Atomic bomb test in new mexico on july 16th 1945. The document key events leading up to the 1945 bombing in hiroshima japan. The author than describes in detail. Thanks very much you can all hear me i hope. Thank you so much for coming on the most wonderful evening and this glorious city. Which my daughter has completely fallen a love with. Its great that you could all come here to this institute to hear about the atomic bomb. I havent really made any notes but i really want to talk to from the heart what this book is and what it means to me, and the journey that i have taken over the last two and a half years since i started the documentary. I was asked to make this documentary back in april 2003. By a friend of mine who owns a company in a london called line television. I did Everything Possible to resist the offer, to make this film. Not because the mommy was appalling which it was. But because this is a really terrifyingly difficult and complex and frightening and challenging subject to have to tackle. You are dealing with one of the several events in World History obviously, people use all kinds of cliches, i use them myself about the world changing forever. Nothing ever being the same again. And yet, actually, what happened in my case was the thought buzz around in my brain and it would not go away and it did not go away and finally, almost reluctantly, i accepted this offer and started to make a film. The film i made, really, was exactly as it was described. It was a 24 hour story, a story that starts at 8 15 on the morning of august 5th 1945. And ends 24 hours later, 1903 feet above a clinic, in the middle of hiroshima on august 6th. It took me to so many different places and people, and became in a way almost an obsession with me, which is a dangerous thing for film maker and writer. But in an instance, i decided after that at this subject was something i could not leave. And i would write a book about it. This is the product of that book now. I just say this, i remember somewhere in the middle of my research, about a year ago, i started a journey that took me around the world. It was a journey i was very privileged to take, thanks to my publishers. I went to, first of all eastern seaboard of the United States, i was in this city, new york, i want to cross the new mexico. A lot of time in new mexico. And then san francisco, and then actually eventually across japan and then finally down to the tiny island of in the western pacific. A little dot in the middle of nowhere. Where is where the first atomic missions actually flew in 1945. It then eyelet, i had a very strong experience i just want to share with you. In some ways it kind of encapsulates the feeling im trying to put a cross in this book. Its a very small its a size of men hannah this island. Its so much so in fact, the cbcs the construction battalions who built the huge air bases from which those missions and others were flown in 1945, actually named the streets after manhattan streets. So there was a broadway, there was a six three, hundred 12 streets. You go down 42nd street, its the middle of jungle, go left on broadway and go up on broadway and somewhere around a 125th street you find yourself a runway which the and no lead to cough to go to hiroshima. These days, the only way you can get to tinian island is from japan. Which is interesting. So in a sense what you do, you take off from japan, you fly 1500 miles to tinian. You land very near belie on saipan. But what you do, you fly that mission backwards. Youre flying over the same feature the sea, you pass over volcanic rock of evil jima, youre flying at approximately the same height that those guys wouldve flown. About 30,000 feet. Its quite a strange sensation. You are surrounded by japanese people on board that plane, and i mentioned two to three of them that this was actually the site of the topic mission they were going back to. What a shot today is a casino. Where people go to gamble. This is a southern and much of the island. If you think of it that way. In fact one case, the japanese tourist or gamblers that were with me, wanted to get their money back because they were so distraught of the idea. A place that was lost in history, was the site of the first atomic mission. I drove up in a sort of, jeep northwards. To find these runways. Which is still there, rotting in the jungle. This is the biggest air base in the world in 1945, it was absolutely massive. For parallel huge runways, the sort of size of kennedy airport. He was huge, its called north field. And it is completely empathy. Theres nothing there at all, its just jungle. And these coral runways, you can just about drive on. The other three have succumbed to that incredibly fertile jungle. And, i then took a walk away from these runways. Down a little pathway that actually traversed a quite think jungle actually. Well winds its way towards the coast, i was quite frightened im terrified of snakes. And god knows what, and i wound my way towards this coast. Through this little path. And found myself where i hoped i would found myself, which was on the site of the actual Assembly Buildings where the bombs which destroyed hiroshima and nagasaki were both built. Or finally assembled. Im standing on the foundations of this building, which ive read about and spend so many scientists, this was pro few short weeks. In the summer of 1945 possibly one of the most secret places on earth. If i had been there 60 years previously, i would have been shot on sight for being in this place. But there was nobody in there now, it is just me and the coin of bird and rustling of leads and the sound of the sea and distance serve breaking. Nothing else, just me. It was a very strange feeling to be in this place, where everyone had gone home so many years ago. For what was one actually one of the most Extraordinary Events in history. After that point, i realize ive traveled in the bomb footsteps. Ive been there in the bomb laboratory, i have been on the site in kyoto. Where the first atomic bomb was tested in the desert. Well talk about that in a moment. I had followed the bomb, the pilots were actually trained to deliver this bomb and this really windy dusty air base hundred 20 miles west of Salt Lake City called very remote. All the guys food from their hated it. It was an extraordinary air base, in which the state line between utah and nevada went right down the middle of the state. Hotel line lobby, so you could be sentenced on one side, and then get drunk on the other side of the lobby. Then i also went to san francisco, and underneath the golden gate bridge, in july 1945, the uss and indianapolis im sure youre familiar with, sailed the cargo of uranium in a 300 pound bucket welded on its way to tinian island. And from there, was taken and delivered and dropped into hiroshima. So in a way, i want to all these places. I follow the bombs footsteps. It gave me the sense of the focus what my book was about. I was going to take the seminal events, the most important three weeks of history of this project, and the most important weeks in history generally. I was going to try and follow, individual stories, from policy makers like president s and secretaries of war and a very key figures in the japanese at the time. Down to ordinary people in hiroshima, scientists bomb makers, people i met, interview, spoken to and obviously the aviators that trained in that windy dusty salt lake airfield and went over for so many months before they were shot off the tinian to do their job. Which they did so remarkably and terrifyingly well. Commemorated if thats the word word. This saturday. What i would like to do if you dont mind, it can be a little dull, but i would want to do this i feel quite strong. Two or three extensive my book, which will give your flavor what this is about and the in which its actually written. Before i do so, let me just stress its very important to understand, although of conceived and written this book in a way that i hope will be engaging to people who might not otherwise touched the subject, theyve been so many books written about hiroshima. But many people dont read about it. Because its daunting, its heavily footnoted, perhaps academic or whatever. But everything that i have written is as far as i can verify, true. Ive used my own historians training to universities to test myself and challenge myself constantly with primary sources. Many many interviews i have done around the world. The stories that i am telling a real stories. These are not fake stories, these are one of the extraordinary situations where the truth is much more extraordinary than fiction. Much more much more, and this instance. So let me start, a good place to start which is the test of the first atomic bomb in the new mexico desert. We are july 16th 1945, 15th or 16th 1945. The worlds first atomic bomb looks like a giant four tons fear. It has wires and things sprouting out of it, and it sits on top of 103 foot tower in the middle of desert and new mexico. There is a massive electrical storm taking place, one of new mexicos worst ever electrical storms taken place. Here is this bomb sitting and a little shack on top of this tower, in the middle of a desert. And everyone is panicking about the weather, because theres all sorts of concerns whether the bomb might actually trigger the bomb. There is also some serious concern that is bomb, once detonated, might possibly set fire to the earths atmosphere and destroy the planet completely. Nobody knows what is gonna happen when an atomic bomb goes off. There actually debates, there are bits taking place in base camp, which is not very far away from this town, obviously a safe distance away. Where nobel prizewinning scientists like family, and regal family are actually taking bets on whether or not this mall might destroy the earths atmosphere. By setting fire to it. This was a serious mathematical probability, all those slight, that this could actually happen. It was actually worked out as a mathematical probability. They dont know whats gonna happen, theres rain, theres win, theres thunder. In the middle of this, general growths, oppenheim or being a balm director and general grounds being this ruthless fat powerful as is owned up you said hard son of a bit, the manhattan prodding was privys job was to build the pentagon. This guy, these two guys together, formed a rather strongly marriage or partnership, decide there might be some security concerns. Theres a possibility that the japanese somehow, might get up there and sabotage this bomb. So they decide to send a man called donald horn, hes a physicist, to go and babysit the bomb, in the middle of the storm, in the very very last hours. He just gets the bombs card, hes the guy whos going to baby said the bomb. Ill just read you how the book starts, this is chapter borrow one of mueller. This is the flavor. This is the story by the way its told me by than a horgan himself. Cambridge massachusetts, and really this is exactly how he told to me. Sunday july the 15th, 9 pm. Trinity test site, 40 miles south of the corona mexico. Don honig, stared up at the tower. The wind and rain ripped through the steel ladders work. The storm that had been building throughout the day, had finally interrupted into all its fury. Flashes of lightning lit the sand andres mountain to the south, and the desert echoed with the crowd of thunder. The tower loomed 103 feet above warnings head. A network of black braces and girders reaching upwards like a giant electric pylon. By now, the clouds were racing solo across the sky, he could barely see the top. Which was just as well really. He did not want to think about what was at the top. He became the climb. The wet steel slipped between his fingers, and the rain stalling his eyes, making it difficult to see. He wore his safety harness. Round by round he put himself of the latter, once or twice he stopped and he could see the guards below him looking up like ants on a desert floor. They seemed a long way down. At the top of the tower, a simple cory dated ten shaq, rested on a square wooden platform. It was a flimsy cheaply made structure, obviously not designed to last. He wasnt much bigger than a garden should. Hornet stepped off the latter beside it, a huge dimly discernible shape crouched inside. There was a bare 60 watt bulb hanging from the roof. Hornet switched it on, and putin side. Hulking on a cradle, was a metallic gray bloated four ton steel drum. It took up almost every inch a space in the shack. Even by day, he would look ominous. But it looked especially so now, with the wind whipping the tin walls and the dim balls swaying from the ceiling. And the lightning and thunder edging near. The fantastic complex cable sprouted from the side, like a spillage of guts or arteries. And it was somehow not organic. A growing living autonomous embryo, waiting its moment of its birth. Acknowledgment of its essence, its creators have even given a name. A number of names in fact. They called it the beast. But gadget. The thing. A device. Sometimes they just called it it. One thing nobody ever called it what it actually was, the worlds first atomic bomb. Honig, squeezed out beside it. The rain pelted on the tin roof like 1000 hammer blows. The wind rattled the thin walls of the bombs cage. In a few hours, a scientist held jeremy mccain, standing in a concrete bunker inlet exactly 10,000 yards south to this tower, would initiate the final act in which was the biggest and most expensive scientific experiment in history. Mccabe would suppress a switch on a panel. And begin a 45 second count down. By the end of the time, a number of Different Things could happen. The bomb could fail to go off. Or could detonate with a very magnitude of explosions. Or is one nobel prize scientists, it could set fire to the earths atmosphere and in the process destroying all life on the planet. But difficulty, was that nobody knew. So that gives you a little flavor of the sort of tensions that were building. I decided to go straight in, i make no apologize for this at all, to go straight in with that story and start with that moment which begins three weeks before the book actually ends in hiroshima. What i think is also very important in the story, obviously very important indeed, is the japanese side of it. When i went to hiroshima, i met a lot of different people in hiroshima. A lot of people who were survivors from the bomb. Had many many stories, some of which i now i use in this vote. This is exactly how they were told to me, through an interpreter. There was one story, that really struck me. Which i never forgot. It kept turning around around in my mind. Ill tell you what the story was. And then how i used it. I met a man he must have been in his mid eighties, it is a name was i met him hiroshima. He was clearly someone who have very badly burned face from a bomb 60 years previously. We were talking about various Different Things. We were talking a little bit what hiroshima was like before the war. What was it lights in the months leading up before the bomb was dropped. He told me about, the good things and the bad things. The movies that people went to, for example the hit movie in hiroshima in 1945 it was a movie called for weddings. In fact, if you look at the newspapers from that time, which i have, and the paper because nothing was with you can see before their adverts for weddings. He told me about the grass, the people there, the rumors around the city. The city had not been bombed not significantly bomb compared to almost every single japanese city. And senior fire raids hiroshima not. Obviously had not, because it was becoming quite literally reserve. That is the air force this word for atomic attack. But hiroshima they sorted differently they had 90 what was going on. There was a rumors spreading around the city, which number people told me about. Actually president trumans mother was a prisoner in the city. She was being kept captive. That is why the city had not been destroyed. It was the personal orders of the United States to not bomb it, because his mother wasnt it. His mother was in fact in missouri many miles away, and the president s personal orders were the exact opposite. He told me all these things. We started talking about the day itself. And i just asked him a question, a simple enough question. Do you remember the night before the bomb . And it was a pause. And then he burst into tears. Which was terribly embarrassing to me. I did not want to upset him. And i said it doesnt matter. He said no not i want to tell you something. I want to tell you something that i have never told anybody before. I want to tell it to you. He said the night before the bomb was dropped, was the happiest night of my life. And then he started to tell a story, the story that he told was a love story. About a woman that he had fallen in love with and met earlier that summer, he was about 19 years old he was about 2021. She was sitting on a bridge when they met. They had fallen in love. They had spent most of that summer together, and what made it particularly poignant, respective families were not at this was a romeo and juliet thing. But they persisted because they loved each other. And then came the time when he knew he had to call out papers to the army. Both of his brothers had been killed in the war. He knew that he was facing death. There was no question about it. The americans were very soon going to invade. And he would be dead. He would be another statistic. So that night, he and rake up went to a very beautiful garden she can garden which is still there today, restored after the mom, its a beautiful japanese garden. They went into the garden, at night, the two of them together. And they laid on the grass, under the stars. And they lay for a long time together, and then for the very first time, they held hands. They did not kiss, they just held hands. Is all they did. And they laid like that for a long time, and then around midnight they parted. He went one way, she went the other way. And the next day, the bomb was dropped. And he searched for his lover in the ruins of the city. About the time that they parted, at that garden gate, the crew of a no law would have been just sitting down to their breakfast of pineapple fritters is what they had for breakfast. Pineapple fritters was his favorite, before being shipped out to the in a leg to take off to hiroshima with the bomb that would be dropped on the city. So those kind of contrasts, really made, made really point. Those are the stories that i told, thats what i want to share in this book. I want to start finish the book with that story, for various reasons. Particularly because it moved me hugely. I thought it was an interesting way to start the book, start with a love story. Two people were in the garden on that night, its not any garden its not any night. And its perhaps something some of us might be able to identify with. If i may, i will read you the preface to the book. This is not chapter one which i just went parts of, this is a preface before it. Sunday august the 5th 1945, she can guard in hiroshima. For the rest of his life, so now its why would never forget how beautiful the garden looked at that night. The trees, the lake, a little rainbow bridge, the ancient wooden tea houses dotting the ban