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THE FIRST NUCLEAR WAR

Chris Wallace recounts the 116 days before America dropped an atomic bomb on Japan

WHEN HARRY S TRUMAN BECAME PRESIDENT,

he learned that the United States was nearly ready to use the most powerful weapon ever devised. The decision to use it would be his. From the June 17, 2020, online program “Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace.” CHRIS WALLACE Anchor, Fox News Sunday; Author, Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days that Changed the World In conversation with LANHEE CHEN David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Policy Studies, The Hoover Institution LANHEE CHEN: Chris Wallace joined Fox news in 2003 and became the first journalist from the network to moderate a general election presidential debate in 2016. Over his career, Chris has covered nearly every major political event and had exclusive interviews with world leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin, French president Emmanuel Macron, President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump’s first interview since being elected.

Chris, over to you for some introductory remarks about your book. CHRIS WALLACE: I have to say that having this book tour during the age of COVID [is] a little bit different, because I was expecting to be seeing all of you in person. Now I’m kind of glad I’m doing virtual life, because it is saving some wear and tear. But I have to say that I really did want to come to The Commonwealth Club in person. I’ve been hearing about it for years and I’ve covered, not as a direct witness, but covered events or news that were made at The Commonwealth Club. So I very much wanted to be there. I hope when this is all a distant and bad memory that you’ll have me back in person.

I’d tell you a little bit briefly about how I came up with the idea for Countdown 1945. I had thought for some period of time that I wanted to write what, for lack of a better term, I would call a history thriller. I think so much of history is written, “We know what happened, here’s why it happened,” and there’s a kind of 2020-hindsight about it. But as it was happening, obviously there were momentous decisions being made, a lot of tension and a lot of uncertainty.

I thought what a more interesting way to tell the story. And I specifically came up with the idea of Countdown and that, if you could find a beginning place and an end point, then you could count down the key moments in that period of time. But I didn’t have the moment. I got it in a kind of a curious way actually, with a San Francisco native, in February of 2019. It was the day that Donald Trump was going to deliver that year the State of the Union speech, and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, invited a number of us over for what’s called a prebuttal, which is basically like a rebuttal, only you say everything that is wrong before the other person has even said it. Both parties do it.

In any case, Speaker Pelosi invited us to a

room that I had never been [in], even though I covered the House back in the late seventies for a year and a half, called the Board of Education. It was this hideaway that Sam Rayburn, when he was the speaker of the House, used in the ’40s, ’50and ’60s. The Board of Education was where he would bring in some of his political cronies in the House to talk shop or to plot strategy or to have our bourbon and branch water—and maybe all three. So she was telling the group—and frankly, I think I was the most excited of this small group of television anchors—that we were in the Board of Education.

And she said—we were all sitting at this table—at the other end of the table, that was where Harry Truman was [when] he’d been told the White House was looking for him. He dialed the White House up and he was told, Get to the White House just quickly and quietly as possible. He hung up the Image by TKTKTK phone and he said, “Jesus Christ in general

President Harry S Truman. Photo by Edmonston Studio/Library of Congress

Jackson,” which I felt was a kind of curious exclamation. [I had the idea for my book], the 116 days from when Truman becomes president to when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Just very briefly to give you an introduction, just to day one, April 12, 1945: Truman gets the call to go to the White House. He has been vice president for 82 days, but has basically been shut out by FDR and by his war cabinet. He had only met privately, although he was the vice president, with President Roosevelt twice in those 82 days. So he goes to the White House thinking that he’s going to meet with Roosevelt, that Roosevelt must’ve come back from Warm Springs, GA, where he was taking a rest after the Yalta conference, and that somehow he had snuck back into town and for some reason he wanted to meet with Truman. So he gets to the White House, is driven up to the North Portico, the ushers put him in the presidential elevator to go up to the second floor. When he gets there, he’s greeted by the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who says to him, “Harry, the president is dead.” Truman, who thought he was coming to speak to the president, now realizes he is the president. And he says to Mrs. Roosevelt, “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

And she says, “Harry, is there anything we can do to help you? Because you’re the one in trouble now.”

I knew that the, the story would be interesting the 116 days, but there are surprises and wonderful, almost novel-like details in every day, on almost every page of the book. So he’s sworn in as president. They call the cabinet, they called congressional leaders, they call the chief justice, Harlan Stone, and they have to find a Bible. They can’t find a Bible in Roosevelt’s White House. They finally locate a Gideon in the desk of the chief White House usher; it’s brought into the cabinet room. They stand in front of the mantle at one end of the room, and Harlan Stone says, “Do you, Harry Ship Truman—” thinking that the “S” in Truman’s [name] stands for “Ship,” which was, a paternal family name.

But of course, as I’m sure many of you know, the “S” actually stood for nothing. So Truman corrects him and says, “I, Harry S Truman,” and they do the oath. Then stone realizes that as he was doing the oath, Truman was holding the Bible in his left hand, and he had his right hand on top of

the Bible. So now we asked to do it all over again, putting his hand up “Henry Stimson took Truman Oppenheimer, who obviously is key to this as well, because he’s sort of so we can swear and take the oath. into a private room. ‘I need to tell the scientific lead in New Mexico Well, anyway, that happens. He tells his cabinet, he wants them all you about a massive project, a top who’s looking after a lot of this. You also introduce Gen. [Leslie] to stay on. He says, “I want your unvarnished advice until I make secret project to create the most Groves, a military person who is largely responsible for the project. I a decision. And then I want your powerful weapon in history.’” wanted to ask a little bit about the complete loyalty and support.” civil–military relationship, because Everybody starts to leave except for Henry Stimson, the 77-year-old secretary of war. He had served five presidents, Truman would be as sixth. Stimson takes him into a private room and says, “I have something very important to tell you.” And he says, “I need to tell you about a massive project, a top secret project to create the most powerful weapon in history.” And that is literally the first that Harry Truman learned about the existence of the Manhattan Project to build an atom bomb. Well, that’s all that Stimson tells him, he says, “I’m going to leave. I want you to convention, because the Democratic Party power brokers thought that Henry Wallace, who was the current vice president, was too far to the left. A lot of them were worried that Roosevelt was not going to survive a fourth term—and clearly he didn’t get through more than three months of it—and that whoever the vice president was would be the president. They didn’t bring this up with Roosevelt, who thought he was going to live through the war and for a good time thereafter, but they wanted to get Wallace out and put somebody else in. it’s been in the news recently with everything that’s going on with President Trump, but I’m kind of curious to get your take on what enabled that relationship. It’s a very interesting relationship between the two of them, because they, at least from my reading of it, don’t seem anything alike. WALLACE: No, and they weren’t. Oppenheimer was an absolutely brilliant physicist. He knew a half dozen languages. He learned Sanskrit, so he could read in the original language, a Hindu devotional poem, the Bhagavad Gita. The thing that was surprising—everybody knew he was settle in. I’ll brief you on this project.” The basic reason they chose Truman brilliant, but nobody knew whether he And Truman doesn’t make too much of it, was because they thought he would hurt could administer it all. And in fact, there because he’s so overwhelmed. He’s now the the ticket the least. Truman, in fact, went was great doubt about that. In fact, he president, he’s now the commander in chief to the convention in Chicago planning to became a very good administrator and of the U.S. war effort to defeat the Nazis in nominate Jimmy Byrnes—who had been a really ran the scientific laboratories at Los Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific. And senator [and] who had been a Supreme Court Alamos. He was the scientific director of the this is just one more boulder on his back. So justice, now he was handling the Office of Manhattan Project and very good at it. Gen. he goes home and says, “I figured the best War Mobilization—for vice-president. But Groves was a bulldozer of a man, big burly, thing I could do is get a good night’s sleep the party really forced it on Truman. And and had that kind of a personality. His big and come back and face the music.” he stepped into the job. project immediately before the Manhattan CHEN: One of the remarkable things I mean, I think you can say his justice, Project was he had been behind building about the book is it does read like a thriller, inherent common sense and ability. He the Pentagon, which was by far the biggest and beyond that you get this tapestry of wasn’t a neophyte. He had been a county building in the world at that time, and he people that’s sort of woven together really judge in the Western part of Jackson County had gotten it through in short order, a lot beautifully. in Missouri for years, and he’d served 10 through the aggressiveness of his power. He

I want to start by asking about Harry years in the Senate. So he wasn’t totally [said], “I know I’m intimidating, and I use Truman, because he is one of the figures unprepared, but I don’t think anybody that to my advantage.” obviously at the center of this. Truman thought he’s ready to step into the job So now you get to the two of them. I would remarks at one point, “I was just a county right now, but he did, and he was famously give more of the credit to Oppenheimer in judge 10 years ago,” and now all of a sudden decisive. In fact, one of the things that terms of the blending of those two, because he’s thrust into being the leader of the United everybody noticed within the first 10 days, Groves was somewhat frustrated with the States and with the incredible responsibility he had put his mark on the presidency. When opinions and you could say the prima donna he learns about what this atomic bomb they had cabinet meetings, Roosevelt used behavior of some of the scientists. A lot project. Did you get a sense in researching to regale the cabinet with long stories and of the scientists bucked out at the kind of the book or thinking about the book, what not much got done. Henry Wallace stayed military order and deadlines that Groves was prepared Truman to step into these shoes? I on in the cabinet after he was ousted as imposing on them. And the one who seemed mean, these massive shoes, FDR, in such a vice president; he stayed on as Roosevelt’s somehow to make it work between the critical time in American history? secretary of commerce. He said, “I think scientists on the one hand and Groves and WALLACE: Well, in a sense he wasn’t sometimes [Truman] had a decision before the military on the other was Oppenheimer, prepared. There’s a famous nickname he’s got a thought.” But he had no problems to kind of keep everybody on board and keep that Truman has had over the years, “the making decisions. the ship plowing ahead toward the research accidental president.” He got on the ticket CHEN: Early on in the book, you and then development of the atomic bomb. in the summer of 1944 [at] the Democratic introduce the character of Dr. [J. Robert] CHEN: Initially, Truman’s trying to figure

out how to tell Stalin that the U.S. has this bomb. Talk about how “Stalin was interested. He just American casualties, because the Japanese were only fighting more that goes over. wasn’t surprised, because there was fiercely and were absolutely refusing WALLACE: So July 16, Truman wakes up in Potsdam, Germany, a Russian spy who had penetrated to surrender as we got closer and closer to the Japanese homeland. and he’s there for a summit, the first post-Nazi surrender summit, . . . the Manhattan Project.” So this wasn’t drop the bomb or do nothing. This was drop the bomb or to discuss postwar Europe with invade. And as it turns out, I think Churchill and with Stalin. We talked earlier right at the beginning about whether Truman was prepared for the job. This is the one time where he seemed nervous and not sure that he was up to it, because he knew he was filling Roosevelt shoes. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin had, had developed quite a relationship. And in fact Churchill and Roosevelt had spent a hundred days together during the course of the war. [Truman] was going to be very much a junior partner, and he wasn’t quite sure he was up to it. In fact he ordered up a whole tutorial, because he wasn’t that familiar with a lot leaves, and Truman is dumbfounded. You know, [Stalin hadn’t asked] a question, not “Tell me about it. How long have you been working on this?” Churchill, who was not in that group, but sort of sees what’s going on the three of them together and is I think also shocked that it was such a brief conversation comes over and says, “What happened?” [Truman] says, “Well, I told him, and he said that and they left.” The answer is that that Stalin was interested; he just wasn’t surprised, because in fact that there was a Russian spy who had penetrated . . . the Manhattan project. He gave [the it was true that an invasion of Japan would have been even bloodier. [The second point] was that Truman sought out dissent. He doesn’t always follow it, but he wasn’t put off by it. In fact, after the bomb works, he has lunch in Potsdam with [Gen. Dwight] Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, and Eisenhower has been told just a few days before by Stimson about the existence of the bomb and at lunch, even though Truman, didn’t ask him, Eisenhower says, “I don’t think you should use the bomb because I think that Japan will surrender anyway.” I’m not sure I agree with that, but that’s what he says. “And I don’t think of the subjects that potentially could come Soviets] a lot of the details about the bomb. we should be the country to introduce this up in the summit. In any case, it turns out Stalin, knew all about it. terrible technology to the world. I think that very day, July 16, is the day that they CHEN: Truman did wrestle with this it will hurt our moral standing.” Well, test the bomb for the first time. There was question of whether to drop the bomb. Talk Truman, as I say, didn’t follow that advice, great doubt as to whether it was going to a little bit about the thought process that he but he wasn’t put off by it. I very much work at all. Late that night, about 8, 9 went through. credited that as well. o’clock, Truman gets word that the bomb WALLACE: Well, this is one of the most The third point I would make is that has worked. Now he’s no longer the junior interesting parts of the book to me. I spent I think Truman’s reputation is that he is partner in this new, Big Three. six years covering Ronald Reagan in the famously decisive. The buck stops here. “I

He’s the one who was got the most White House. I was the chief reporter for make a decision on, and I never looked clout because he’s got control of the atom NBC. I’ve covered seven presidents over back.” In fact, he, he wrestled, I would bomb. Churchill had been a partner with the course of my career. So I’ve always been say, even agonized over this decision, as I Roosevelt from the very beginning; in fascinated by how they make their decisions. think he should have. In Potsdam, he was fact, he kind of urged in the early ’40s to There are three points about Truman’s having terrible trouble sleeping at night. He begin the Manhattan Project. So he was decision-making process that really complained of fierce headaches, which he along for all of that. But Stalin had never impressed me. had whenever he was under stress. You know, been told about it. And finally, the bomb One was he was meticulous. He went one of the joys of writing history as opposed has been dropped, it works, and Churchill over this material again and again; this was to covering current events as a reporter is that and Truman are discussing well, do we tell no snap decision. You have to understand I had access. One of the first things I did was Stalin or not? Supposedly the three of them until July 16, 21 days in, before the end of went to the Truman library and spent some are allies. So they decided they have to tell these 116 days, the bomb had not been tested time there and got access to his diaries. He him, but Churchill says, don’t tell them too as far as he was concerned it was a science was a great letter writer to his mother and his much, and wait till the meeting’s just about project until they could prove to them, this sister and his wife Bess. But particularly in to break up. So finally, in late July, they agree actually works and can be used as a weapon. his diaries, where he didn’t have to be careful today’s the day the Truman is going to tell So a lot of the early conversations as he sat what he was writing, he described this bomb Stalin. So at the end of a meeting, Truman down with Stimson and General of the Army over and over as the most terrible weapon. comes over to Stalin—and he doesn’t even George Marshall and all the other members He described it in apocalyptic terms as the bring his own translator, he had just Stalin’s of this war cabinet, was an invasion of Japan. fire destruction prophesied in the Bible. So translator. Truman says, “I just want you The estimate that they got was if you invade he wrestled with it. I think he agonized over to know that we have developed the most Japan—this is now the late spring and it, and then he made a decision, but it was powerful weapon ever.” And Stalin turns summer of ’45—the war will go on until not an easy decision. to him and says, “Well, I hope you’ll put November ’46, and we project it will be a CHEN: So what do you think the rationale good use to it with athe Japanese.” And he million Japanese casualties and half a million was? Certainly in the book, it’s very clearly

Hiroshima after the atomic bombing. Photo by U.S. Department of Defense

understood what he’s struggling with. They make the decision to drop the bomb in Hiroshima, but then they drop a second bomb in Nagasaki. Did you explore or think about the question of whether Truman questioned whether the second bomb was necessary? WALLACE: There was not a separate order to do it. But it was interesting when Truman and Churchill talk about the bomb after the first test on July 16, Churchill says, “You know, we may need to deliver one or two violent shocks to Japan to get them to surrender.” You have to understand also there was one last part in [Truman’s] decision making. He wanted to give Japan one last way out before he dropped the first bomb and they delivered the Potsdam Declaration, which was the three countries of the Alliance that were at war with Japan. Russia was not in that at this point; it’s Britain, the United States and China. In that, they made all kinds of threatening remarks. They obviously didn’t say anything about the bomb, but talked about the utter destruction of Japan, unless you give unconditional surrender. The Japanese completely dismissed it. They didn’t even give a formal rejection. The Japanese government said we have to mokusatsu it, which meant to kill it with silence, basically ignore it. So they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and then Truman comes out and—he’s on a boat at that point, the USS Augusta in the middle of the Atlantic coming back from Germany—and he makes a newsreel statement from his state room, basically saying, “We will do this again and we’ll do this again.” And there was silence from the Japanese for three days. It is on August 9 that they dropped the second bomb.

People say we didn’t have to drop the bomb because they would have surrendered anyway. We did drop the bomb, and they didn’t surrender. And then we dropped a second bomb, and they didn’t surrender again. The military government in Tokyo still wanted to keep fighting. It was only the Emperor Hirohito who goes over the Japanese government and decides to deliver a radio address. It was the first time almost any Japanese person had heard the voice of the emperor. He’s the one who unilaterally says “Enough, we have to surrender.” But if it hadn’t been for him, the Japanese would have fought on not after one, but after two nuclear explosions.