Special Episode: The Navy's Role in Hiroshima with special guest Admiral Sam Cox 

I took my then 14 year old nephew to the Enola Gay display at the Air and Space Museum and we were fortunate to meet an elderly gentleman who was a copilot of a B29 flying off Saipan. What an amazing afternoon. We had the best history lesson ever. At the end of the display there was an opportunity for viewers to leave comments, this veteran summed it up in one sentence, he listed his name, rank and unit, plus the following: "Before you attempt to change history, it is always a good idea to make sure all the eyewitnesses are dead!!" God Bless all the people of the Greatest Generation for our freedom.

The US navy had their own Nuclear Program running in WWII aimed at producing a power plant for naval vessels. Run by Philip Abelson at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, he perfected a method of separating U-235 from U-238 by a process called liquid thermal diffusion isotope separation in which the two isotopes in liquid form were separated by heating them up in a vessel that had a cold wall on one side and a very hot one on the other. This set up a convection current within the vessel that made the lighter U-235 isotope migrate to the top of the vessel and the heavier U-238 sink to the bottom, from which points the two isotopes were removed from the mix. Abelson set up a pilot plant at the Naval Yard in early 1944 and started getting good results, His project was totally separate from the army run bomb programme. At the same time Oak Ridge were having serious Issues getting both the gaseous thermal diffusion isotope separation and electromagnetic isotope separation processes to produce any large output of U-235 due to technical problems. Deke Parsons got to hear about Abelson's work through his contacts within the Navy and passed them on to Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. Oppenheimer then told Groves that the process should be bought into the U-235 production project at Oak Ridge and Abelson was brought onboard the Manhattan project to set up a plant at Oak Ridge using his system. The other thing that Oppenheimer did was tell Groves that instead of using the three processes for Isotope separation in competition, better extraction rates could be done by feeding the output of one method into the input stage of one of the others. If memory serves Abelson's method was the first stage for most of the U-235 produced that went into Little Boy. Another fun fact Abelson was involved the first major study into putting a Nuclear Reactor into a Submarine. His work was a major part of the evidence used by Rickover to get a nuclear tea kettle into a boat.

I am alive because of the A bomb drops. My father was a Navy fighter pilot flying close air support and anti-kamikaze missions at Okinawa and he would have been part of the invasion force... Thank you Capt Parsons. It was wonderful to learn these additional facts about the Navy's role. --W.C. Small MD, formerly LCDR MC USNR

We had a local man who was a WWII veteran whose experience during the war was a testament to enduring unbelievable hardship. He was a Navajo code talker. He had been captured by the Japanese who tortured him to get information out of him about the code talkers. He never gave them what they wanted. He was moved to a POW camp near Nagasaki just before the bomb was dropped. He said the POW camp was spared annihilation because it was behind a low hill that protected the camp from its thermal radiation and then the shock wave.

Very interesting presentation. It's ironic that a weapon of mass destruction could actually save lives, given the alternative. But what I don't understand is that a segment of the Japanese military elite would still be willing to fight to the bitter end. This clash between the US and Japan, in my opinion, was as much about a clash of cultures as it was about economic empire building. Thank you for all your hard work. Excellent podcast series.

OK, as requested, my review of the movie "Oppenheimer." Happy to see that against “Barbie,” a movie about history was doing relatively well-theater packed. But this movie was done in typical Christopher Nolan film, most shots lasting 5 seconds or less resulting in a jumping narrative style, that when combined with the technical jargon and the too loud “Hans Zimmer-like” soundtrack made it difficult to understand, even for a physics-degreed guy wearing hearing aids. Warning: spoiler alerts contained below! BLUF: they get the history mostly right, although they attribute certain conversations to the wrong people. Nolan says he did this for clarity in the reduction of number of characters, but in a movie with more than 30 main characters you are expected to track, I can’t see how adding one or two more to correct the history would have hurt. Did I love it? Well, I liked it a lot. I loved the presentation of the physics. Brought me back to my two undergrad courses in quantum theory. Loved the discussion of whether the bomb would set the atmosphere on fire. That was one of the conversations attributed to the wrong guy-the actual guy who did those calculations was one of my grad school profs Robert Hamming. In the movie Oppie asks Einstein in one scene to do the calculation (never happened) and in another scene it was an unnamed character (likely my old prof) who tells Oppie that the probability is “near zero.” Fun note: in one of my grad school courses “Hamming on Hamming” he went through those equations with us. And I loved seeing Tom Conti’s portrayal of Albert Einstein. Having read all of Einstein’s books in my undergrad days, Conti plays him exactly as I have imagined him. Another fun scene is when Oppie starts teaching his first class (Berkely) and tells his one student who is trying to understand quantum, “You’re looking at it the wrong way.” I wish I had that prof. I was looking at it the wrong way in undergrad too, but nobody was ever bold enough to tell me that. But I did not like the gratuitous sex, which added nothing to drive the story forward and seems to have been inserted just because it’s what British filmmakers do. So back to the movie: It ran for 3 hours and didn’t feel like it. There were slow parts but I never found myself looking at my watch. The chronology was difficult to follow despite jumping from color (paradoxically, for the sequences happening in the 1940s-1954) and black & white (for the Senate scenes with Admiral Lewis Strauss-played by Robert Downey Jr- mostly taking place in 1959). Strauss is the antagonist who never attended college, made enemies of Chester Nimitz, yet gets a Navy reserve “graveyard promotion” to rear admiral right after WWII and insisted on being called “admiral” for the rest of his life. He has a giant chip on his shoulder throughout the movie, which apparently was accurate. Was the movie accurate from a historical sense? Very much so. Even some of the more contrived and unbelievable scenes (such as the “more useful than a sandwich” scene which humiliated Strauss) actually happened. If you put differences in Nolan’s jumpy, distracting narrative style aside, his biggest miss with the movie is his failure to recognize that something can be “regrettable,” yet one still may not regret it. This is the matter Nolan goes back and forth with Oppenheimer at the end. Does he regret the Hiroshima bomb? Oppenheimer does not say. Yet Oppie clearly feels that the need to drop the bomb was regrettable. Nolan goes back and forth with this as if it is a paradox, but it’s not. Any sane human being regrets the fact that something substantial had to happen for the war to end. And as we cover in our episodes of “The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War” podcast, dropping the bomb was the least bad choice of many really bad options, one which actually minimized the loss of life necessary to end the war. Anyone who thinks otherwise has to ignore the facts of the conflict and many contemporary statements, most notably from the Japanese leaders themselves. Is “Oppenheimer” worth seeing? Absolutely-if for no other reason than we need serious movies to compete in the box office with comic book and toy movies else they will stop making serious movies. But whatever you do, stay to the end, that final scene with Oppenheimer and Einstein. The closing line of that movie may be one of the best lines for film ever written.

Not sure if anyone else caught this, but it was Leo Szilard (and Edward Teller) who convinced Einstein to write the letter to Roosevelt, not Enrico Fermi. Appreciate and enjoy your podcast - thanks for all you do!

This episode is so damn good and important that everyone alive should study it!

As a Boomer born in 1949 I have no problem with the use of the two bombs. My father was in the Army in 1945 stationed in California and scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan. Without the use of the bombs, I very well might not exist. Although warfighters had to weigh the horrors of Okinawa and Saipan the wanton destruction of Manila was critical to the evaluation of modern urban warfare.

I must assume that the Navy Bureau of Ordinance had NO assigned task with respect to the development and implementation of either weapon.

Seth, Bill, I cannot thank enough for this across the board review of WWII in the Pacific Theatre. Its informative, educational and brutally touching in so many ways and we appreciate your past and present services to our country in bringing it to us. Many talk about the use of this weapon as being inappropriate or wrong. Yet few know the many jobs associated and assigned to our military leadership. But in the top 3 is the reduction of civilian AND military loss of life. You guys mentioned along with Adm. Cox the buildings were made of wood and associated materials. Had we used Mustard Gas (which we had been mass producing) in the larger cities instead of the Atomic Bomb, the Japanese would have suffered untold hundreds of thousands of deaths and not to mention the long term suffering of those that survived its initial application. But the wooden homes would have held the gas to the extent of 2x its normal effective time. Truman knew this from my understanding. It was a tough call for any leader to make. And would have caused more deaths into the millions on both sides. No matter who made the call it was a heavy one and im glad it wasnt me. God Bless my father-in-law, a Navy SKD2C on Ford Island, who is still alive today. Intelligent, caring, dedicated and humble. I am most lucky to have known him, and I gained so much from his gentle guidance. Go Navy !

We had a Japanese woman that lived on the street. I grew up on that indicated to me into my parents that she had no qualms about the atomic bombs because she knew, and her family knew that the government, the military would never stop fighting that something drastic had to happen to stop them.

This subject always brings to my mind a bumper sticker I once saw many, many years ago. It read "If there had been no Pearl Harbor, there would have been no Hiroshima." It very wrong to view this comment in terms of it being a quid pro quo, but rather I think it best viewed as a warning not to open Pandora's box, and that the attack on Pearl Harbor can be viewed as being just that. That also reminds me of a comment made by Otto von Bismarck in which he noted that 'he hated war because he never knew how it would turn out." As regards Mr Tibbiets, I think it remiss to not take into account that by holding himself out to the public to defend the use of the weapon, he also walked into a very strong sentiment against nuclear weapons in general what was generated by the way the cold war developed into a standoff between two very large and potent nuclear powers. And this effect remains up to the current moment, thanks at this point largely to Mr Putin. And lastly, in his autobiography, Harry Truman notes that so far as he was concerned about the use of the weapon, anything that might prevent him from writing more letters of condolence to mothers who had just lost their son in the war was just fine with him. And there is a largely political aspect to all this which reflects upon what was then the blooming industrial/military complex. That was that there were two most unacceptable outcomes of the Manhattan Project. One was that we might have dropped the bombs and they didn't work as predicted, the other was that we sank all that money into a project which never came to fruition.

Saw the Oppenheimer movie yesterday with two of my children yesterday. Am first all happy to experience that they are interested in the 20th century history. Thankyou Bill and Seth for your balanced views on the war and this world class series, its very educational and entertaining at the same time. Cheers from Denmark

Young people today do not understand why we dropped the bomb. Time frame is me being a USMC vet going to college after one tour, I was appalled at a professor trying to teach how terrible we were for doing it. He would not budge or listen to rational points. Fast forward to present day and first talking to my to be wife and she simply didn't know anything more than pearl harbor then dropping the bombs as far as the Pacific theater was taught in school. She's listened to some of your podcasts and it's the first time she's every heard of places like Guadalcanal, sense then reading with the old breed really opened her eyes and puts things in perspective. Point being is the story isn't being taught so young people have no basis to judge correctly

Awesome. Two episodes of Unauthorized History and two episodes of Drach all in one week! Fantastic. Skipper Toti, please do an episode of your experiences with Admiral Rickover. A Rickover special episode is in order. I am totally fascinated with the engineer/scientist/naval officer. I would love to hear more of his war time experiences solving the complex problems the ships had during the war. Great episode guys! Keep em coming.

Apologies-- I misspoke at the end of the podcast. It was not Enrico Fermi who convinced Einstein to sign the letter-- it was Leo Szilard. Szilard tried but failed to recruit Fermi into his effort.

Great episode! I watched it twice. A big thanks to Admiral Cox for joining…

I was reading somewhere that Dick O'Kane and Pappy Boyington where both in the same Japanese prisoner of war camp. In late August 1945, they started to get cans of food dropped into the camp. Many asked Pappy, "Why are you not out there claiming a can of peaches or something good to eat?" His reply is "I made it so far, and don't want to get killed by a 5 pound can of food dropped from a plane!" I think both of them lost over 40 pounds in the camps.

Incredible episode. The intricate details of the reasoning for using the most horrific weapon ever devised are hard to hear, as the truth usually is. Its amazing to me how many people forget history, and the most important parts of history are these intricate details. Its easy to judge in hindsight, but even all these years later, you cant say that vision is 20/20 when looking through the lens of today. People forget how long the war was, and how many people died. This decision by the United States of America was one of a list of bad choices, but it saved more lives than it ended. That's the goal of any population at war, to end it as quickly as possible. Thanks to Adm Cox for his insights as well.

Thank you for another great episode. I know that if it wasn't for Truman's decision to use the atomic bombs that one of my Uncles (and I had 6 who served in the war) would not have come home. Uncle Walter was in the 1st Cavalry and they were assigned to Operation Olympic as a part of XI Corps and its planned amphibious assault of Ariake Bay, Kyushu. I urge everyone to look at the broad picture... the loss of life across the ENTIRETY of the remaining combat fronts and Japanese controlled areas. If the war had continued through an invasion of Japan, many months would have passed and many hundreds of thousands of lives, many of them outside of the Japanese home islands, would have died.

Around 2003, I had the pleasure of sitting next to a US Veteran from WWII. He was on a ship that was off the coast of Japan after the US dropped the two nuclear bombs on Japan. Japan surrendered but they did not know if some type of Guerrilla type warfare would occur in defiance of the Emperor. The fleet of ships sent radio signals instructing the Japanese to place all weapons in the town square including all guns, swords knifes,etc. They were supposed stay in their homes as well. He told me that they went ashore on landing craft just like Normandy. When the door opened they weren’t sure if machine guns would open up on them or not. Nothing happened. They went to the port along the docks and there wasn’t a soul. As they went into to the town, he described the mountain of weapons in the town square. It was so large you could not see the buildings behind the mountains of weapons. They looked at all the weapons and they could see cutlery from the homes including butter knifes. He was stationed in Japan for 3 years and he stated that he never made eye contact with a Japanese citizen. It was a truly defeated nation and he certainly appreciated the loyalty and respect the citizens for the Emperor. He stated he would have lived through a guerrilla style campaign. So, no he had no issue with the two nuclear bombs. IMO, Nuclear Warfare is done. If the US did not use any of them in Tora Bora after 9/11 after the attacks in DC and NYC. Where better to use them and send a distinct message to the world …….

Thank you gentlemen. My father was lost at sea when the USS Indianapolis was sunk. I did not know that it was written on the bomb, “From the boys of the Indianapolis”. It makes me sad and at the same time gives me a sense of pride. I would have rather have had a dad growing up. This truly was “the greatest generation”!

Good overview gentlemen, My basic attitude on the subject “we didn’t start that son-of-a-bitch in 1941, but we ended it” People I’ve met who criticize the bombing have all been ignorant of the history. For the year of the B-29 bombing campaign, we basically assigned the same value to human life as the Japanese had been practicing the whole war. Okinawa was a very realistic smaller scale example of how any invasion of the home islands would cost. The civilian population of Okinawa suffered heavy casualties as well. My take on the quotations of US general officers after the war against the bomb is: these men had been dedicating every waking hour to winning this war using the conventional means under their control. They were fixated on every aspect of these conventional approaches. That’s years of mental momentum focused on an invasion or blockade of Japan. Naturally these officers would have had lingering thoughts of ‘what if’. Also consider they had just been through 3-1/2 years of brutal war.

Very level headed well balanced episode, on a very continuous subject. Using facts- you’ve come to what I think is the proper conclusion. But, it’s healthy to question it every now and then👍

Another excellent episode. The role of the Navy is not widely known as it pertains to the Manhattan project. Great new information for me

I studied Japanese dance with a teacher who lived in Hiroshima during the war. She told me the many of the families of women and children had been moved to the outskirts of Hiroshima due to the fire bombing. Her husband died when the Atomic bomb was dropped as he worked in the city. She told me about walking the streets of Hiroshima searching for her husband.

Very interesting episode. My father told me that he interviewed for a position on the Manhattan Project. Presumably this was about the time when he graduated from College in 1943. Later he worked at NRL on Small (aka PT boat) radar. At some point he served as the Bomber/Navigator on a B-25 assigned to shoot down Japanese incendiary balloons. He was detailed to that job because he was a civilian who knew how to operate Radar.

defintetly gonna wathc, this series is a pure gem

There was a Japanese tradition of averting the Emperor's gaze and not looking at him. A sign of respect. Staring at him and even waving a fist would have been a better sign of displeasure

For those commenting or reading here Episode 225 with Richard Frank is worth reviewing even if you've seen it. I think the best and most prepared interviewer for historic and other serious topics is Peter Robinson of the Hoover institution's Uncommon Knowledge. At some point Seth and Bill will be candidates to be interviewed on that excellent podcast/channel. I don't think Peter has interviewed Rich Frank or Jonathan Parshall, but I'm going to write and suggest those two to him...

Such a sobering and thoughtful episode which looked at all sides of using such a horrible weapon. Thanks guys!

I like the statement "If there was not a Pearl Harbor, then no Hiroshima" - and I agree! I think it is great they picked the Indianapolis to deliver the nuclear materials to Tinnin. They could make 33 knots all day and night. If told to go at top speed for 3 days, and end the war so much sooner, they would have been delighted to do so, much like a car driver being told "Drive as fast as you want on the Autoband" and was told that faster is much better, they let loose with the speed. I can only wonder what the boiler room guys where thinking "Why are we going flank speed more than 24 hours?" When burning bunker oil, you need to remove the feed nozzles every once in a while and clean them. It is fairly quick to quick change one while underway. So they have 15+ nozzles on each boiler feed, they can take out 1 at a time, and clean them. At least 1 cleaning after 12 hours of run time. Maybe with really hot oil, they can run longer between cleaning. Running at high speed more than 24 hours, they can get that oil pretty warm! Another Awesome video! Thanks so much for getting these guys together to put this in the history lesson.

Yet another outstanding episode! I love you guys! I was able to visit Nagasaki once during a port visit to Sasabo. I saw the peace park and toured the city. I have to say that the people who I encountered there ware warm. This was in the early eighties.

Commodore, Seth, and admiral--- great episode!!!

Another outstanding episode gentleman. A very good and balanced discussion too of a controversial topic. I believe your right that not dropping the bomb would ultimately have led to many many more deaths both American and Japanese. Those who can’t see this are so blinded by their horror of atomic warfare that they can’t see this reality. Whichever alternate history you embark on (Invasion or Blockade and Starvation) the war would doubtless have gone on far longer with all its attendant horrors.

My dad, then barely 18, enlisted after Pearl. He was in every major naval action after Midway on a surface ship. He was mostly reticent about the war, but told me how terrifying night actions and kamikazi attacks were. As a pharmacist's mate, he patched up a lot of burned and wounded. He told me he and his fellow sailors were very anxious about a land invasion of Japan. He thought a million Americans would have died before the Japanese relinquished their fight to the death philosophy. He and his fellow sailors were relieved that the atomic bombs ended the war.

How do you say anything more than a fantastic episode. I've been studying WWII since I was 12 years old. My Dad and a lot of my Uncles served in WWII. I feel that I know a lot the history but I learned a lot more today. Thank you Seth, Bill and Adm Cox. I've got to tell my friend Mike not to miss this one.

My father in law was aboard USS Poole (DE-151) off Okinawa when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. His ship had already completed 18 convoy runs across the North Atlantic prior to transferring to the Pacific. He was greatly relieved after discovering that the atomic strikes shortened the war. Following the surrender, he spent time ashore in Wakiyama and Yokosuka with the occupation forces. He always swore that the atomic bombs were instrumental in ending the war, and had we not used them the losses and suffering would have been far greater. Incidentally Bill, I also have a copy of Paul Tibbets' book and photo with Enola Gay that he signed for me during his visit to the Pentagon. We probably stood in the same line waiting to meet him!

Excellent as always!!

Great to hear y'all especially on the weekend God bless y'all Mississippi and skipper

A great episode gentlemen! I know you’ll deep dive later in the series but this was a great warm up to that. Great insight by Admiral Cox! Can’t wait for Tuesday!

I came around years ago to a reluctant acceptance that their use was certainly justifiable and reasonable at the time, especially in terms of the cold calculus of saving lives. In addition to probably being decisive in the Japanese decision to surrender. The Cold War severely distorted how most people look at the original atomic bombs and the decision to use them. Don't be mad that we used them. Be mad that physics allows them to be possible at all. If we hadn't made them, someone else would have. If we hadn't used them in 1945, someone else would have used them later, and possibly a more powerful version instead of a beta test version.

I have talked to WWII Veterans who would be assigned to invade Japan. All supported the use of atomic weapons to end the war before an invasion was needed. So heavy were the expected US dead and wounded from an invasion, the government worked overtime to make Purple Heart medals. All the Purple Heart medals awarded in Korea, Vietnam, on to today's War on Terror are from that stock made for the invasion of Japan. I believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may very well have prevented the use of nuclear weapons to this day. I was a computer repairman in the USAF. Stateside, my system was the 465L Remote Communications Central (RCC). This system connected the Wing to HQ SAC and Numbered Air Force. The primary purpose, thankfully never done, was to pass the Presidential Emergency War Order. The authority to launch the Alert Tankers, Alert Nuclear Armed Bombers, and could be the launch codes for our ICBMs. Just before leaving Griffiss AFB, NY, the 416th Bomb Wing's 4 alert B-52Gs each were armed with 20 SRAM nuclear missiles. Each SRAM's weapon could be as much as 200K Tons. It doesn't take much math to figure that it would have taken the 509th Bomb Group up to 800 sorties with the A-Bombs back then to deliver the same destruction as those four B-52s.

Martin Caidin wrote an excellent book on the subject, called "A Torch to the Enemy". He goes into detail about the fire-bombing of Hamburg and Tokyo. It was an excellent read.

Great episode. Details do matter. I always wondered but never researched why a naval officer was the weapon specialist on the Enola Gay. Now I know it was a Navy operation with the AAF driving the delivery vehicle. Controversy will always surround the nuking of Japan. Weapons of war cause terrible damage, then we have lived in fear of nuclear war since August 6th, 1945. The USA lost around 407,300 to all causes in WW2. Estimations of invading Japan would have doubled the number of deaths. With the Japanese government planning to use women & children to combat invading troops, the number of civilian deaths would have been many times higher than the 2 bombs caused. Also, what about the effect on US soldiers being forced to kill women & children. It makes my stomach turn just thinking about this possibility. YES! Nuking Hiroshima & Nagasaki saved lives.

Like Oppenheimer said, the difference between conventinal firebombings of Japanese cities and the atomic bombings was in terms of psychological factor fairly distant, it took about 50-100 B-29 bombers to fully torch Tokyo and killed or displace the population of the city, but it took only ONE bomb carrying B-29 without fighter escort to mostly flatten a city and killed 70 thousand Japanese people, imagine that any other Japanese city would be bombed in the same way, that is why for the Japanese and their government would rethink their strategy of prolonging the war or wait for the Americans to really invade the main islands. Although they were like 50/50 in terms of surrender or not, the invasion of Manchuria by Soviets and the second A-Bomb on Nagasaki really made the Emperor and most Japanese leadership to decide to capitulate.

I saw in a magazine decades ago, an ad for black tee shirts that had the white image of a atomic bomb blast on the shirt front. At the top of the mushroom cloud was: "Made in America"; at the bottom was: "Tested in Japan". Always love it when Mare Island is mentioned!

In my family, my uncle had already been killed inside Germany, shortly before the surrender. My 15 year old father was in the marines in the Philippines preparing for the invasion of Japan (he lied about his age). So, yea, my grandmother definitely was not interested in loosing another son, so close to the end of the war. She also had three other sons aproaching military age; and she knew they likly were not going to wait for the draft, as their brothers had already gone. No one in my family debates the ethics of dropping the bombs.

Anyone who is a descendant of a WWII veteran who was serving the in Pacific in August 1945, those in Europe who were planned to be redeployed to the Pacific, and those in boot camp ought to think about whether or not they'd be here right now to view this video and read these comments if Japan continued to refuse to surrender. Same holds for Japanese who are descendants of those living outside Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I reckon Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis serving in the Pacific theatre of '45 would have found themselves landing in Japan as well.

It seems to me you 2 gentlemen were born for this, another excellent post.

Outstanding and informative program! These videos are and will be a great historical resource. Thank you.

You guys made some great points. I believe some people assume that the US leaders had no moral dilemma with dropping the atomic bombs, but most of them certainly did, yet they knew that it was the best choice among a bunch of bad options. I believe a full invasion would have been delayed for 6 months at least, while a blockade would have starved millions of Japanese, and fire bombing would have meant millions more dying agonizing deaths. Wars are terrible, and rarely offer good choices, it's the leaderships responsibility to bring war to and end as soon as possible, with the fewest casualties possible on both sides. The Japanese military leadership seemed willing to sacrifice it's entire population for this cause, and the US made a decision that spared millions of Japanese from that fate. No matter how much some want to question it in hindsight, it was the correct decision.

When I have add serious discussions on whether or not the bomb should be dropped, I point out the loss of life that would have happened either way without it. My favorite counter argument to the facts is; " well there should have been another way ". If you look at the topography of Japan you would have seen a bloodbath kind of like what we had in Italy. The only difference being the Italians and the Germans surrendering at points in the battles. Japan does not have much flatland. It is very mountainous due to the volcanic nature of the islands in the subduction zones to the east and south. What is very frightening is the number of aircraft that the Japanese had secreted in caves all over the islands. I have read numbers higher than 10000. In addition they had their piloted rocket-powered bomb set up to be launched off rails out of caves, they had Kamikaze submarines, torpedoes, speed boats and frogmen. Personally I think the Navy underestimated the damage that they would take and the Allies in general underestimated the number of casualties the Allies would take.

Thanks much. I have binged on your vids since finding the show and have enjoyed them all. You're appreciated.

1:03:48 Not ready until end of August. Well , the core was on the waterfront at SF awaiting shipping as of 9th August is the story. It could have been shipped by air even faster. Yes I know it was a U235 projectile that went by water to Tinian and the core I mention is Pu239.But that's the wording that's commonly given about the possible third bomn. There were several outer assemblies ready at Tinian for Fatman type bombs- The pusher shell in these is natural 238 metal, which is a metal refining problem to make. Earlier Seth talks of the difficulty in making Pu. That's only the half of it - you have to have process for removing the radioactive Pu239 from the urainium 238 it had been bred from. All this chemistry had to be developed and it had to be reliable and efficient. The discussion was well informed and well balanced.

My father served from 1944 to 1948. Part of his service was aboard the USS Davidson DMS 37. This ship plus seven other DMS were slated to be the minesweeper spearhead of the southern Kyushu landing sites. I firmly believe my siblings and I would not be alive if the bombs were not dropped. Context means a lot.

I've to the Peace Museum in Hiroshima a couple of times. I agree with your guy's takes on the lack of context there.

Thank you guys for shedding more light on this subject.

Thank you for a great history series. You need an episode with a discussion on how both USA and Japan misinterpreted the culture and determinations for victory.

In August, 1945, My father was on board the USS Nashville as an Electronics Mate 3rd Class assigned to a beach master's team for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu. My Father-in-Law was assigned to an Army Division designated for the same invasion. After the surrender occurred, my Father-in-Law told me his unit was unloaded on the beach they were supposed to assault. His only comment was "the beach ended in tall bluffs with many artillery and machine gun emplacements. It would have been suicide." Both my father and father-in-law were grateful the Atomic Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They never believed that President Truman had a viable alternative to dropping the bombs.

Big Big Thanks, Super Interesting

Excellent episode. Congrats to all of you.

Captain Toti, I believe that the Japanese turned their backs on the Emperor because they were not supposed to look at him. They did the same to MacArthur and there was trouble until this action was explained to the US authorities. My understanding is that it was not disrespect, but the opposite.

Admiral nails it saying "every option was bad." Those 2 bombs, combined with all the ordinance during 1937-1945, changed earth's environment forever. Indeed, Oppenheimer's "I Am A Destroyer Of Worlds" rings true in 2023.

My thanks to for explaining this and without Pearl this wouldn’t have happened at this time All ignorant comment is just as the admiral explained “arm chair quarterbacks “ They forget the sacrifice of all to stop this continuation of war If we forget those who stood against war we are going to repeat history Thankyou Admiral Thankyou Bill Thankyou Seth

20:00 got to say that the story the after meeting-house isn't unique the same happened in UK in 1940/1941 at Bristol, Coventry, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Cydeside and in particular Southwick /London where in particular Churchill was told to where to stick it by women trying to salvage their belongings when he came around with his "We can take it" and was told promptly, "You might be able to in your safe bunker/hideaway but we can't anymore". Significantly both in Bristol and Plymouth had siginificant problems getting civilian workers returned to work (Plymouth naval base and Bristol aircraft factories) Coventry was a martial law situation -again many people decamped into the country disrupting factory work -Coventry being tank, vehicle, aircraft and weapons manufacture centre. But in all cases normality was restored, eventually. Same happened in Germany but the totalitarian state was far more brutal in dealing with dissent, including executing Berliners for "bread riots" but for the most part the placards saying "our homes may be broken but not our spirit" was Goebelles-esque propaganda stunt. That said it is surprising how fickle a civilian population can be, once "enemy" soldiers appear the nerve often changes and not to the advantage of the attacker. And FYI within on August 6th 1947 Hirohito was welcomed to Hiroshima as a hero.

Excellent episode gentleman! Thank you

Thank you for putting this episode together. I haven't been to the museum in Hiroshima but I do want to go at some point. It is useful to remember that from the perspective of the victims on that day, they really were just going about their day, when out of the blue a cataclysm happened. That POV is not necessarily wrong. The babies and little kids knew nothing or almost nothing about the war. The older kids and adults certainly knew about it, but to what extent that shaped their daily lives probably varied. As Americans, I don't think we need to have such a chip on our shoulder about justifying the slaughter. Our leaders did what they did and generally tried their best. For anyone who knows WW2, the events speak for themselves.

My dad was in the 20th Air Force as ground crew in the 501st bombardment squadron. They targeted the oil refineries, and they flew the last bombing mission of the war. They won two battle stars, one for not losing a plane in combat, the other for the 90+% destruction of the refineries, and a presidential unit citation with an oak leaf cluster. Dad brought back a photo album, several recon photos showing the Diet complex, and the emperor's palace. Also Tokyo after the fire bombs. If you would be interested I would share them with you.

As a mater of fact , in the first half of the twentieth century the Empire of Japan never once conducted itself in an honorable way.

My father was part of the crew of a Navy B-17 at the end of WW2. He was in training to support the invasion of Japan. He was told to expect not to come back.

Rarely mentioned is that about 250,000 people were dying each month in Japanese occupied China and Southeast Asia, and any delay would have seen those deaths continue. And the Nagasaki bomb was critical. The Hiroshima bomb was uranium and the Japanese knew how hard it was to separate the fissile U-235 isotope, and concluded that the US couldn’t have more than one. The Nagasaki bomb was plutonium and they knew that plutonium could be produced in quantity so the US would have a stream on more bombs.

The British nuclear research “Tube Alloys” project fed into the ‘Manhattan Project’ looking at bomb designs.

Good informative show. An observation. According to Richard Frank, Hirohito had decided to surrender on the evening of 8 August two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but the bombing of Nagasaki happened before he met a second time with the big six. The second bomb strengthen his decision and forced the big six holdouts to vote for capitulation.

I had kind of avoided watching this episode. Silly me. Very interesting and educational. Thank you.

I do believe that back in the 90's the Smithsonian tried to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay and rewrite its history as one of regret for dropping the bomb on Japan. There was outrage from veterans groups that resulted in the plexiglas encasement of the display to prevent vandalism and the display's eventual removal. These actions by the Smithsonian leadership led to someone stepping down (whose name escapes me) due to the backlash of its efforts of atonement to Japan.

Again you gentlemen provide human context to written history. As a 594 Torpedoman I WELL remember the SubRoc. In the moment; the gravity of exactly what is available to use in warfare( thank God we didn't have to) is lost. I retrospect; you ask yourself how we got to this point of destruction.

The toughest topic to date. Well handled!

Hiroshima was in the Australian occupation zone which is why so many Australian personnel and journalists were able to make their way there to have a look. Australian journos were the first to report on the devastating impact. Such was the poor state of the British/Australian relationship at the end of WWII, the Australians initially proposed to field their own occupation force directly under MacArthur. After a number of British concessions including overall command and a steering committee located in Australia, Australia finally agreed to participate in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. Australia provided went on to provide most of the BCOF throughout the occupation. Indians, Brits and New Zealanders all left after a short period of time. It was not just Americans that would have died in the invasion, British Commonwealth navy, army and air forces would have been there as well.

Thankyou gentlemen.

I appreciate the discussion about what Japan's rulers were thinking at this time. In Fall 2023, we see very clearly the same brutal and dismissive view of human life in the actions of Russia and Hamas. Their rulers care about their people only in how they can be enriched and empowered by their sacrifice and servitude. I wish people weren't capable of thinking that way, but we are. This is a concept that is so very foreign to a Western, humanistic mindset, and it undermines the logic of many academic and pseudo-academic discussions today.

This is awesome!!!! Bonus video!!!!

The definitive history of the development of the atomic bomb is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It's a fascinating read and covers the physics aspects in terms a layman can understand, plus the history of how atomic theory itself had developed prior to the war. Highly recommended. I've read it three or four times.

Thanks!

Nice job, thanks!

Nice, I love bonus episodes

Great video, thank you.

Two videos in a week? Love it

At the time the bombs were dropped my father was in the Philippines Training for the invasion of Japan. He was in a Quartermaster Battalion and they were going ashore on day two or three and would be supplying two Infantry Divisions and providing their own security. He was very glad when the Japanese surrendered.

As a (further) service to history and this country, I am asking Seth and Bill to take a very deep dive into Operation Olympic, and any following plans to win the war without the use of nuclear weapons. The comments here are reasonably in agreement with you, but there are so many other videos and comments that will not recognize the reality of the need to drop those bombs.

27:40 I think what Capt. Toti meant to say that U-238 is non-fissile (ie, not able to support a chain reaction), as U-238 is still somewhat radioactive.

Thanks! Sorry but I somehow completely missed this. Caught the reg. show last tues., since this show is pre-recorded I'm still in the "Fog of Media", can't know if they worked Bill to exhaustion or not. We got your Back Bill.

Great show gentlemen.

I think this negative evaluation of past eventa is a midset mechanism that is in constant use. Namely looking at the past through current social norms. The (well, not bad itself) need to see war and all war events as evil ones make people to evaluate the past through such a standard. The truth is - even while we consider war atrocities as indeed evil ones - the past mindsets are different from today's one. And the decisions past mindsets made with information and evaluation at hand were valid ones - even if cruel or wrong . And that is almost universally true about any historical events we today see as evil ones - Roman wars, Crusades, Hundred Years' war, Napolecnic wars - pick one. All of them people may see as bad ones from current point of view. But all of them were actually inevitable and valid in their times because of the situation and mindset. The same is with the nuclear bombardement of Japan. Yes, it would be best if that could be avoided. But also the decision making process to carry this on was valid in its own right at the time. With that I just write it was another fine episode. I like that you bring out top brass like admiral Cox, who have many interesting things to say and can do it like professional podcasters (I guess that's a part of admiral job sometimes).

Thank-You

There is just about Japanese culture. Dawn on August 29, 1945, the American occupation of the Japanese home islands began. Eight hours after the first troops from the 11th Airborne Division had secured the airstrip on Atsugi, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, arrived. Japanese soldiers guarded the route to the city of Yokohama, the location where U.S. headquarters would be set up. Just as they had often done in the presence of the emperor, the guards turned their backs to the conquering American troops as they drove by in a gesture of utmost respect.

Without reading prior comments, I read many years ago that the high level precision bombing was instituted with no decrease in plane production in the normal factories that were destroyed. When the low level incendiary raids took place, production took a nose dive. Much respect to any other commenter.

Great episode guys. The "debate" about use of the atomic bomb is actually one of the least serious - among many unserious ones - related to US military actions in WWII and since. Of course you had only limited time to touch on the key points, and how the actual history renders the discussion essentially moot. The "revisionism" is shoddy and unserious. (One minor point that usually receives insufficient emphasis, and which Bill and Adm. Cox fortunately touched on, was that there was hardly a "decision" to use the weapons, in the sense that it is imagined decades later - a significant % of the country's GDP was being devoted to these bombs, not using them was not a serious consideration). For those interested getting a good intro to the actual facts and history that framed these events, a few book suggestions: Japan's Struggle to Surrender (about the political dynamics at the top regarding surrender) Downfall (Richard Frank) Japan's Longest Day (Japanese group-sourced account of the coup attempt and the struggle within the leadership over the surrender issue) Hell to Pay (detailed look at invasion planning and casualty issue) For Capt. Deke Parsons, the book Target: Hiroshima is a good account of his incredible war-time ordnance accomplishments. And for lots of interesting color on the 509th and the Nagasaki mission, War's End by Bock's Car's pilot, Charles Sweeney. The mission was wild, Adm. Cox teased this a bit in this episode, but the book is well worth reading. Including for the truly incredible, "unauthorized" post-surrender *visit* to Nagasaki by Sweeney and some of his crew - even before the scientists and military personnel waiting offshore received permission to land in the devastated city!

Wonderful show, gentlemen. I learned a lot. I have little patience with defenders of Japan or those who simply focus on the bombs. I note also that Hirohito's capitulation message contains a outrageously self-serving statement: "Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. So, through Japan's magnanimous gesture of accepting the Potsdam Declaration provisions--they saved human civilization. A disgusting assertion. Japan has never accepted responsibility for the war and their inhumane behavior all over Asia.