 --> 01:11:10,852 It was the biggest story of the year. 1274 01:11:10,956 --> 01:11:12,820 It was written about in all the papers 1275 01:11:12,923 --> 01:11:14,960 and "Time" and "Newsweek." 1276 01:11:16,548 --> 01:11:18,343 It got immediately turned into a book. 1277 01:11:21,587 --> 01:11:24,210 This was the sensation of the season. 1278 01:11:26,040 --> 01:11:27,800 The entire article was read 1279 01:11:27,904 --> 01:11:29,112 over national radio. 1280 01:11:29,215 --> 01:11:30,631 "Hiroshima" 1281 01:11:30,734 --> 01:11:31,977 by John Hersey. 1282 01:11:32,080 --> 01:11:33,806 This chronicle of suffering and destruction 1283 01:11:33,910 --> 01:11:35,221 is broadcast as a warning 1284 01:11:35,325 --> 01:11:38,501 that what happened to the people of Hiroshima a year ago 1285 01:11:38,604 --> 01:11:40,330 could next happen anywhere. 1286 01:11:41,504 --> 01:11:43,920 It's written in this very dispassionate way. 1287 01:11:44,955 --> 01:11:47,855 "And every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. 1288 01:11:47,958 --> 01:11:50,236 "On some undressed bodies, the burns had made 1289 01:11:50,340 --> 01:11:52,894 "patterns of undershirt straps and suspenders. 1290 01:11:52,998 --> 01:11:55,207 "And on the skin of some women, 1291 01:11:55,311 --> 01:11:58,003 the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos." 1292 01:11:59,556 --> 01:12:03,698 He wanted us to see the Japanese 1293 01:12:03,802 --> 01:12:07,115 as people, not as monsters. 1294 01:12:08,427 --> 01:12:10,774 They're just trying to live their lives, 1295 01:12:10,878 --> 01:12:12,017 and this is the world they happen to live in, 1296 01:12:12,120 --> 01:12:14,502 and then this horrible thing happens to them. 1297 01:12:17,091 --> 01:12:22,130 To me, that's a really profound shift in perspective. 1298 01:12:25,202 --> 01:12:27,722 Various things that have been done to keep a lid 1299 01:12:27,826 --> 01:12:30,518 on images from Hiroshima, radiation sickness. 1300 01:12:32,382 --> 01:12:34,177 Now in one fell swoop, 1301 01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:37,422 John Hersey threatened to disrupt that. 1302 01:12:39,320 --> 01:12:41,357 That puts the Truman administration 1303 01:12:41,460 --> 01:12:43,359 into a bit of a panic, and they start to organize 1304 01:12:43,462 --> 01:12:47,363 a second wave, reinterpreting the narrative 1305 01:12:47,466 --> 01:12:51,056 of what the bomb means in order to counter Hersey's story. 1306 01:12:56,648 --> 01:12:58,339 This was a key moment, 1307 01:12:58,443 --> 01:13:01,756 because U.S. nuclear bomb tests were really ramping up. 1308 01:13:01,860 --> 01:13:04,690 We were on the verge of developing the hydrogen bomb, 1309 01:13:04,794 --> 01:13:06,658 and of course, the Soviets were full speed ahead. 1310 01:13:06,761 --> 01:13:08,867 Uh, behind us, but full speed ahead. 1311 01:13:08,970 --> 01:13:12,767 So this was a kind of turning point. 1312 01:13:12,871 --> 01:13:14,907 The audience is the American public 1313 01:13:15,011 --> 01:13:17,807 that you want not to turn against the nuclear deterrent. 1314 01:13:18,877 --> 01:13:19,912 If you are at home 1315 01:13:20,016 --> 01:13:21,293 when a surprise attack occurs, 1316 01:13:21,397 --> 01:13:24,054 crawl beneath a table if it is very near the window. 1317 01:13:25,884 --> 01:13:28,473 If the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had known 1318 01:13:28,576 --> 01:13:30,889 what we know about civil defense, 1319 01:13:30,992 --> 01:13:33,443 thousands of lives would have been saved. 1320 01:13:35,411 --> 01:13:37,861 You want them to think that nuclear bombs are okay, 1321 01:13:37,965 --> 01:13:39,656 that we should have them, 1322 01:13:39,760 --> 01:13:42,141 and that nothing untoward happened 1323 01:13:42,245 --> 01:13:45,800 when they were used to destroy two Japanese cities. 1324 01:13:45,904 --> 01:13:47,284 So a number of people associated 1325 01:13:47,388 --> 01:13:49,528 with the Manhattan Project-- James Conant, 1326 01:13:49,632 --> 01:13:51,081 the president of Harvard, 1327 01:13:51,185 --> 01:13:53,394 General Groves, 1328 01:13:53,498 --> 01:13:55,914 Secretary of War Stimson-- they collaborate 1329 01:13:56,017 --> 01:13:59,814 and produce this multiple-authored article 1330 01:13:59,918 --> 01:14:01,609 that's going to come out under Stimson's name, 1331 01:14:01,713 --> 01:14:03,300 and it's going to be the official 1332 01:14:03,404 --> 01:14:05,061 "Why we dropped the atomic bomb." 1333 01:14:06,752 --> 01:14:08,582 The United States built this weapon 1334 01:14:08,685 --> 01:14:10,549 because it was afraid of the Nazis. 1335 01:14:14,760 --> 01:14:16,762 It didn't really want to use this weapon, 1336 01:14:16,866 --> 01:14:18,902 but Truman had this choice in front of him. 1337 01:14:19,006 --> 01:14:20,525 Do we invade Japan? 1338 01:14:22,388 --> 01:14:25,150 There is a very elaborate narrative 1339 01:14:25,253 --> 01:14:27,911 that such an invasion would have been enormously 1340 01:14:28,015 --> 01:14:30,189 destructive of American lives, 1341 01:14:30,293 --> 01:14:33,986 and even more destructive of Japanese lives. 1342 01:14:34,090 --> 01:14:36,955 And so the atomic bomb was a merciful way 1343 01:14:37,058 --> 01:14:39,889 to end the war with the fewest casualties possible. 1344 01:14:41,131 --> 01:14:44,100 And that's a way of trying to erode 1345 01:14:44,203 --> 01:14:47,724 the moral clarity that Hersey is putting forward. 1346 01:14:50,382 --> 01:14:52,246 Similar to the Hersey piece, 1347 01:14:52,349 --> 01:14:54,835 "Harper's" hyped it heavily, 1348 01:14:54,938 --> 01:14:57,700 and it gained a very wide audience. 1349 01:14:57,803 --> 01:15:00,254 Newspapers reprinted parts of it. 1350 01:15:00,357 --> 01:15:02,290 A lot of people basically said, 1351 01:15:02,394 --> 01:15:07,088 "Well, we've, we've had our doubts, but this settles it." 1352 01:15:09,919 --> 01:15:13,370 "Now that we understand why the bomb was used, 1353 01:15:13,474 --> 01:15:14,855 "we don't have to hear about people 1354 01:15:14,958 --> 01:15:16,891 raising moral issues" or something. 1355 01:15:20,274 --> 01:15:23,070 This becomes the definitive way 1356 01:15:23,173 --> 01:15:24,727 to attack the criticisms, 1357 01:15:24,830 --> 01:15:27,108 by saying, "It was the lesser of two evils. 1358 01:15:27,212 --> 01:15:29,041 "We agree it's really cruel, 1359 01:15:29,145 --> 01:15:30,629 "but they put us in that position, 1360 01:15:30,733 --> 01:15:31,975 and we had no alternative." 1361 01:15:35,807 --> 01:15:38,292 So what did we learn from Hiroshima? 1362 01:15:38,395 --> 01:15:42,538 We should have been able to see the horrible effects on humans 1363 01:15:42,641 --> 01:15:45,368 and long-term effects, aftereffects, and so forth. 1364 01:15:45,471 --> 01:15:46,611 But instead, it was, like, 1365 01:15:46,714 --> 01:15:48,509 "Okay, well, we got away with that." 1366 01:15:50,580 --> 01:15:53,825 The constraints on journalism in the mid-'40s 1367 01:15:53,928 --> 01:15:55,067 are overwhelming. 1368 01:15:57,276 --> 01:15:59,244 So, it's very hard for me to fault the journalists, 1369 01:15:59,347 --> 01:16:00,832 because they're up against a secrecy apparatus 1370 01:16:00,935 --> 01:16:02,040 that is brand-new. 1371 01:16:02,143 --> 01:16:03,041 So they don't even know 1372 01:16:03,144 --> 01:16:04,076 what they don't know. 1373 01:16:04,180 --> 01:16:05,112 They don't know where to ask, 1374 01:16:05,215 --> 01:16:06,527 and no one's allowed to talk to them. 1375 01:16:08,494 --> 01:16:11,981 Censorship mostly worked during World War II 1376 01:16:12,084 --> 01:16:14,742 and after the dropping of the two atomic bombs 1377 01:16:14,846 --> 01:16:18,194 because General Groves put together 1378 01:16:18,297 --> 01:16:20,817 a very effective PR effort. 1379 01:16:23,164 --> 01:16:24,545 One of the odd things is, 1380 01:16:24,649 --> 01:16:27,893 after the bombs were dropped, the war ended. 1381 01:16:27,997 --> 01:16:31,483 And the effort to control information continued. 1382 01:16:34,486 --> 01:16:36,522 One of the more creative ways 1383 01:16:36,626 --> 01:16:38,904 to get even more of this narrative out there is, 1384 01:16:39,008 --> 01:16:42,598 Groves worked with MGM to make a movie 1385 01:16:42,701 --> 01:16:45,946 about the creation and use of the atomic bombs. 1386 01:16:47,844 --> 01:16:49,397 General Groves was the key character 1387 01:16:49,501 --> 01:16:50,882 in the movie. 1388 01:16:50,985 --> 01:16:53,298 Our country must have an atomic bomb. 1389 01:16:53,401 --> 01:16:57,854 This must be the best-kept secret in all history. 1390 01:16:57,958 --> 01:16:59,960 Anyone who saw it 1391 01:17:00,063 --> 01:17:02,203 would have seen pro-bomb propaganda. 1392 01:17:02,307 --> 01:17:03,377 MAN [on speaker]: Mr. President, 1393 01:17:03,480 --> 01:17:04,792 your press secretary, Mr. Ross, is here. 1394 01:17:04,896 --> 01:17:06,829 And all these advisers tell me 1395 01:17:06,932 --> 01:17:10,004 the bomb will shorten the war by at least a year. 1396 01:17:10,108 --> 01:17:12,455 And if the bomb shortens the war, 1397 01:17:12,558 --> 01:17:15,113 it will save many thousands of American lives. 1398 01:17:15,216 --> 01:17:17,563 The American public took the narrative 1399 01:17:17,667 --> 01:17:19,427 hook, line, and sinker, and said, 1400 01:17:19,531 --> 01:17:20,566 "Okay, this was, we, we trust the government 1401 01:17:20,670 --> 01:17:21,982 "that this was what was needed. 1402 01:17:22,085 --> 01:17:23,224 "Thank God we got it, 1403 01:17:23,328 --> 01:17:25,088 "and it wasn't, you know, another country, 1404 01:17:25,192 --> 01:17:26,331 "and that we have this, 1405 01:17:26,434 --> 01:17:27,953 and it was the right thing to do." 1406 01:17:28,057 --> 01:17:30,784 And this is a remarkably resilient narrative 1407 01:17:30,887 --> 01:17:33,338 to the point where, if you tell somebody this narrative, 1408 01:17:33,441 --> 01:17:35,133 they'll say, "Right, that's the story, right?" 1409 01:17:35,236 --> 01:17:39,102 And no, that didn't get really solidified until 1947. 1410 01:17:39,206 --> 01:17:42,071 So, like, quite a ways after Hiroshima. 1411 01:17:43,313 --> 01:17:44,694 And in many ways, it's not true. 1412 01:17:47,283 --> 01:17:49,975 There was no deep deliberation over whether to use the bomb. 1413 01:17:50,079 --> 01:17:53,358 There was no deep concern about the Japanese victims. 1414 01:17:53,461 --> 01:17:56,844 The plan was to bomb and invade, not one or the other. 1415 01:17:58,915 --> 01:18:03,368 The bombs weren't used to end the war promptly. 1416 01:18:03,471 --> 01:18:06,509 The bombs were used to scare the Soviet Union 1417 01:18:06,612 --> 01:18:08,062 into submission. 1418 01:18:09,408 --> 01:18:11,756 They were not the last salvos of World War II, 1419 01:18:11,859 --> 01:18:13,481 but the first salvos of the Cold War. 1420 01:18:13,585 --> 01:18:16,484 America sees itself as taking on the mantle 1421 01:18:16,588 --> 01:18:18,970 of leading the world into freedom. 1422 01:18:21,110 --> 01:18:24,976 And the bomb is just an element of that story. 1423 01:18:35,469 --> 01:18:37,471 The Longines Futurscope. 1424 01:18:37,574 --> 01:18:41,337 A television production of "Men and Ideas." 1425 01:18:41,440 --> 01:18:43,753 In this field of science, what would you say was 1426 01:18:43,857 --> 01:18:46,860 the most exciting event that you have ever reported? 1427 01:18:46,963 --> 01:18:49,690 One night on the desert of New Mexico, 1428 01:18:49,794 --> 01:18:52,451 on July 16, 1945... 1429 01:18:52,555 --> 01:18:55,523 Into the early 1950s, Laurence continues 1430 01:18:55,627 --> 01:18:58,354 to fashion himself as an expert on all things nuclear. 1431 01:18:58,457 --> 01:19:00,839 There won't be any wars in the second millennium. 1432 01:19:00,943 --> 01:19:01,909 Because science... 1433 01:19:02,013 --> 01:19:02,910 You think war can be eliminated? 1434 01:19:03,014 --> 01:19:04,015 I think so-- I think science 1435 01:19:04,118 --> 01:19:05,257 is going to make it unnecessary. 1436 01:19:05,361 --> 01:19:07,604 Laurence became known as "Atomic Bill." 1437 01:19:07,708 --> 01:19:09,606 He did other things for the "Times." 1438 01:19:09,710 --> 01:19:11,298 He continued to write other science stories, 1439 01:19:11,401 --> 01:19:14,301 but his brand was the atomic bomb. 1440 01:19:15,578 --> 01:19:17,718 In a lot of ways, it is a sad legacy. 1441 01:19:17,822 --> 01:19:20,686 He was a journalist who was in a singular moment 1442 01:19:20,790 --> 01:19:24,000 with singular access, and he squandered it. 1443 01:19:26,313 --> 01:19:28,142 After Loeb leaves Japan, 1444 01:19:28,246 --> 01:19:30,386 he returns to Cleveland, 1445 01:19:30,489 --> 01:19:32,698 where he serves as a managing editor 1446 01:19:32,802 --> 01:19:34,735 of the "Cleveland Call and Post." 1447 01:19:35,978 --> 01:19:38,808 He is called "the Dean of Black Journalism." 1448 01:19:39,844 --> 01:19:41,121 Without Charles Loeb, 1449 01:19:41,224 --> 01:19:43,813 you don't get the Black journalists that you have today. 1450 01:19:43,917 --> 01:19:45,746 You don't get the reporting that you have today. 1451 01:19:45,850 --> 01:19:48,473 It's one giant, long struggle for freedom. 1452 01:19:48,576 --> 01:19:51,579 And Charles Loeb is an essential piece of that. 1453 01:19:53,650 --> 01:19:54,928 John Hersey wrote 1454 01:19:55,031 --> 01:19:56,999 one of the most important pieces of reporting 1455 01:19:57,102 --> 01:20:00,002 from the war and of a defining new event in world history. 1456 01:20:01,935 --> 01:20:06,594 This was a patriotic American reporting 1457 01:20:06,698 --> 01:20:10,288 on the horrors that the United States had caused. 1458 01:20:10,391 --> 01:20:13,878 That's journalism at its most important. 1459 01:20:15,949 --> 01:20:18,986 If people could imagine what it was like to be 1460 01:20:19,090 --> 01:20:20,643 one of the survivors, 1461 01:20:20,746 --> 01:20:22,438 and then, on top of that, 1462 01:20:22,541 --> 01:20:26,097 realized that a nuclear weapon 1463 01:20:26,200 --> 01:20:29,065 2,900 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb 1464 01:20:29,169 --> 01:20:30,273 has been tested... 1465 01:20:33,483 --> 01:20:36,486 ...then I think that memory would have moved us much faster 1466 01:20:36,590 --> 01:20:38,868 toward getting rid of these weapons. 1467 01:20:40,318 --> 01:20:41,802 In 1952, 1468 01:20:41,906 --> 01:20:44,632 seven years after the atomic bombings, 1469 01:20:44,736 --> 01:20:49,051 the U.S. occupation of Japan ends and censorship is lifted. 1470 01:20:50,466 --> 01:20:52,226 Americans finally get to see 1471 01:20:52,330 --> 01:20:55,851 what the attacks looked like from the ground, 1472 01:20:55,954 --> 01:20:58,232 a view they had never seen before. 1473 01:20:58,336 --> 01:21:02,512 "Life" magazine publishes Yoshito Matsushige's photographs 1474 01:21:02,616 --> 01:21:04,825 in a special spread. 1475 01:21:06,240 --> 01:21:08,104 One of Matsushige's most famous photos 1476 01:21:08,208 --> 01:21:10,935 is a picture of people on a bridge leading into Hiroshima, 1477 01:21:11,038 --> 01:21:14,490 and you can still see this dust cloud down the road. 1478 01:21:14,593 --> 01:21:17,113 And so the symbolic value to me was always, 1479 01:21:17,217 --> 01:21:20,323 ever since that day, we've all been on that road to Hiroshima, 1480 01:21:20,427 --> 01:21:24,465 in this nuclear threat that we've lived with since 1945.