Captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 it is simply a clinical description of what happened when that bomb dropped. Then im going to read you a little bit about the reaction from the enola gay when the plane was literally just diving away from the bomb having dropped it. Just to set a little background the city. There are three planes up there. One carries photographic instruments. One carries observers. The third is the enola gay which is carrying the bomb. The bomb is dropped over a teashaped bridge in the center of hiroshima, which looks from the air like fingers of an outstretched hand. A lot of rivers. And this bridge at the center. Very distinctly standing out from 30,000 feet. The bomb tumbles out of the bomb bay and it drops for 44 seconds through the air. Indeed, in tests that were done for this particular bomb design the ballistics of the bomb were very poor which meant it actually made the most terrible sound when it dropped. A lot of the scientists i spoke to talked about this. I had never read this before but i heard about it from the scientists. It shrieked and wailed like a banshee shout and made a terrible racket. One wonders if this might have been the last sound that thousands of people heard without knowing quite what it was, the shriek as this bomb ripped at almost the speed of sound, its terminal velocity toward the ground. The bomb explodes 1903 feet above a clinic, 200 yards from the aiming point which is this bridge. I followed the bomb down at the end of the previous chapter and then i pick up just in the immediate aftermath of the detonation. So ill just read that bit to you now. The impact was at once immediate and catastrophic. In the first billionth of a second the temperature at the burst point reached 60 million degrees centigrade, 10,000 times hotter than the suns surface. The heat almost instantaneously expanding outwards across the city in a visible, searing, alien, unimaginably brilliant flash of light. Afterward, they gave the flash a name, lightning, the opening act in a terrifying drama. But for many who survived it was also astonishingly beautiful, a swirling wave of myriad colors, of electrically vivid greens and blues and reds and golds that burned into the retina and seemed to last forever. These witnesses were fortunate. Before the flash even ended, thousands of other human beings were already dead, burned beyond recognition by the extreme primal heat, instantly carbonized into little charred smoking bundles where they stood or sat or slept or walked littering what was left of hiroshimas streets. Within a one kilometer radius of the hypercenter the thermal energy contained in that single moments flash was intense enough to evaporate internal organs, literally boiling off intestines in less than a fraction of a second. Birds ignited in mid air. Telegraph poles, trees, clothing, thatched roofs, wooden buildings, household pets, and entire street cars spontaneously combusted. Steel framed buildings liquified like wax. Rubble and bone fused together in a single amorphous mass. Watches and clocks stopped suddenly, their hands permanently burned into their faces, forever recording the precise moment of detonation. Hundreds of fires sprang up simultaneously all across the city, overwhelming the fire breaks so carefully prepared in the months before. Accidents of clothing determined how and whether people died. Black or dark colored garments absorbed the heat, making it white or lighter colors reflected it. In some cases individuals were so completely incinerated that nothing remained but the shadows. One man was sitting on the steps outside a bank 260 meters from the hypercenter when the fire ball struck. All that was ever left of him was the imprint of his pose, scorched into the stone like a photograph. The heat was visceral and horrifyingly destructive as if the sun had suddenly descended to earth. It all happened in the first three seconds. So thats this is 8 15 in the morning japan time. 9 15 as far as the crew is concerned. If i may, ill just read you one other section which is the view of the same event from the air. This is from the enola gay at 31,000 feet. I need to give you a couple character names. As you im sure possibly know the commander of the mission is paul tibbits. He is the pilot flying the plane. Still alive today. Age 19. Age 90s. And the tail gunner is a man called bob caron, rather remarkable man. Died in 1995. I interviewed a number of people including his best friend at the time. He becomes one of the key stories in my book. He was the rear gunner. The enola gay was only armed with a tail turret. They took Everything Else and stripped the planes out completely so they were going to be able to carry this very heavy bomb. They basically are unarmed apart from the tail. Caron was a very small man about 55 and he fit into this claustrophobic turret. He carried with him all the way to hiroshima not only several packs of lucky strikes which he smoked all the way there and back but also a photograph of his wife and his little baby that were dangling in a photograph from his oxygen chart. So they were with him all the way there and back and gave him sort of succor if you like as he flew this mission. He also carried with him a camera, a little k20, called pistol grip camera that was given to him at the very last moment by the photographic officer of the squadron just before he boarded the plane. The guy said, look, youll have a ring side view. I want you to take whatever photographs you can. Dont reset the aperture or focus. Just press the button. Whatever you see just press the button. He gave this guy the camera and, sure enough, as the airplane dived away from the shock wave of the bomb trying to flee the blast wave as it rushed toward the airplane, bob caron picked up his camera. Ill just read you what he said. Bob caron saw it first. From his turret at the rear of the plane, he had a ring side view looking directly back at the city as they dove away. One minute he was peering through his world with goggles barely able to see. The sun through the darkness. The next he was blinded by a terrific flash. At that moment enola gay was 11 1 2 miles from the bomb blast. The dazzling light filled the plane. For several seconds every part of it was bathed in a strange, unearthly radiance. Tibbits experienced a peculiar tingling sensation on his teeth and the distinct taste of lead on his tongue. His fillings he later learned were interacting with the bombs readation. Nobody spoke. Then car ron yelled over the intercom, an incoherent animal shout of warning. Through his goggles he watched in astonishment as something that looked like the ring of a distant planet detached itself and came hurtling toward him. Before he could utter another word the shock wave had caught up with them. It smashed against the fuselage, tossing the big bomber up in the air like a scrap of paper. A voice shouted over the intercom in panic. The plane bucked violently under the impact. Tibbits fought to keep it under control. At that point enola gay was still traveling directly away from the city. Only bob caron in the tail could see it. He removed his goggles and now he was staring through his wind screen in amazement. Boiling up from the ground was a spectacular and terrifying mushroom shaped cloud, at least a mile wide, with a fiery, blood red core. It was climbing and expanding at an astonishing rate. A monstrous, angry, purple gray mass of turbulence punching up into the sky at almost 10 miles a minute. Beneath it hiroshima had completely disappeared. Everything down there was burning. Thick, black smoke covered the entire city, rolling out into the surrounding foot hills and into the valleys like larvae spilling from a volcano. Caron grabbed his camera and started shooting. The gun site got in the way. He asked tibbits to turn the plane 5 degrees, pointing the lens instead through the escape hatch window to his right. One after another he snapped images of the Mushroom Cloud. Seven of them in all, each frozen black and white frame capturing those first instance of hiroshimas destruction. They would stay in his memory forever. I can still see it he said years later. That mushroom and that turbulent mass. It was, he said, a peep into hell. The copilot bob lewis picked up his pencil and turned to his log. My god, he wrote, what have we done . If i live for a hundred years, i will never quite get these few minutes out of my mind. In fact, the pilot, copilot bob lewis who wrote this log all the way through the trip and which i found a fax simile of in the smithsonian, his previous entry to that is quite extraordinary and he says, there will be a short intermission while we bomb the target. Then you got this, my god, what have we done . Ifs quite chilling to read that. That is the moment when it happened. So that also gives you some sense of how im dealing with really the most difficult part of it all and really the last act of the book is about the impact of that moment and how it affected those people who were most actively involved in it. So anyway, thats really all i wanted to say from this perspective. And obviously i know ive gone way over time here. Ill get told off. Why dont i take any questions. Ill do my best to answer them. I think ive been told when people do ask questions, if they could go up to the microphone that would really help matters. Okay. Yes . [ question inaudible ] both sides was there consideration of just what how seriously it was the collateral and civilian damage considered by the u. S. Government . And im curious on the part of the japanese, it seems like the bomb probably allowed us to demand complete surrender. I mean, do you see this all let me just i should also comment briefly on this, actually just before the crews took off they were blessed by a priest, by the chaplain, which i think is very standard, who blessed their mission and blessed the men who were taking the war against our enemies. I think you said. I actually have the text in the book. Some of the guys were religious. Others were not. It was a very interesting sort of story. This guy bob lewis actually, actually not bob lewis. Another guy who was actually on the captain of the great artiste it was called, the observer plane, who went to confession that morning, but because of security restrictions was not able to confess what exactly it was he was confessing so it made for an interesting confession. But on the larger scale, its very interesting to talk about religion. The target Selection Committee i interviewed the last surviving member of the target Selection Committee that chose the target of hiroshima and in fact the first target as you probably know was going to be kyoto, the city of a million people, japans oldest, who actually its original capital, obviously the most important Religious Center in japan. One of the reasons why it wasnt chosen was because henry stemson then secretary of war had visited kyoto as a tourist twice in the 1920s and loved the city very much. As a result of his love for that city and his appreciation of its importance in japanese culture, he actually persuaded the president not to drop the bomb on kyoto. So because stemson happened to be a very happy tourist in kyoto, in 1926, kyoto was spared atomic destruction. When those guys are sitting around a table deciding which city to bomb, they actually decided at one point, or discussed at one point, the possibility of following the atomic bomb almost immediately with a full scale incendiary raid. The idea being to send in the bombers and drop incendiaries on the city at the point when it was most vulnerable. This was discussed very seriously. The reason they didnt do it was not for any religious or other scruple. It was because they were worried it would muddy the effects of the bomb. It would make the impact of this new weapon less obviously discernible and the most important thing here was Public Relations. The word is not mine. Its theirs at the time. The pr of the bomb was as important as the actual bomb itself. The fact this bomb was a new weapon and could shock the japanese into surrender was the key. So, you know, youre talking about a level, if you like, very cynical destruction that is a long way from any kind of obvious sense of christian ethic that i can understand. But also i can understand perhaps the context of the time in which that decision was taken. Yeah . Im absolutely amazed that even if there was just the slightest possibility of the earths atmosphere catching on fire and destroying all life on the planet that the u. S. Government would take that chance and test the bomb. Now, was it because the scientists felt they could rest safe in the knowledge that if indeed that did happen there would be no bad Public Relations afterwards . Why would they do that . Well, actually that is the point i do make in the book. That is actually true. They wouldnt be around to have to justify that. The mathematical probability of that happening were not huge. It was all to do with the temperature. Was the temperature hot enough literally to set fire to the earths atmosphere . A mathematician actually calculated the probabilities. They were relatively slight. Really nobody knew what was going to go on and the impetus to get this thing tested and moving was terrific. Its very important to understand the rollercoaster the Manhattan Project had become by this time. It was massive. Were talking about a project which cost 2 billion in 1945 dollars of taxpayer money, a project which employed well over 100,000 people. Entire cities had been built to man production plants which in themselves in some cases were half the size of the state of rhode island to make this happen. The entire silver deposit of the United States treasury had been melted down to get uranium processing parts working. This is huge you know . For some guy to say there is a slight possibility we might actually destroy the planet and all life as we know it, lets not do it, just wasnt real. Exactly as when people turn around and say why did truman make the decision to drop the bomb . Truman said it was no great decision. It was not a decision, his words, you had to worry about. The reason he said that, which sounds, you know, terribly calloused to us today, is can you imagine a situation in which truman sent in the boys into japan and then turned around to his taxpayers and said, you know, guys, i actually had a bomb which you guys have paid for. It cost 2 billion. But actually i decided not to use it. It could have ended the war and your sons neednt have died . I mean, it is not thinkable. Its not real. Thats not how the real world works as we all know today. It doesnt work like that. So its a rollercoaster. If i answer your question. There is no way these guys can say actually weve had second thoughts and were not going ahead. Just as worried there would be a dud. General groves, this amazingly large, tough guy that ran the Manhattan Project and a total chocoholic, one of his more endearing features, had an aide whose job was to top off the chocolate bars in his safe along with topsecret files of the atomic bomb. He said if this thing doesnt work he said, if this thing doesnt work, they will stick me in a dungeon so deep in Fort Leavenworth theyll have to pump sunlight in. So, you know, he was worried about a dud just as much as setting fire to the u. S. Earths atmosphere . Am i all right for time . Okay. Fine. Yeah . What channels did the government in tokyo become aware of the extent of the devastation and how long did it take them to glean that . Great question. Again, its part of the story of my book, actually. Its a very dramatic story. Within about there was actually, there were no sirens that went off when the bomb was dropped. It was there were warnings coming in as these bombers were approaching but it was too late to stop the sirens. There was an announcer in the radio booth at the hiroshima local Radio Station. He actually began to get the words out over the radio, broadcasting to the people of hiroshima there were three planes approaching and usually then an air raid alert starts up. But at that moment the Radio Station goes off air because the bomb drops. In fact he was literally hurled right up into the air and the entire Radio Station tilted on its side. At that point the tokyo operator of the nhk, Japanese National broadcasting, noticed hiroshimas station had suddenly gone off the air. 40 minutes later the signals people on the railways in japan railways noticed that there was a signal break in the line just north of hiroshima. They couldnt get through to the city. And about two hours after that, a reporter, and this is in the book, from the domai news agency, who would actually be in the center of the city just before the bomb had gone off but had gone to visit a friend of his and stayed with his friend because he was waiting for a suit or a pair of pajamas to dry and didnt get back to his home in the center of the city where he would have been killed, he then goes back in afterwards. Hes a reporter. He sends one of the most famous news faxes of all time to his he managed to get to a telephone and one of the very few lines still working and he manages to get the news out to tokyo and he says in this news flash that the city has been hit by a huge bomb and at least 80,000 people are dead. The guy, this is how he tells the story, and he is a primary source where he describes it in japan which has been translated for me, his boss on the other side, you know, in tokyo simply refuses to believe this could have happened. And he actually refuses to broadcast this or have anything to do with it at all. That night on the 6 00 news in japan there was a reference to some american bombers dropping some bombs on japan and some damage but nothing more, on hiroshima forgive me, and some damage but it was by later that evening that it was becoming obvious something horrific had happened to the city. At that point the news basically the president , the president of the United States statement, which said that an atomic bomb had dropped on the city of hiroshima with the power of 20,000 tons of tnt went across the airwaves, was intercepted by a guy in tokyo, who made six recordings of the president s statement, and then cycled through glistening potato fields, thats how he remembers it, to his superior and very quickly that news was passed to the prime minister. It was obvious then that something horrific had happened. As part of that statement the president made he said that the japanese do not now surrender. He said famously, they will face a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth before. Yeah . Mr. Walker, i lived in japan four years and ive been to new mexico to some of these places youve been to. Yeah. A few questions id like to ask quickly th