Guests ab i am honored and have the privilege to welcome you to the virtual programs we been able to shift to. We look forward to lovely having you join us for more in the coming weeks. Before we get to the subject of the next program i want to share a little bit about some things we have coming up, things to look forward to, more virtual programs hopefully you might be interested in joining us. He will be hosting next week will be hosting ab anticorruption expert and former new York State Attorney general candidate sharing ab exploring the connection between big money and the impact on the democracy. That will be august 11 the following week we will host Rick Perlstein in a conversation with Jeffrey Toobin discussing his new book abwhich continues in the exploration we been doing with the recent history of the Pelican Party and modern american athat will be on august 19. We are also proud to partner with the ms. Foundation on an upcoming series entitled women in power 100 years after the 19 awhich will kick off on august 18 the 100 Year Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment. With a discussion of body power welcoming mcmillan cotton, Jennifer Boylan and moderator Raquel Willis to discuss issues pertaining to bodies of women throughout time and how they continue to be spiked with contention and oppression. We look forward to hosting many more virtual programs as they come together, to learn more about the offerings we will have for you on our website. In just a moment i will be welcoming tonight speakers to the virtual space. This is a powerful conversation we are looking forward to tonight. Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb in hiroshima. And the night is the 75th anniversary a these are events that shaped much of the 20th century and will be discussing the events themselves an immediate impact, we are also talking about the role of journalism and sharing stories with people so we could truly understand the potential of the atomic warfare, the human cost and the danger that it posed. Reflecting today on the recent passing of the legendary journalist pete hamill we also have the leisure of hosting a few years ago, i want to share a quote of his that is the work of a journalist who abtoday in the landscape of fake news, such a narrative of potential danger of misinformation and propaganda and how journalism can help us cut through to see the truth its something that rains all the more important. Without further ado i like to welcome tonight speakers, we are very honored and glad to have them joining us tonight, tonight we will be joined by lesley blume, who of course is the author of fallout. ab she will be joined in conversation by adam awriting for the new yorker since 1986 during his more than 30 years in the magazine hes written hundreds of essays from personal memoirs to reviews and profiles along with much reporting from abroad along with fiction, humor and art criticism. As the conversation unfolds i want to remind you that we will be taking questions if you have questions for our speakers you can submit them via the q a box at the bottom of your screen and begin the subject of tonights discussion is of course lesleys book fallout. We have teams at our Community Bookstore here in brooklyn if youd like to learn more about the book and possibly purchase your copy you can do so via the link that is in the chat now. Without further ado, please welcome lesley and adam, can you hear me cannot. Loud and clear. Thank you both for being here, looking forward to this conversation and thank you for participating. Thank you for hosting. And, adam, thank you for doing this. Delighted to do it, first of all congratulations on this extraordinary book. My second born. The hiroshima coverup, by the way should it be hiroshima or hiroshima . I mix them up and i shouldnt because it should be hiroshima. Theres a lovely small moment in the book where harold ross, the editor of the new yorker said not only in my published thing this dam thing i learned a new way to pronounce it. Its an extraordinary book. Its about both deepak marking and catastrophic event but even more and more importantly about the coverage of that event and how it was turned into words. You call it the hiroshima coverup. I have a very particular and im afraid very parochial interest in this book because its very much about the history of the new yorker and the evolution of the development of the new yorker but before we get to the new yorker and how the internal dynamics of the new yorker shaped this book in many ways, what do you mean by the coverup . What was the state of play when john hershey went off to japan to do the reporting to produce his legendary peace hiroshima which filled an entire issue of the new yorker the first time that ever happened, a year after the bombing. The audience should know that you are a sounding board for me since the beginning. When that first started researching the project i didnt actually realize the extent to which a coverup would be playing a role in this narrative at all. I just really wanted to know the back story. I was approached the story and journalist covering another journalist and the story of her shes hiroshima had been about outside success. Nobody ever looked at how they got the story in the first place will. I wanted to look at logistics of how he got in. When i started looking at how much General Macarthur and his total domination of japan at the time started to realize how impossible it would have been for him to get him as an independent reporter and the more i researched the subject i started to come across historical accounts of macarthur administration, how much he had suppressed the Foreign Press and the Japanese Press in particular, and the magnitude of coverup. Its been addressed previously but never to the extent i felt it should have been and ended up being extremely central to the story. What were they covering up, in a sentence or two. Interestingly, the government seems to be ecstatically advertising that they drop this mega abecho went to 20,000 tons of tnt, the biggest bond that had ever been in the history of warfare, the government released pictures of the mushroom cloud, pictures of the landscape devastation but where hershey and his editors were quick to pick up mom is there was weirdly no reporting on the human toll, nobody knew what was happening to human beings who have been among the only humans on the receiving end of the nuclear pack. And still are to this day. New york where was abnew yorker was in transition when he began the reporting it had changed over the course of four years and the onset of the war from pearl harbor to the end of the war, more dramatically perhaps and its now 90 year history because as you write beautifully, it had still been essentially, not entirely but essentially a humor and local reporting magazine noted for its fiction, noted for its elegant and stylish reporting but still very much in the initial imprint of how it brought inspiration. Then the war broke out and warm editor in particular played an outsized role in it making magazine take on a much more ambitious and almost magisterial role in its reporting and that was role william chung. Both william sean and harold ross, they were news men in disguise and away. Even 20 years earlier, harold ross never at that point had any aspirations for the magazine to be a big news operation. We paralleled the news, we dont report the news, he had been a news man before that and so was william sean, and when pearl harbor happened, that was it for the magazine went to work time quitting right away. Harold ross wrote to one of his coeditors, can it be a humor magazine because nothing feels funny anymore. And many of the writers were already on hand when off to war had found themselves as writers i think about ajay liebling, who was a local future writer who went off and became ab went off to report the war in north africa, eventually the normandy invasion and the rest of it. There was a whole generation who made that trip. They dispatch correspondent and all over the world. Many theaters of war they had a pretty deep relationship with the War Department with the Public Relations operation. He was the linchpin of the new yorkers operation. There was a lot of all aa lot of overlap. Sometimes the editors even commissioned stories for military figures, sometimes even Public Relations, just to keep things good with the law department. For the most part, they were serious. They were in the mix. Very much so. He would send one of his correspondence into the field and he didnt know what the scoop was going to be, he just knew there would be one. He trusted his writers. So why john hersey . He was not born and bred as a new yorker, he came from the a awhat made sean trust that hershey glass they hated each other. Hilariously publicly hated each other. Hershey reporting since 1939 and at one point he was really grooming him to be the a [multiple speakers] he was of that type, he was not a fat new york jew he wasnt elegant figure. He was also, from yale, a [inaudible] also, when you read this, the time and the distractions that hershey broke, its a far cry to what he was writing for for the new yorker later on. As somebody who cares only about literary style, its a hugely important point. You run with it. He had written one hugely significant piece, in historical terms, incredibly significant piece for the new yorker before that, set in the pacific. Im going about it back to you after i tee it up, thats how hershey did come to the new yorker. He breaks up with ais far too chauvinistic for him and he said, thanks but no thanks. Instead of being heir apparent hes a freelancer in 1945 but in 1944 he had managed somehow to do a story that william sean at the new yorker had really wanted to bring hershey in and hershey had a story that wife had projected and sean said come this way. It was the story of john f. Kennedy in the pacific. Hersheys wife had been the former paramore of jfk, jfk had been a this is a large class, a significant class of people. They all knew each other. Hershey is on his way back from the pacific abjfk was on his way back from the pacific, hes in new york, one that he got a nightclub, some said the martinique club, he runs into hershey and his wife. Jfk is telling hersey and his wife that ablike to have your wayside, not to confuse Joseph Kennedy but it was the whole story but he rejected that he brings it to the new yorker and they were excited to have it. In many ways that story helps make kennedys political career, i got trotted out by kennedy and kennedys Campaign Team for every Political Campaign they have but it also helps make john herseys career because it provided and enter to the career because he was going nowhere fast. You mentioned that joe kennedy hated the fact that it appeared in the new yorker. That was not a big enough magazine. Right. Life wouldve been great but the new yorker was a little pie for him. So then he badgers harold ross into having it vindicated in readers digest. Another magazine that harold wrote. I dont know how kennedy twisted his arm but it did vindicate in readers digest, he got his story. Another thing about the new yorker and the war years was the socalled pony addition appeared and a smaller addition which is available the key thing and driving up circulation hersey has this relationship with aincredibly on the pt 109 piece. Then what happens . How does it get to japan . How does he break through the walls of the coverup . One should never assume the first lesson of life. [inaudible] i was initially a very bad journalist, i chastise myself publicly for that right now. Herseys hiroshima has this feeling of it expose. I assumed it was him getting in and getting out somehow unilateral because of the reporters had made a run of the story that way. They went there crazily length he has mixed feelings about hiroshima, nagasaki you think is a total criminal action. He knows hes going to cover the bomb but he doesnt know exactly how just yet. Then he has lunch with william sean and they talk about the coverage. They realize that what had been missing his stories about the human toll, what happened to the human beings under those bustling crowds . Nobody was reporting on that. Its likely that they knew the extent, or some of the extent, of the restrictions being placed on foreign and japanese reporters because the Journalism Community was very close knit back then. A lot of lesley blumes wartime friends and colleagues were part of the occupation so they probably knew the only way in was, he wasnt gonna prattle about abpaddle a boat from guam. He would need clearance to get in. He was gonna do a major reporting trip that started in china, the country he was born in, apply for clearance. He would be accredited in china and then having reestablished himself with the military there, apply for clearance to get into tokyo. And it works. He gets cleared. One things interesting to me in reading your wonderful book, lesley, the reporters in this period both have in a certain sense, less freedom because everyone expects you to conform to the needs of the military, there is a patriotic reflex but at the same time, more because whole business of postvietnam of the military wanted to keep reporters as far as humanly possible wasnt in place yet. They expected to be traveling with guys who be writing. It was a buddy system throughout, thats one of the things that gave her see this huge advantage because hersey had been play buddy to the military during the war. He had written glowing profiles of many military figures including jfk. He was a commended war hero. He helped evacuate wounded marines while covering the story, covering a battle between us and japanese forces. He had written a really glowing biography of general douglas macarthur, which he later thought was so auditory he wanted to take it out of circulation. That definitely helps the cause even though hiroshima and nagasaki were restricted topics, they were really vetting journalists coming and going into japan. Hersey had been seen as a relatively innocuous a liable man works exactly. Company man still. He gets from china, he gets to japan. When he gets to hiroshima, tell us about how he does that, the extraordinary step forward is that he talks to people rather than reporting on events, how does he begin to find the people who will form this spine of the great pc right . That was an incredibly important departure and it might seem obvious now to focus on a few individuals to bring out the Human Element of the story but it was pretty revolutionary then. Especially because what he was proposing to do was humanize japanese victims and japanese were enemy number two because they attacked us directly. When hersey eventually is admitted to tokyo abhe did not have free reign there just because he sent the company man, hes not being monitored by staff, which is macarthurs operation there. The fbi knows hes on the ground to notify the fbi dc. At the same time, you dont want to read too much into it, what you ate, how you thought, how many cigarettes you smoked every day. They gave hersey clearance to go to hiroshima for two weeks, which might sound substantial but it includes travel in 24 to 36 hours of travel to get there in that time. When he gets there he has the help of the german priest who had been living there and had returned who spoke english and through this german priest one of the japanese minister who had been educated at Emory University and therefore spoke english not only gave her see their own testimony but they also abultimately a coming back to something that preoccupied is me, i dont think frivolously, one of the things that makes hiroshima such an important work of journalism and literature is that hersey saw abeven as he revealed had a very specific novelistic pattern and template he was applying to his material. It wasnt just enough that he was going to show it events from the individual point of view. He decided he was going to, it had to be six individuals whose lives intersected. Also their lives in the moments that leading up exactly where they were at that moment of detonation and how their paths crossed. In the hours and the days of the aftermath. Sometimes pretty shocking. It was like he was leaving a neighborhood a neighborhood narrative and because he had people they picked their profile were regular folks and he was creating empathy for them because american readers, not all of them were going to be able to understand the civics of how the bombs worked or the allout nuclear war looks like but they would be able to relate to the stories of young mother with three young schoolage kids, young clerk, young doctor going about their business feeding their families, getting on the bus to work. I was thinking specifically that as you mentioned, Thornton Wilders novel clearly was gave him an organizing principle with the story of how six strangers share a moment of common disaster. Thats quite theoretical. He literally did have that as inspiration. He got the horrible flu, laid up a the china flu, lesley. Oh, god. [laughter] you read while there is great nowabthats the way i can tell this story of these intersecting lives. Absolutely, it gave it a really cohesive structure to tell it and he knew he wanted it to be novelistic because, lets face the fact, people had real intentions not to read this, it was going to be graphic, it was going to confront people with the fact that they had had what one person called a 4th of july attitude about the bombing, everybody had every incentive to abhot potato out of their hands. If he could make it novelistic for people not to put it down, it was almost like he was a trojan horse reporter getting into japan, coming back one step, what did if anything, what did the occupying force, the army, think he was going to be doing and hiroshima, basically a followup piece about the aftereffects of the bombing. They knew he was going down there and there is evidence there was evidence they knew he was out and about talking to people, they had started letting other reporters and who were not reporting on the aftermath of hiroshima it was considered a old story by that point. When reporters were admitted, they were there to do the more fluffy stories, if you can believe that. Hiroshima, a year old, going into fluff. It was like this is hiroshima coming back, people are back and not just building it. Correct. If the military had something in mind it was hiroshima coming back. It wasnt so bad. That was the story that they imagined. You and i have both reported thi