#PRESIDENTS WEEKEND: HARRY TRUMAN: 7/8: 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
⏱️ 12 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.
1940 Tokyo Detention Center
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm with Evan Thomas. His new book is The Road to Surrender, |
| 0:10.0 | Three Men in the Count Down to the End of World War II, the two bombs have been used |
| 0:15.0 | against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
| 0:17.4 | The Japanese cabinet is frozen. |
| 0:19.7 | It cannot move one way or the other. |
| 0:22.3 | It's negotiating in some fashion. The Americans, however, are |
| 0:26.5 | reacting to the after-action photos that they're seeing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
| 0:34.0 | And now the question is what comes next because the Japanese had not yet surrendered. |
| 0:40.0 | Heaven, the thinking is that there's another bomb I believe it will be ready the |
| 0:46.1 | middle of the month. General Marshall is aware there's another bomb. There might be |
| 0:51.6 | even more bombs I think he's asked how many can I have by |
| 0:54.2 | November 1st. The third bomb seems to be the one that the debate is, Mr. General |
| 1:00.2 | Spots, for example. Do we use it on Tokyo? What was their thinking about dropping |
| 1:04.9 | that bomb on the Emperor? |
| 1:07.1 | General Spots, although he's in his heart against dropping any atom bombs, |
| 1:12.8 | he comes up with the idea of bombing Tokyo. |
| 1:15.6 | Now that may sound pretty apocalyptic, |
| 1:19.7 | but actually his thought is to drop the bomb on a burned out area of Tokyo. |
| 1:25.0 | About 16 square miles were burned in March, another five, at least another five square |
| 1:31.0 | miles in May. |
| 1:33.2 | Much of Tokyo is just a burn ruin. |
| 1:37.0 | And so General Sposs's thought is |
... |
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