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2:02

At exactly 9.20am

2:04

on the morning of May 30th 1945, General

2:07

Leslie Groves received a message to report

2:10

to the office of the Secretary of War at

2:13

once. Stimson

2:15

was waiting for him. He wanted to know

2:17

had Groves selected the

2:19

targets yet? The sites

2:21

chosen would ultimately be Nagasaki, Kokora

2:23

and Hiroshima, with the latter being subject

2:25

to the first atomic annihilation in

2:28

history.

2:29

But how were these decisions made? Who

2:31

made them? And how did the atomic bomb

2:33

actually impact the end of the Second World

2:35

War, if at all? I'm

2:38

your host, James Patton Rogers, and for the

2:40

last time here on the Warfare Podcast, it

2:42

is my privilege to bring you a true expert,

2:45

the New York Times best-selling author, historian and

2:47

journalist, Evan Thomas. Evan

2:50

is the author of Road to Surrender, a

2:52

book which follows three of the most influential

2:54

figures in the final months of the war.

2:57

He's a Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of

2:59

War, General Carl Spatz, the

3:01

head of strategic bombing in the Pacific,

3:04

and Japanese Foreign Minister, Sigur Noritogo,

3:07

the only one in the Emperor's Supreme War Council

3:09

who believed even before the bombs were dropped that

3:11

Japan should surrender. It

3:14

is through these three pivotal figures that Evan

3:16

shows us exactly how the Second World War

3:18

came to an end and how unconditional

3:20

surrender was secured.

3:27

Welcome to Warfare, and

3:30

thanks for joining us as we mark the 78

3:32

years since the end of the

3:34

Second World War. And those final

3:37

months, weeks of the war, have been

3:39

the focus of so much attention

3:41

recently, with a core focus on Oppenheimer,

3:44

of course, the whole world has gone mad

3:46

for Oppenheimer, but also the torment

3:49

of those around him as this seemingly

3:51

inevitable deployment of the atomic bombs on

3:54

Japan took place. And I think, Evan,

3:56

it's here that I want

3:57

to start, on this exact point. Do

4:00

you think that by the time the Trinity

4:02

test was successful that the bombing

4:05

of Japan was inevitable?

4:07

Yes, without doubt. There was just

4:09

no discussion no discussion of

4:12

not using those bombs so

4:14

matter of Finances at play

4:16

you need to prove the fact that you've

4:18

invested all of this money into the Manhattan

4:21

Project all of these expertise You've

4:23

built an entire town brought the world's

4:25

best minds together to make this bomb You

4:27

need to deploy it to prove to the politicians

4:30

but also in the end to the taxpayers that

4:32

this money wasn't wasted

4:34

Yes, that sounds unbelievably cold-blooded.

4:37

It's more complicated than that We're gonna get into

4:39

it But Stimson the secretary

4:41

of war joked that it's a good thing

4:43

the thing works because otherwise we'd all

4:45

be going to jail

4:47

Having spent two billion dollars on

4:49

it They were relieved

4:51

that it worked and the fact that it worked made

4:53

it that much more likely that they were going to use it There's

4:56

just no discussion of not using it now.

4:59

Was this a crass? immoral

5:01

cold bloodless act

5:04

No, because I think

5:06

it did in the world There's a huge debate about this

5:08

about whether it was necessary or not I'm

5:11

on the side of it was necessary, but

5:13

I understand the debate It's a horrific

5:15

thing that we did and I think

5:17

there's no question that some of the motivation

5:20

was purely Scientists wanting to show the thing that

5:22

could work and policy makers would spend

5:24

a lot of money wanting to show the thing could work

5:27

and Also knowing that the American

5:29

public if we'd spent all that money on this bomb

5:31

and not used it and the war had continued

5:34

They would have gone what the hell? I

5:36

mean for me I think your work has opened my

5:39

mind to the fact that there are perhaps

5:41

three key figures that are vital

5:44

for us to analyze Not only in terms

5:46

of that decision around why and when

5:48

the bomb was dropped But also as

5:50

your new book is called that road to surrender

5:52

those pivotal moments between The deployment

5:55

of the bombs and that total unconditional

5:57

surrender of Japan and in your work you've

5:59

gone deep

5:59

into the archives here looking at Stimson's diaries,

6:02

you can see quite clearly that perhaps it

6:04

is Secretary of War Stimson, who

6:07

is perhaps the most pivotal figure when

6:09

it comes down to making this final decision.

6:11

Someone who only really gets a short

6:14

show in, in Christopher Olin's latest film.

6:16

Is that a fair appraisal of Stimson? Was

6:18

he the pivotal person when it came

6:20

down to deciding the deployment of this bomb? I

6:23

think so. Stimson, you might call him the chairman

6:25

of the board of the atom bomb. Yes,

6:28

Oppenheimer the scientist designed it.

6:29

He reports to General

6:32

Groves, the military guy played by

6:34

Matt Damon in the movie, but they report

6:36

to Henry Stimson, the secretary of war. And

6:39

it's Stimson who keeps the money going. Stimson

6:42

who keeps Congress quiet. Stimson

6:45

who is the authority figure. Now,

6:47

ultimately the authority figure is the president,

6:50

but Roosevelt dies

6:53

in April 1945,

6:55

leaving

6:57

Harry Truman. Harry Truman has not even been told

6:59

about the atom bomb. I do think he

7:02

knew about it. I think he had some inkling

7:04

of it, but he has not been briefed. Roosevelt didn't

7:06

tell him and Stimson briefs him

7:08

two weeks after he becomes president. So he's

7:11

new on the job. There is

7:13

no evidence that Truman pushed

7:15

back at all.

7:16

So this is really a Stimson

7:19

led project. Now, did

7:21

Stimson worry about this? He sure

7:23

did. In his diary, he would refer

7:25

to the atom bomb as the terrible,

7:28

the awful, the diabolical.

7:31

One of his aides was John McCoy, was so once

7:33

asked, did Henry Stimson think about this and worry

7:35

about it? And McCoy's answer was, how did Stimson

7:37

think about it? On his knees was the answer.

7:40

Praying. I don't think that's an exaggeration.

7:43

Stimson was a church going episcopalian,

7:46

thought of himself as a Christian gentleman. So

7:49

Stimson worried about it plenty, but

7:51

the fact that he worried about it doesn't mean that he thought

7:53

about not using it. No,

7:55

they were going to use this thing, I think no

7:57

matter what. By

8:00

this point in time, he had served five

8:03

presidential administrations. Do

8:05

you think it was that experience that helped

8:07

him grasp the reality? Because it's so

8:09

often said that not only the scientists,

8:12

but the politicians didn't know the force

8:14

of this bomb. But I think as we go through

8:17

the papers and the archives, it's pretty

8:19

clear that they knew that this would be a new, terrible

8:22

weapon. But Stimson's experience

8:24

must have shown him that this was really the only

8:27

way to end the war. Stimson is a

8:29

realist, but he's

8:29

also an idealist. It intrigues

8:32

me because this is American foreign policy

8:34

in a nutshell. Americans are idealists.

8:36

They believe in democracy and freedom, and they want to

8:38

spread that. That's true more than other countries in history.

8:40

But we're a giant superpower,

8:43

a hegemon. And Stimson

8:45

understood that. He was a realist, and

8:48

he understood the uses of

8:49

power. And he didn't love

8:52

it. It's not that he was bloodthirsty,

8:55

but he realized that sometimes it was necessary.

8:57

Now, you mentioned they have this meeting in late

8:59

May, actually, amongst the top people. And they ask Oppenheimer

9:02

how big is the bomb. He says between 2 and 20

9:05

kilotons. Hiroshima

9:07

bomb was 12 kilotons.

9:09

The Nagasaki bomb was 20 kilotons.

9:12

So that's the upper range of

9:14

what Oppenheimer predicted. Then

9:16

he's asked, how many people will it kill?

9:19

And Oppenheimer answers 20,000. Actually,

9:22

it killed 70,000.

9:25

Pretty much right away in Hiroshima, another 70,000

9:27

more slowly. Nagasaki

9:30

had killed 35,000 right away, another 35,000 more slowly.

9:35

These numbers are inexact. We're

9:37

still guessing at them. The point is,

9:39

yes, they knew they had a hell of a bomb on

9:41

their hands, but they didn't know quite

9:43

how big it was. And until

9:45

you actually use something, you don't know.

9:47

When I was going through Stimson's papers

9:50

in the Sterling Memorial Library over at Yale,

9:52

I was struck time and time again how he was almost

9:55

justifying it to himself by saying that

9:57

this was going to be a military target.

10:00

in the terms it's going to hit the war making capacity.

10:02

Now for me this is very much in line with a very

10:05

old American way of doing bombing. This

10:07

whole idea of ethical, moral, precision

10:09

bombing, doctrine. This is what the Americans have been talking

10:12

about since well, after the First World

10:14

War, even in the final days of the First World War, the United

10:16

States would bomb differently to the abhorrent

10:19

old world of Britain and Germany and their area

10:21

bombing doctrines and they'll only hit these military

10:24

targets and they'll avoid, I quote, the

10:26

populace and their livelihood. But Stimson

10:28

isn't naive and Truman

10:29

isn't naive when he's saying that in his final

10:32

speech to the American people saying that this was

10:34

a military target. It

10:37

wasn't in so many ways, you just listed

10:39

the amount of thousands of deaths that were there.

10:41

Was this purely a way of making it palatable

10:44

to the American people? Because I've been down to

10:46

Hiroshima, I'm sure you have as well, Evan. We

10:48

know that where it struck around that

10:50

area was a bustling marketplace

10:53

and yes there is the Second Army headquarters,

10:55

Hiroshima Castle, about 500 meters

10:57

away up the road. That is the military target.

10:59

But there wasn't such thing as a purely

11:02

military target in Hiroshima. You've

11:04

just opened a giant can of worms, something that

11:06

I've struggled with for years. Because

11:09

you're right, the US military likes to talk about precision

11:11

bombing and military targets. It's actually

11:13

imprecise. It's really area

11:16

bombing and we're killing a lot of civilians.

11:19

This is a very difficult subject. Let's

11:22

go right to the heart of it. The day

11:24

that Truman gives the

11:26

order to drop the atom bombs, this

11:28

order is plurals, bombs as made ready

11:31

on four cities, Hiroshima,

11:33

Nagita, Nagasaki,

11:35

and Kokura, the day

11:37

that he gives that order, he writes in his diary

11:39

that night, I have instructed the Secretary

11:41

of War, that Stimson, and

11:44

we are in agreement that it should

11:46

be a purely military target.

11:48

The target should be soldiers and

11:50

sailors and not

11:52

women and children. What the hell

11:54

is he thinking? Hiroshima, as

11:57

you say, the military is a headquarters

11:59

city. their troops are. The bomb

12:01

did kill somewhere between 10 and 20,000

12:04

soldiers, but it killed 50 to 60,000

12:08

civilians. And of course, most

12:10

of them probably are women and children

12:12

because the men are off at war. So

12:15

what is Harry Truman

12:17

thinking when he writes that in

12:19

his diary? The answer is, I

12:22

don't know.

12:24

Historians can't make this stuff up.

12:27

Here's my theory. That day,

12:29

the issue before Stimson

12:32

and the president was taking Kyoto

12:35

off the target list because

12:37

General Groves, who was a pretty,

12:40

I wouldn't say he was bloodthirsty necessary, but

12:42

talk about practical, he kept putting

12:44

the city of Kyoto top on the target

12:47

list three times. And three times

12:49

Stimson takes it off. Why? Kyoto

12:52

is the ancient cultural capital

12:54

of Japan, a beautiful city. I've been there. Maybe

12:56

you have. It's lovely. And

12:58

you don't want to destroy it. Groves actually does want

13:00

to destroy it.

13:01

He wants to wipe out the culture of Japan. And

13:04

Stimson, who's been to Kyoto, doesn't want to.

13:07

He wants to spare it. So that day

13:09

on the 25th of July, 1945, Stimson

13:13

and Truman one more time

13:16

take Kyoto off the target list. So

13:18

I think they're thinking about, gee, we

13:20

spared Kyoto

13:22

and it wasn't that a good thing. And

13:24

so, Hiroshima, that must be a military target.

13:27

But they're not trying that hard to find out if it

13:29

is. The next day, I believe,

13:31

Stimson's worried a little bit about the targeting.

13:33

Somebody sends him a National Geographic map.

13:36

It's pretty crude, the briefing he's

13:38

getting on just what a target it is. And

13:40

I can't help but think, and now I'm

13:42

in the realm of psychology, they

13:45

don't really want to know.

13:46

They just don't really want

13:48

to know. The most poignant scene

13:51

of all to me between Stimson

13:53

and Truman is a little bit earlier. I

13:55

think the date is June 6, 1945. So this is a

13:59

six weeks earlier and Stimson

14:02

goes to see the president and Stimson's committee

14:04

has just decided our

14:06

target's gonna be a defense-related plant

14:09

surrounded by workers homes. Ridiculous. Obviously

14:11

it's but that is what the wise men get together

14:14

and that's what they say it's gonna be a defense-related

14:17

plant and so now you

14:19

have the president and meeting with the Secretary

14:21

of War and

14:22

the Secretary of War says he's bothered

14:25

by a couple things here about by firebombing.

14:28

This is we need to take a step back because we've

14:30

been firebombing Japan since

14:32

March. March 10th 1945

14:35

we killed a hundred thousand people more

14:38

than Hiroshima with incendiaries.

14:40

Why? Because precision bombing

14:42

was not working

14:44

and Curtis LeMay who's the head of the

14:46

21st bomber committee at 20th Air Force has been

14:49

trying to do precision bombing and it misses because

14:51

there's something called the jet stream

14:53

these giant winds that are blowing our brand-new

14:55

beautiful B-29s off course and they can't

14:57

drop bombs on target. LeMay says

14:59

I gotta have some results here I'm gonna get fired

15:02

and so how does he do that? He

15:04

brings the planes in low at night and

15:07

uses incendiaries. NAPOM this new

15:09

horrible jelly gasoline it starts

15:11

a firestorm and it burns down 16 square

15:14

miles of Japan and

15:16

it kills a hundred thousand people more people die

15:18

in six hours than in any war in history.

15:21

How's that for a gruesome

15:23

number? So that happens back in March so

15:27

going forward the 21st

15:29

bomber command continues to use incendiaries

15:32

and they bomb Tokyo again. They're on their way

15:34

to burning out 60 cities and

15:36

so now you have the Secretary of

15:38

War who's in charge of all this and he comes

15:40

to the president he says he's bothered by the firebombing

15:43

and he get this he says I don't want us

15:45

to look like Nazis

15:47

I don't want us to be accused of atrocities. Well

15:49

Roosevelt had sent out a warning to

15:51

Germany and to Britain before the

15:54

start of the Second World War saying

15:56

that they need to avoid this ruthless bombing

15:58

of civilian centres.

15:59

was something that was very un-American.

16:02

And in times of supreme emergency, strategies

16:04

and priorities change, but the United States

16:06

had fully turned towards that old

16:09

kind of bomber Harris idea of in order

16:11

to destroy something, you've got to destroy everything.

16:13

It's a little more complicated than that, I think.

16:16

There's a lot of euphemisms, even

16:18

on the firebombing. They say they're going

16:20

after economic targets. If you look at the targeting

16:22

documents, they'll list a factory

16:25

or a military base, and that's what

16:27

we're trying to hit. Now, we're burning everything around

16:29

it

16:29

to burn it down. Are they cynics? Is

16:32

this just a laughable exercise in cynicism?

16:35

I don't really know. I wasn't there. It's

16:38

troubling is all hell, but let me finish the story

16:40

here, because I think it's very revealing. Now

16:42

we have the top two people, the Secretary of War

16:44

and the President.

16:46

And this is early June. The atom bomb

16:48

hasn't been tested yet, but they're on their way

16:50

to using it. But Stimson is talking

16:52

to Truman. He says, look, I have a problem here. One is I don't

16:54

want us to look like Nazis,

16:56

but here comes the twist. But he says, but

16:59

we need a city that

17:02

hasn't been burned down. So I'm afraid we'll burn

17:04

down all the cities so we won't have the proper

17:06

backdrop for our new weapon.

17:08

Now think about this for a second. He doesn't want to

17:10

burn all the cities down, but on the other hand,

17:13

he wants a pure untainted

17:15

virgin city to burn down

17:18

with his atom bomb. And so he Stimson in

17:20

his diary, what does he write? He writes, the

17:23

president laughed.

17:25

Now think about this for a second. What kind

17:27

of laughter do you think that was? It

17:30

was not jolly ho ho, isn't this

17:32

funny? Aren't we having a good time? It's

17:34

the bitter, melancholy,

17:37

ironic, gallows humor laugh

17:40

of two men who are in

17:43

an impossible situation

17:45

where they got to get these results,

17:48

but they know what they're doing

17:50

is the modern term would be

17:52

war crimes. I don't believe that they were war crimes.

17:55

I can understand why people would say these

17:57

are atrocities and war crimes. It makes me extremely

17:59

undefended.

17:59

uncomfortable. I'm defending in my book. I

18:02

defend these decisions, but it makes

18:04

me extremely uncomfortable. I don't really

18:06

know what these guys are thinking, but this moment

18:09

captures something from me. My book is

18:11

about moral ambiguity,

18:13

which is I think something you get into

18:15

these terrible wars and how can you avoid it?

18:17

Hello host of Dan Snow's History at Podcast here.

18:19

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18:30

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18:32

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Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

19:03

There appears to be a moment where you could perhaps

19:05

avoid the dropping of the second bomb.

19:08

Surely, take us through their mindset from

19:10

that moment or on August 6th

19:13

when you've got the dropping of the first bomb, little boy

19:15

on Hiroshima. You're starting to see the

19:17

impact of this. The reports are coming through. They're coming

19:19

to Truman. There's announcements going on that this has taken

19:21

place. But when they start to get

19:23

these results in, do they not think that this is

19:26

enough? We perhaps don't need the second

19:28

bomb. What is the mindset? What are the discussions that

19:30

are going on at this time?

19:32

This is messy and complicated

19:34

and I wish I had a clear answer for you. The

19:36

order that goes out is to bomb four cities

19:39

with bombs as made ready. They've turned control

19:41

over to the military. Truman doesn't

19:43

even know that the second plane is in the

19:45

air. That's a military decision that's made

19:48

on Tinian, Guam, where the military guys

19:50

are. It's a weather-driven decision. There's

19:52

a front coming in. They're supposed to wait five days

19:54

or six days. There's weather coming in, so they push

19:57

it up to three days. They're breaking the

19:59

Japanese code.

19:59

and they find out before the second

20:02

bomb has actually dropped that a

20:04

reported 100,000 people have died at Hiroshima. So they

20:06

listen to magic, they're breaking the Japanese

20:08

codes, and they know that

20:10

these bombs have done a hell of a lot of damage. But Truman's

20:13

not even aware the second plane is in the air. And

20:16

there is a moment when McCloy, Stimson's

20:18

aide, says to Marshall,

20:21

should we think about it here before dropping the second?

20:23

And Marshall says, this

20:26

man, the emperor, is tottering.

20:28

We need to give him another shove.

20:31

Now, we don't have good intelligence on

20:33

what the emperor is thinking. We're reading some cable

20:35

traffic, but we don't really know what the emperor is thinking. We

20:37

have a better idea now, 70 years later.

20:40

What's the emperor thinking?

20:42

And the emperor is

20:45

getting pretty close to wanting to surrender. I

20:48

think the evidence shows that he did need a second

20:50

bomb. Not so much the emperor needed a second

20:52

bomb, but all the people around him who

20:54

have the real power.

20:56

The real power lies with the military.

20:58

Because in the Japanese system, they can bring

21:01

the government down any time they want. And

21:03

the military is not

21:06

ready to surrender after one bomb.

21:09

They need to be hit by a second

21:11

bomb. Now, how do I know that?

21:13

There are extensive diaries

21:15

and records of a meeting that's

21:18

going on, the Supreme War Council,

21:20

six people, war minister,

21:23

army, navy, chiefs of staff, foreign minister,

21:25

prime minister. This is the people who really

21:27

run the show.

21:28

They're the true power in Japan. And

21:31

they're having a meeting on the morning. This

21:33

is three days after Hiroshima. And

21:35

the Russians have invaded the night before,

21:38

at midnight.

21:39

Invaded in Manchuria, not Japan, Manchuria.

21:41

Oh my God, they're having a meeting. Word

21:44

comes that a second quote, Hiroshima-style

21:47

bomb has just taken out Nagasaki. So

21:50

now they know. A

21:52

second atom bomb has hit them.

21:55

And they know it's an atom bomb. And

21:57

the war minister, General Anami,

21:59

really the... most powerful man in Japan. He

22:01

says, wouldn't it be beautiful if the entire

22:04

nation were to perish like

22:06

a cherry blossom?

22:08

That's how suicidal these guys are. He

22:10

says, let a hundred bombs fall. So

22:12

they continue to debate and they don't

22:15

take a formal vote, but they're split three

22:17

to three on whether to surrender. This is after

22:19

the second bomb, after the

22:22

invasion.

22:23

The war council is split three to three

22:25

on whether to surrender. Now, fortunately

22:28

behind the scenes and my hero

22:30

Togo, the foreign minister, he's got this

22:32

little peace party going and they're maneuvering

22:35

behind the scenes. And that night they do

22:37

get the emperor to say we surrender. It's

22:39

not a complete surrender because they

22:41

want to keep the emperor as a sovereign. So

22:44

the United States rejects that and

22:46

they have to do it all over again. Four days later

22:49

after a coup attempt, we can get into all that. My

22:52

point here is that even after

22:54

two bombs, it's a very close

22:56

thing

22:57

on whether the Japanese are going to surrender. Why

23:00

is that?

23:01

Two reasons. One is they're crazy.

23:03

There's a maniacal death wish

23:06

nuttiness going on here, but the other

23:08

is actually rational and it goes

23:10

something like this.

23:12

They know they're defeated. Their fleet is sunk.

23:14

Their cities are all burned out. They're not

23:17

going for victory. What they want is

23:19

no occupation and they want

23:21

to keep what they call the Kokutai, the imperial

23:23

system going. They don't want war crimes because

23:25

they know they're going to get hung in war crimes and

23:28

they want to get the emperor. They want to keep the system going

23:30

so they can come back. And that's not so

23:32

crazy because they think we

23:35

just make the Americans invade.

23:37

We'll bleed them. They had a word for it. Shiketsu.

23:40

We'll bleed them. They know where the Americans

23:42

are coming. Southern Kyushu. Japanese

23:45

are waiting for us. One million men, 7,000

23:48

Kamikaze planes.

23:50

That's a bigger force than we have landing. And

23:54

they think they can inflict so much bloodiness,

23:56

death, that we will say, okay,

23:59

you can keep Emperor and we won't occupy

24:01

it. That's not irrational if

24:04

you're fighting conventional forces. However,

24:07

if you're fighting atom bombs, that's

24:09

a different thing. And they're

24:11

grudging about it. They don't want to believe it's an atom

24:14

bomb and okay, it is, but Anami

24:16

does all this nonsense about let him drop 100 more.

24:19

But handwriting is on the war. And it's given

24:21

them an excuse. We could have defeated an

24:23

American invasion,

24:25

but these new terror weapons, I don't know, it

24:27

gives them a face-saving reason to surrender.

24:30

So they finally grudgingly go along

24:32

with it. But as I said, there's a coup plot on

24:34

the last night.

24:36

So it's a close thing. Tell

24:38

us about this coup, because when we

24:40

look at people like Foreign Minister Togo,

24:42

who you go into such detail with in this

24:44

book, and it's great to see that side of the story

24:47

as well, and to see the deliberations that are

24:49

going on. And like you say, just all

24:51

of that debate, as you move towards

24:53

the end of the war, you can see that perhaps defeat

24:56

is on the horizon. Tempers must

24:58

have frayed. There must have been incredible

25:00

fights, arguments and disagreements. How

25:02

does someone like Togo make

25:05

that peace happen, make that

25:07

surrender

25:07

happen?

25:09

This is a subtle thing. And again, we

25:11

don't have all the records on this. The Emperor's

25:14

records, a lot of them are still closed.

25:16

So we're still learning. There's a story

25:18

named Richard Frank, who you're probably familiar

25:21

with. He's really good on this. And

25:24

he has got some guy who's about to publish

25:26

an article from one of the court

25:28

chamberlains who's around the

25:31

Emperor. And it's clear from

25:33

this courtier that the Emperor

25:35

is really starting to get scared about another

25:38

atom bomb on him.

25:39

So his mood is changing. The military

25:41

has been lying to him, and he's dependent on the

25:43

military. His power comes from the military.

25:46

But he's starting to change his mind. So that's an important

25:48

factor. The Emperor is starting to come around

25:50

here. And Togo and these few

25:53

pieceneks, these are somewhat lower level

25:55

bureaucrats, head of the Secretariat.

25:57

There's a privy counselor

25:58

named Kita. So there are

26:00

maybe four or five people who are lower level

26:03

around the emperor and they are

26:05

seeing the moment to persuade the

26:07

emperor, and it's brave on the emperor's

26:09

part, to do what they call a seidan,

26:12

which is a sacred decision. Then

26:14

normally

26:15

the way it works is the military, the war council

26:17

decides something, they go to the emperor and he says

26:20

nothing. And why?

26:21

That's a silent assent, it means yes,

26:24

but they don't want the emperor saying anything because they want him to be

26:26

about politics. This is a good way to keep

26:28

the power of the military. But

26:31

no, actually this time the emperor

26:33

takes the lead,

26:35

never done before in this war, it's very

26:37

unusual, it's called a sacred decision.

26:39

He gets everybody in his bomb shelter on

26:42

the night of the 9th, I guess it is,

26:44

9th, 10th. He gets everybody in his bomb

26:46

shelter and he says, I agree with Togo, I agree with

26:48

the foreign minister.

26:50

He takes the side of the foreign minister.

26:53

And the military guys are just beside

26:55

themselves. They're crying, they're

26:58

prostrate on the deaths, but

27:00

they go along. Now they

27:02

put a wrinkle in, they say, okay, we'll surrender,

27:05

but the emperor has to be sovereign or no, it's

27:07

reporting to God. So back

27:09

in Washington we get that message,

27:11

we surrender, but the emperor is still sovereign.

27:15

And Truman and Jimmy Burns, the

27:17

secretary of state, so they send back saying, no,

27:19

the emperor cannot be sovereign. He's not reporting to God

27:21

anymore, he's reporting to Douglas MacArthur, the

27:24

Supreme Allied commander.

27:26

That starts the problems all over again because

27:28

the military fanatics won't

27:30

accept that.

27:31

So here we go again. And the military

27:34

debates back on and that's when

27:36

the coup attempt starts. Now the most interesting

27:38

character is the Japanese minister of war,

27:40

Inami. I can't really tell

27:42

whether he was really fomenting this coup or not.

27:45

Japanese are extremely indirect. I think he was ambivalent

27:48

in his own mind.

27:50

How does he resolve it? It's a puku.

27:53

On the night the Japanese surrender, he takes his

27:55

sword and he plunges it in his belly, he takes

27:57

his dagger, he plunges it in his neck, he kills

27:59

himself.

28:00

And he writes a note, a cryptic note

28:02

saying, for my crimes. It's not clear what

28:04

his crimes are. So he just takes

28:06

himself out of the game. The junior hotheads

28:08

do stage a coup. They kill

28:11

the head of the Imperial Palace Guard, murder

28:13

him, and they forge orders to take

28:15

over the palace. They're running through the palace.

28:18

What are they looking for? The emperor has recorded

28:21

his surrender speech to be played

28:23

the next day at noon on the national radio. The

28:25

soldiers are running through the palace trying to find

28:28

that recording to break it, to

28:30

smash it,

28:31

so that he can't give the speech. They can't

28:33

find it. It's hidden in a room reserved

28:36

for the ladies in waiting. So

28:39

they can't find the record. They can't break it. And the head of the coup

28:41

plot goes out and shoots himself. And Japan

28:43

finally surrenders. But it's that close.

28:46

It's that close. It's hard to think what the end

28:48

game might be there once you've broken

28:50

the recording. Do you go on to kill the emperor,

28:52

to silence the emperor? There's no way of doing

28:55

that. No, they don't kill the emperor. They kidnap

28:58

the emperor. They do it in his name. Everything is

29:00

done in the emperor's name.

29:02

Now they might get rid of the emperor and put his brother

29:04

in there.

29:05

But we're doing this in the name of the emperor. The

29:08

emperor is already pushing back somewhat, a

29:10

month or two earlier. The military

29:13

said, we built you a new palace up in

29:15

the mountains for the final stand. And

29:17

we have an armored train to take you up there. And

29:19

he says no. A rare case

29:22

of him standing up to the military. This is

29:24

in June. A couple of months earlier, six

29:26

weeks earlier. So the emperor is starting to show

29:28

a little pushback here.

29:30

But for most of the war, he does what

29:32

the military tells him. He's cruellous sometimes.

29:34

He's grumpy about it. He's critical

29:37

of them. But he goes along.

29:39

Now he is finally pushing

29:41

back. Why? To save his own skin,

29:43

maybe. Because he thinks that a third atom bomb

29:45

is gonna land on him. Not entirely wrong about that.

29:48

Because he's sick of the military lying to him. I don't know.

29:51

But he does. The fact is, he does finally

29:53

surrender. Would there have been a third

29:56

atom bomb, Evan? And would it have been a target

29:58

of something like Tokyo?

29:59

So this is not well understood, and this

30:02

is not new in my book. Rich Frank and others have been

30:04

onto this. This is not something I discovered, but

30:06

I make a lot of it. One of my characters

30:08

is General Tui Spots.

30:11

Tui Spots is the head of strategic

30:13

bombing in Europe. So he's

30:16

killed a lot of people in Europe,

30:17

including civilians, and he's troubled by this, including

30:20

Dresden. The night after we firebombed Bezden,

30:22

what does Tui Spots do? He blows too much

30:25

pay at a poker game, and

30:27

his wife has to explain why. He's just

30:29

dealing with the stress of it.

30:30

He wants to quit. No,

30:33

he's got to go to the Pacific and run

30:36

Operation Downfall, the final fall

30:38

of Japan.

30:39

And he's been told, you've got to drop an atom

30:41

bomb. He says, if I'm going to kill 100,000 people, I

30:43

want to see it in writing.

30:45

He insists on a written order.

30:47

He gets there. He's a dutiful guy. He does what

30:49

he's told, but he's not happy about it. He writes

30:52

in his diary.

30:53

I was against the atom bomb, just as I've always been.

30:55

This is back to your point. Killing civilians

30:58

in cities, right? He's been

31:00

killing civilians in cities, but he's against it.

31:02

So you unravel this. Duty

31:05

is a hard thing. Yes. Not only that,

31:07

the trouble there is that the technology

31:09

just wasn't working. That Norden bombsight, despite

31:11

all of its pre-war tests and what is it,

31:13

getting a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet,

31:17

pinpoint precision. When you go over to

31:19

Europe, there may be one or two clouds across

31:21

that region from time to time. And it turns out,

31:24

if you drop a bomb or two, you might get

31:26

a bit of smoke and some fires. And the Norden

31:28

bombsight ends up being worse

31:29

and useless. And a Luftwaffe

31:31

is shooting at you, and there's flack in the air.

31:33

And it's a problem, so they miss a

31:35

lot. That's also a problem. Yeah, absolutely.

31:39

It's not a religion, but almost an ideology

31:41

to them when it comes down to this precision bombing.

31:43

Spatz is an air corps tactical schoolman.

31:45

He's been born, brought up, and bred

31:48

in this way of American bombing. So

31:51

I can completely relate with this idea that towards

31:53

the end of the war, he has completely

31:55

fed up everything that he had worked his

31:57

whole career towards. It's turned

31:59

out to be... something completely different. Yeah, and he's

32:01

troubled by it. He's over in Guam.

32:04

So he has this idea, and

32:06

he does this before Nagasaki. Let's

32:08

drop the second bomb

32:10

in a burned-out area of

32:13

Tokyo.

32:14

Remember, 20 square miles have been burned

32:16

out. Or in Tokyo Harbor.

32:18

He wants to do a demonstration. The

32:21

policymakers have rejected the idea of

32:23

a demonstration on a desert island because they're

32:25

worried it'd be a dud or the Japanese would shoot the plane

32:27

down. They dismiss it. But

32:30

their strategic air commander wants

32:33

to do a demonstration using Tokyo,

32:36

using the burned-out areas of Tokyo or

32:38

Tokyo Harbor. And he has this idea before

32:41

Nagasaki, it's rejected. So

32:43

after Nagasaki, Japanese still

32:46

aren't surrendering.

32:47

So there's a very interesting document

32:51

that shows Harry Truman talking to

32:53

the British government. And he says, quote,

32:55

sadly decided to

32:57

drop a third atom bomb on

33:00

Tokyo.

33:01

This is on August 14th.

33:04

This was just a few hours before we find out that they

33:06

finally surrendered. So it appears

33:08

that Truman has embraced

33:11

Spots's idea. They've worked

33:14

out a little bit. They talk about something called the scare radius.

33:17

You can see the flash and hear the bomb,

33:19

but it doesn't kill you.

33:20

So the idea is you drop it a few miles

33:22

from the palace

33:24

so they can see the flash and see how terrible

33:26

it is, but doesn't actually kill them. Now, they

33:28

very imperfectly understand radiation in this period.

33:31

They dropped it in Tokyo Harbor.

33:33

That might have created a radioactive tidal wave,

33:36

which would have killed thousands of people. So this is not

33:38

well understood what they're doing here.

33:40

The point is that Spots

33:43

is thinking of a demonstration

33:45

with a third bomb on

33:48

Tokyo, the burned-out area. And it appears

33:50

that the President of the United States has

33:52

embraced this idea, but they

33:55

don't have to use it because a few hours

33:57

after he tells the Brits that we're doing this,

33:59

we get word that this time the Japanese

34:02

have surrendered for real,

34:04

no sovereign empire, to real surrender,

34:07

because the emperor has given the speech on the radio,

34:09

and the war ends, so we don't have to do it.

34:11

But the point is, we came

34:14

pretty close to dropping a third bomb. How do we get

34:16

to that point where there is that surrender

34:18

just in time then? Did the Japanese know

34:21

there might be a third bomb on

34:23

the way? How did they get to the agreement that the

34:25

emperor would remain not in

34:27

charge, but as this figurehead? They

34:30

don't know there's another bomb on the way.

34:32

They know the group that dropped the

34:34

bomb is called the 509th Composite Group.

34:37

They know there's signals.

34:38

So Japanese radio intelligence is hearing

34:41

509th Composite Group planes in the

34:43

air.

34:44

And so they're worried, of course, that

34:46

Wama is about to deliver another bomb. They

34:48

don't know anything more than that,

34:50

but that's enough to be pretty frightening. And

34:52

that's the sort of thing that pushes

34:55

them to make these final concessions? Or

34:57

is it a political decision between the press? I

34:59

think so. It's a little blurry, again,

35:02

but I think it's the fear of a third bomb. And

35:04

also, they just want to end the damn thing, because

35:06

they're on the verge of starvation, civil

35:09

war. Nothing good is going to happen

35:11

here. It is fascinating to look at this

35:14

period. And for me, when we start to look at how

35:16

American air power starts to

35:18

proceed after the droppings of the bomb and

35:20

the end of the Second World War, you start to see

35:23

how Truman is starting to say, we

35:25

will not use this bomb. Again, we

35:27

need to push towards international control. But

35:29

it's people like Arnold and Spatz around

35:31

him who are saying we need to prepare for the next

35:33

war. And they start to develop their own strategies

35:36

as they go forwards. But what are

35:38

the legacies

35:39

of the bomb here for Japan?

35:42

When we start to look over this period,

35:45

who is it who is left in place? Is

35:47

it Togo who is left in

35:49

order to try and coordinate any sort of post-war

35:52

rebuilding? Who are the figures that are left in

35:54

place by the United States? Togo,

35:56

ironically, and I think wrongly, is

35:59

convicted of war. crimes because he was in

36:01

the cabinet for Pearl Harbor. So

36:03

that makes him a war criminal. He

36:05

gets 20 years and dies in prison. I

36:07

think that's crazy. We should have given him a medal. He

36:10

saved millions of lives. But that's

36:12

what happened to him.

36:13

He accepts it. He doesn't really complain that much. He resigns

36:15

right away because he knows he's going to be arrested and

36:18

tried for war crimes. But there's another strata

36:21

of peace-minded bureaucrats

36:24

and they essentially take

36:26

over. The Japanese fight to the

36:28

end, but once they surrender, they accept it. There

36:30

are a few final kamikazes. There

36:32

are 5 million Japanese soldiers in Asia.

36:35

And their fear was they keep fighting.

36:38

And as we know, famously a few of them took to

36:40

the hills and fought for years. But almost

36:43

all of them surrendered. Somewhat

36:45

surprising. The emperor wisely sent out

36:47

two princes

36:49

to say, this is the imperial will

36:52

you need to surrender. And they did. All 5

36:54

million of them. They surrendered and they gradually come

36:56

back to Japan. Not as heroes. But

36:59

they do come back. And the Japanese

37:01

accept their fate. They're

37:03

a stoical nation. And they

37:05

do accept their fate. There is very little pushback.

37:09

It's incredible to think, isn't it? That centralized

37:11

control ends up being the key thing

37:13

that means that the war can end then. Once

37:16

it's decided to end, it can end as

37:18

quickly as possible. Evan, thank you

37:20

so much. I think your work just reveals

37:23

three of the key figures and that unimaginable

37:26

pressure that they were under as they

37:28

led towards this decision to drop the atomic bomb

37:30

and then to try and obtain that unconditional

37:33

surrender. You've got to tell us, what's the name

37:35

of the book and where can we buy it? The

37:37

book is called Road to

37:39

Surrender,

37:40

Three Men and the Countdown

37:43

to the End of World War II.

37:45

It's in bookstores everywhere, I hope.

37:47

You can always get it on Amazon. One thing

37:50

it is, I should say, it's a very fast tale.

37:52

It's a fairly short book. It's a dramatic

37:54

story. I hope we've shown that. But it was

37:56

a close run thing. It's a very dramatic tale.

38:01

Thank you Evan and thank you to all of you for

38:03

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38:06

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38:09

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get 50% off. And if you're

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the app. So give it a go. I know you're

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gonna love it.