#PRESIDENTS WEEKEND: HARRY TRUMAN: 6/8: Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II by Evan Thomas (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Surrender-Three-Countdown-World/dp/0399589252
At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war “at once.” Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?
So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb—and Japan’s decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who had overall responsibility for decisions about the atom bomb; Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito’s Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender.
Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as the U.S. nuclear program progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson’s recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.
To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.
1933 Tokyo
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batch with Evan Thomas. His new book is Road to Surrender, three men in the |
| 0:08.9 | countdown to the end of World War II. We go to Tokyo. It is August 6th, August 7th. The bomb has been |
| 0:16.7 | dropped on Hiroshima. The big 6th are learning that something has happened in |
| 0:22.3 | in Hiroshima that is unusual, |
| 0:25.6 | except they're extremely reluctant to believe it. |
| 0:29.1 | Togo at this point is still doing what he can lobbying for a diplomatic surrender and not the |
| 0:38.8 | final battle that will kill sometimes they boast about killing a hundred million Japanese, along with all the |
| 0:45.0 | Asian peoples who will be, are dying at the rate of 250,000 a day. |
| 0:50.6 | Togo goes to the Emperor. |
| 0:53.0 | Foreign minister asked for an audience with the Emperor and he goes to Hirohito. |
| 0:59.0 | What does he tell the Emperor and what does the Emperor, |
| 1:02.0 | how does the Emperor react to news of one bomb destroying one city? |
| 1:07.0 | By after the bombing of Hiroshima, although the Army is in denial and doesn't even want to believe it is an atomic bomb, |
| 1:16.7 | the Emperor is starting to come around. He is, he's mad at the military because they're not being |
| 1:22.1 | straightforward with him and his own court is telling him that 100,000 people have died in Hiroshima. |
| 1:29.0 | And the Emperor starts to see, whoa, you know, the next bomb could be coming for me for the palace he's not |
| 1:36.0 | totally wrong about that and so he wants to push up the diplomacy with Russia you you know, get this done. |
| 1:44.0 | By then he wants peace. |
| 1:46.0 | He's on Togo's side by then. |
| 1:48.0 | But the wheels are turning here and the next day the second bomb hits the |
| 1:55.0 | Nagaaki. |
| 1:57.0 | Yes, we go now to other points of view on the big six. |
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