Original subtitles

North Field, on the island of Tinian, in the Marianas,

1500 miles south of Japan.

In the summer of 1945 this was the biggest air base in the world.

Here, on August 5,

the world's first uranium bomb was loaded into a B-29 bomber -

named Enola Gay after its pilot's mother.

Next morning, before dawn, the Enola Gay took off.

Its target - Hiroshima.

On April 12, 1945,

Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States, died suddenly.

The nation mourned its lost leader.

He had brought them from the depths of economic depression 12 years before,

now he had led them to the eve of victory in a world war.

Two months before his death, Roosevelt had been at Yalta, in Russia,

laying the political foundations of the post-war world.

Roosevelt and Churchill wanted to restore democracy to Eastern Europe,

particularly Poland.

They also asked Stalin to confirm that Russia would join the war against Japan

three months after the defeat of Germany.

In a cheerful atmosphere,

the "big three" thought they had reached agreement.

Yalta was really the high point of the relationship

between the three men.

Victory was in the air, the Germans were in retreat,

and so there was a good deal more talk,

in addition to military matters, of the future.

Poland again became

the most troublesome point.

And it's interesting that

both Roosevelt and Churchill

felt they had an agreement with Stalin.

The problem with Poland - as with all Eastern Europe -

was that the Western leaders wanted a freely elected government there.

The Soviets wanted a government friendly to Russia.

They thought the West understood and accepted this.

Poland, from their point of view, was not going to be an outpost of the West-

nor any of the Balkan countries.

They thought they'd had various agreements

about spheres of influence with Mr Churchill-

if they left Greece pretty much in British hands,

they could have certain proportional influences

in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, particularly Poland.

My impression at Yalta

was that the Russians thought

we had in substance accepted that demand.

After Yalta, Roosevelt lived for only two months.

Even by then, he and Churchill had become disillusioned

by the interpretations the Russians were putting on what was agreed there.

The very, very tough exchange of telegrams on both sides

between Stalin and Roosevelt

makes it very plain that Roosevelt, before he died,

knew that Stalin was breaking his agreements.

I think it went sour because

the military developments

strengthened Russia's hands

and that where the Russians had felt it necessary

to be considerate of Western opinion at Yalta,

a few months later they didn't feel any such necessity

because the war was going so well for them,

and therefore they swept aside some of the engagements they'd got into.

That certainly applied particularly about Poland.

Roosevelt had been seen as a friend by the Russians.

His successor, Harry Truman, was an unknown quantity -

both to them and to his own advisers.

I left, as soon as Roosevelt died, to go back to see Mr Truman.

I wanted to be sure that President Truman

understood the position of our relationships,

because there had been so much euphoria in the air

about the warm relationships that existed with our gallant allies.

And I got home within a week of the time Roosevelt had died.

I found, my first experience with President Truman,

I found he was an avid reader.

I found he'd read all the telegrams

and understood from those messages the difficulties we were going to have.

The arrival of their foreign minister, Molotov,

in Washington on April 23 gave Truman a chance to prove, as he put it,

that he would "stand up to the Russians".

Even as his arrival raised hopes on the thorny Polish question,

the world learned that Russia had signed a 20-year pact of friendship

with Poland's Warsaw government.

This Polish government had no pro-Western members.

They were all pro-Soviet.

The Western leaders were angry and upset.

Molotov saw Truman and his secretary of state, Stettinius - Alger Hiss's boss.

By that time...

the Polish situation had, to use a gentle word, crystallised.

The Russians were moving forward.

They seemed to be paying no attention to the kind of provisional government

that the British and Americans had hoped for.

Therefore protests - angry protests - were going to the Russians about that.

And Truman decided to have a showdown, at which he was gifted.

On that occasion, as you know from what is now part of the history books,

he accused Molotov, in effect,

of violation of the agreements,

as early as that.

This was a strange thing to do in the midst of a war, by no means yet won,

with an important ally - but he did it.

And it ended by Molotov saying:

"I've never been talked to like this in my life",

and Truman saying: "Well, keep your agreements and you won't be" -

just like a schoolteacher.

Stettinius, who'd been present, told me the next morning - he was still shaken -

he said, "I thought the whole conference was off."

Well, that was an unfortunate conversation.

It was one of the first diplomatic conversations that Truman had,

and I can only say that it was not a diplomatic statement on Truman's part.

He used good, solid Missouri language, which was very definite,

and Molotov had talked to other people that way,

but had had no one talk to him that way.

So he was very much upset,

and I gained the impression that he thought this was a new voice,

not Roosevelt any more, but a more aggressive president.

When he was sworn in,

Truman had said he would continue Roosevelt's policies.

But his sudden harshness with Molotov

now worried the secretary of war, Henry Stimson.

The day after the confrontation,

Stimson told Truman about something he thought could transform

America's dealings with Russia.

Stimson's biographer, McGeorge Bundy.

Stimson wrote to Truman,

"I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you

as soon as possible on a highly secret matter."

"I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office,

but have not urged it since on account of the pressure you've been under."

"It, however, has such a bearing on our present foreign relations

and has such an important effect upon all my thinking in this field,

that I think you ought to know about it without much further delay."

The next day, April 25, Stimson explained to Truman

that his view of foreign policy - Stimson's -

was dominated by the imminent prospect of atomic power,

and the terms which might be got from Russia

in exchange for sharing atomic secrets.

It was Truman's first detailed news of the atomic bomb

and its diplomatic potential.

He asked Stimson to head a committee to decide its military use.

By this time, in great secrecy, two kinds of atomic bomb had been developed,

one based on uranium, the other on a man-made element, plutonium.

The uranium bomb did not need testing - but there was only one.

The plutonium bombs - easier to produce in quantity -

would have to be tested before use.

The first would be ready by July.

A special unit of the American Air Force

had begun practising the tactics involved

in dropping one very large bomb, with great accuracy,

then getting away as fast as possible.

Its commander was Colonel Paul Tibbets.

Up to this point,

anything in the way of an error in bombing up to 500 or 600 feet

was considered good bombing.

So I told them then: "if you have a 100-foot error from 25,000 feet,

you're just a borderline case."

"I want it less than 100."

I was told immediately, "You can't do this."

So I said, "I don't know why not." They said, "Nobody's ever done it."

I said, "That's no reason why it can't be done."

"Practice, they tell me, makes perfect."

"So we'll practise and you'll practise until you do it."

From their forward bases in the Mariana Islands,

American B-29 bombers were already attacking Japan's cities

with more conventional weapons.

To begin with, the results were poor.

General Curtis LeMay developed a new tactic: low-level incendiary raids.

With aerial photography you could outline a general area,

but not precisely.

You just couldn't avoid doing collateral damage,

and I'm sure we burned down a lot of Japanese buildings

that had nothing to do with the war industry at all.

This, of course, is one of the sad things of war that can't be helped.

On March 9, 1945, 2,000 tons of incendiaries were dropped on Tokyo,

destroying 16 square miles of the city.

80,000 civilians died -

more that night in Tokyo than in the whole of England in the Blitz.

Most suffocated in the firestorm.

LeMay now attacked city after city.

It looked as if the B-29s alone might defeat Japan.

It wasn't until General Arnold asked the direct question

"How long will the war last?",

and then we sat down and did some thinking about it,

and it indicated that we would be

pretty much out of targets around 1 September,

and with the targets gone,

we couldn't see much of any war going on at the time.

By the spring of 1945

Japan was helpless in the face of American air and naval power.

Most of the Japanese merchant fleet and navy had been sunk.

An effective blockade had cut off Japan from her overseas army,

grounded most of her air force for lack of fuel,

and threatened her population with starvation.

American fighter-bombers roamed at will, backing up the devastating fire raids.

Many Japanese politicians realised

that their country could not hold out much longer.

April 1: American troops land on Japanese soil -

Okinawa, only 350 miles from the mainland.

They face fierce resistance.

But as the battle starts, the growing peace party in Japan

secure the appointment of a new cabinet, led by Admiral Suzuki.

When the Suzuki cabinet came into existence,

the military situation was deplorable,

and, moreover, the economic plight of our nation was quite apparent.

The military command...

tried to squeeze the last drop, so to speak, of the nation's blood,

in order to prosecute harder the useless war,

but it became evident to any sensible man

that we were at the end of our tether.

The younger officers in the army, the extremists,

thought that we should fight to the bitter end,

until every man had been killed.

But the war minister, General Anami, didn't agree.

He thought that if we fought on until the Americans invaded the mainland

and then hit their forces hard on the beaches once,

we could then negotiate peace on terms more favourable to Japan.

But Truman would not negotiate.

He told Congress so in May, after Germany's defeat.

Our demand has been, and it remains, unconditional surrender.

I want the entire world to know

that this direction must and will remain unchanged and unhampered.

Truman now faced two major problems:

how to deal with the Russians in Europe,

and whether to ask them to fulfil their pledge to join the war against Japan.

In Germany, Russian and Western troops exchanged toasts,

but already Churchill was sending urgent messages to Truman

warning that an iron curtain was being drawn down in Europe by Russia.

The "big three" must meet quickly before, as he put it,

"the armies of democracy melted".

And Truman had a new secretary of state, James Byrnes.

Byrnes wanted to finish the war against Japan

before the Russians could join in

and cause problems for the West in Asia, too.

It was ever-present in my mind

that it was important

that we should have an end to the war before the Russians came in.

But Stimson wanted to avoid

hasty decisions in Europe or the Far East

before the bomb was ready. He wrote to Truman:

"Over any such tangled weave of problems,

the atomic secret would be dominant."

"It seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes in diplomacy

without having your master card in your hand."

Truman reassured Stimson -

the "big three" meeting was postponed until July 15

on purpose "to give us more time".

Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's close friend whom Stalin trusted,

was sent to Moscow in May

to take the heat temporarily out of the Polish issue.

He reported back that he had smoothed things over.

Stalin had also promised - unprompted -

to join the war against Japan on August 8.

While Hopkins was in Moscow,

Stimson's committee reached its decision.

The committee studying the atomic bomb

unanimously recommended that it be used as soon as possible, without warning,

against a major Japanese military establishment.

Only this, Stimson thought,

would provide the psychological blow which might induce Japan to surrender.

Although he agreed with some of Truman's advisers

that the Japanese should be given an ultimatum

which made it clear they could keep the emperor,

he opposed announcing this until after the bomb had at least been tested.

But after the war he wrote,

"It is possible, in the light of the final surrender,

that a clearer and earlier exposition

of American willingness to retain the emperor

could have produced an earlier ending of the war."

June 18: Washington.

General Eisenhower is given a hero's welcome after his victory in Europe.

In the White House that day,

Truman is asked to approve his joint chiefs of staff's plans

to invade Japan in November.

We gathered up our papers and started to go out,

and Mr Truman spotted me and said:

"Mr McCloy, nobody gets out of this room

without expressing himself-

everybody else has."

"Do you think I have

any other alternative?"

I looked over at Colonel Stimson - he liked to be called Colonel -

he'd been colonel of a regiment in World War I,

rather than Secretary -

I looked over at Stimson and he nodded, he said, "Go ahead."

So I started in, and I said that I thought that

we ought to have our heads examined

if we didn't begin to think in terms of a political culmination of the war

rather than a military one.

And I said I'd give them some terms -

I'd send a message over to them, I'd spell out the terms.

And Mr Truman said, "Well, what are your terms? What would you do?"

I hadn't quite prepared for the actual dictation

of the surrender terms at that point,

but I started in and I said,

"In the first place, I'd say you can have the mikado,

but he's got to be a constitutional monarch -

you've got to have a representative form of government."

"You can have access to, but not control over, foreign raw materials

so you can have a viable economy..." I spelled it out as best I could.

"And I'd say, 'Besides that, we've got a new force,

and it's in the form of a new type of energy

that will revolutionise warfare,

destructive beyond any contemplation." I said I'd mention the bomb.

Well, mentioning the bomb, even at that late date, in that select group,

it was like they were all shocked

because it was such a closely guarded secret.

It was comparable to mentioning Skull and Bones at Yale,

which you're not supposed to do.

But Mr Truman said, "This is the sort of thing I was trying to reach for -

get that all spelled out."

At that point Stimson did come in and joined in support of my position,

but then later on Mr Byrnes, who was then secretary of state,

who was not present,

vetoed the idea of offering them the mikado.

One can only speculate as to what would have happened

if we had put the message to the Japanese

in the form that I indicated, including the mikado.

I always had the feeling, in view of some of the information we've had since

of the tendency on the part of some of the real military hotheads in Japan,

to think that this was perhaps the best way out,

that we might have been able to avoid the dropping of the bomb.

By this time, the battle for Okinawa is almost over.

12,000 Americans had died,

a bloody foretaste of what invasion of the mainland might cost.

For the Japanese, the lesson was harsher still.

100,000 died,

and, for the first time in the war, their soldiers surrendered in thousands.

As the last resistance ended, on June 22,

the new Japanese cabinet made its first move towards peace.

Ultimately, we had to conduct negotiations

with our military opponents -

that is to say, America and Britain -

but the high command refused categorically

to entertain any idea of

starting conversations with the enemy powers.

The only great power left out of the enemy camp was the Soviet Union,

because of the fact that nominally

there existed still the neutrality pact,

and so this was the only window open for peace endeavours -

and this window looked towards the north.

And so we argued it out with the military command,

and the military command finally, reluctantly,

acceded to our request that we start negotiations with the Soviet Union

in order to arrive at the final destination,

which was Washington and London.

But it was the Chinese foreign minister, not the Japanese,

that Stalin had been meeting.

A huge Japanese army still occupied parts of China, including Manchuria.

The Russians and Chinese were negotiating terms

under which Stalin would attack that army.

When Truman sailed to Europe on July 7 to meet Stalin and Churchill,

he knew, through intercepted messages, that Japan wanted an end to the war,

but not unconditional surrender.

Truman and Byrnes now had several options open to them -

they could modify the surrender terms,

they could encourage the Russians to invade Manchuria,

they could demonstrate the atomic bomb, they could invade Japan itself.

But Truman decided that he would drop atomic bombs on Japan without warning.

This alone, he hoped, would end the Pacific war quickly,

before the Russians joined in.

And it would immensely strengthen American bargaining power in Europe.

The decision had already been taken

when Truman arrived for the "big three" meeting on July 15.

The next morning, just before dawn, at a remote desert site in New Mexico,

Robert Oppenheimer and the team that had built the bomb

witnessed the first atomic explosion.

I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture,

the Bhagavad-Gita:

Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince

that he should do his duty,

and to impress him

takes on his multi-armed form

and says, "Now I am become death,

the destroyer of worlds."

I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

The plutonium bomb exploded with a force of 20,000 tons of TNT.

The desert at the point of the explosion was turned into glass.

By July 1945 Japan's economy was crumbling

and her cities were defenceless against the B-29 raids.

Although her army remained virtually intact,

Japan's war industries were smashed.

One million civilians had died.

Millions more were homeless.

The US Air Force had no doubts that surrender was only weeks away.

It was a hopeless situation for 'em.

The B-29s were flying over Japan at will and they couldn't do anything about it.

We could destroy any target at will without much opposition.

So with this hopeless situation they were facing,

they just didn't have the will to continue.

In fact, they'd been trying to get out of the war

for about three months before they actually did.

They'd asked the Russians to be an intermediary,

to try to negotiate them out of the war,

and the Russians had been stalling till they'd got the European war finished

so they could get into the Pacific war before it ended.

Stalin and Molotov refused to see the Japanese ambassador

before they left Moscow for the last "big three" meeting for ten years.

Also at Potsdam was Secretary of War Stimson.

He passed on detailed news of the atomic test to Truman and Byrnes -

who, he noted in his diary, were immensely pleased.

"The president was tremendously pepped up by it

and spoke to me of it again and again when I saw him."

"He said it gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence."

And when Stimson told Churchill about the successful test the next day,

Churchill said he now understood

how this pepping-up of Truman had taken place

and that he felt the same way.

The British and Americans debated

whether to tell the Russians about the bomb.

Some argued that its full weight as a diplomatic lever

would only become evident after it had been dropped on Japan.

After one of our meetings, just as we adjourned,

Truman went up with his interpreter to Stalin

and told him briefly

what we had discovered

and what the effect of the atomic bomb would be.

And all Stalin did was to nod his head and say "Thank you" quite curtly,

and his expression changed in no way and that was all there was to it.

It was a tremendous disappointment.

We thought he would be flabbergasted at this thing but he just passed it off.

Whether he knew about it,

whether he didn't want to show any great emotion in regard to it,

I don't know.

All I know is that he took it very much in his stride

and, somewhat to our disappointment, went on to the next item in the agenda.

And this rather dismayed Stimson

because he thought that,

once having disclosed this,

there would be immediately a great rush on the part of the Soviets

to sit down and talk to us

about the future implications of this thing

and what the future uses of it would be.

But he got no encouragement at all.

Stimson's tactics had misfired - the "big three" had met

before the full power of the atomic weapon was revealed.

Stimson feared that from now on, Secretary of State Byrnes

would use the bomb to try to lever direct concessions from the Russians.

I rather think that Mr Byrnes had something of the thought

that this would be a sort of

point of leverage in diplomatic exchanges,

whereas I think Mr Stimson - or Colonel Stimson -

had a different idea of the use of the bomb.

He wrote to the president

to urge direct negotiation on the nuclear issue,

and argued that relations with Russia "may perhaps be irretrievably embittered

by the way in which we approach the solution of the bomb with Russia."

"For if we fail to approach them now

and merely negotiate with them

having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip,

their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase."

With the atomic weapons now almost ready for use,

it was time for Truman to issue a final ultimatum to the Japanese -

and again Stimson's advice was rejected.

Truman and Byrnes decided not to modify the unconditional-surrender formula

by offering the Japanese the chance to keep their emperor.

My hope is that the people of Japan will now realise

that further resistance to the forces of the nations

now united in the enforcement of law and justice

will be absolutely futile.

There is still time - but little time -

for the Japanese to save themselves

from the destruction which threatens them.

The very purpose of it was to assure them that they would have the decision,

and at the same time

not to start a controversy among ourselves

about the position of the emperor.

When the Potsdam proclamation was issued,

Foreign Minister Togo and I worked together many sleepless nights,

and I took this proclamation to the attention of the foreign minister

and explained the substance of it.

Togo at once said this was acceptable,

and he immediately went to the palace and asked for an audience.

The emperor approved Togo's judgement that this should be accepted

and the war be terminated at once.

Foreign Minister Togo said in the cabinet meeting

that we can stop the war without the question of the emperor.

We can keep the emperor all right.

But at that time we -

the Japanese government-

asked some... intermediate...

mediation... Mediation?

...mediation to the Russians,

so many cabinet ministers said,

"Well, let us see the situation for a while."

Prime Minister Suzuki announced

that Japan would ignore the ultimatum.

Perhaps Russia would save Japan's honour.

After all, the Potsdam Declaration had not been signed by Stalin -

he might still mediate.

Stalin told Truman about the Japanese approaches.

Truman knew all about them - the Japanese codes had been broken.

Both leaders agreed to ignore the peace feelers

and Truman sailed home on August 3.

With no response from the Japanese, he authorised the Air Force

to drop the atom bomb as soon as they were ready.

The Japanese foreign minister, Togo,

in desperation cabled his ambassador in Moscow:

"Since the loss of one day relative to this present matter

may result in a thousand years of regret,

it is requested you immediately have a talk with Molotov."

But Molotov would still not meet the ambassador.

On August 6,

two days before the Russians had said they would attack the Japanese,

the Enola Gay set off on its 1500-mile journey.

I noticed as I taxied out that there were several hundred people

that were in the area the aircraft were parked in,

there were some in front of the control tower...

People were out there to see what was going on

without really knowing what they were looking at,

but it was something different,

so they wanted to be part of it, wanted to see what was taking place.

There's one bomb and one aeroplane was going to carry that bomb,

and that's the group commander, Colonel Tibbets, with his full crew.

My crew was assigned

to fly in formation on his right wing

during the bombing,

for a couple of reasons -

somebody had to fly there

and I was scheduled by him to fly the second mission,

if there were to be a second mission.

We were to have a third aircraft flying on the left wing

who would drop back just before the bombing -

he was equipped with cameras.

We were to fly unseen by each other for the first three hours

and to make rendezvous at 8,000 feet over Iwo Jima at 6am.

This was the plan.

We made the rendezvous successfully, then we had about an hour and a half

to go along in a lazy formation on a beautiful night out over the Pacific,

with moons and cloud puffs that looked like powder puffs -

it was a quiet, peaceful evening, believe me.

Nothing much went on - a little bit of talk in the aeroplane,

but that's always normal on a mission -

but then you'd get a quiet period,

and I guess everybody was dreaming or something, because it was quiet.

At 8:15 on the morning of August 6,

the Enola Gay, flying at 32,000 feet, released its bomb over Hiroshima.

As soon as the weight had left the aeroplane

I immediately went into this steep turn,

as did Sweeney and Marquart behind me,

and we tried then to place distance

between ourselves and the point of impact.

In this particular case, that bomb had 53 seconds

from the time it left the aeroplane until it exploded.

That's how long it took to fall from the bombing altitude - 53 seconds.

And this gave us adequate time, of course, to make the turn.

Now, we had just made the turn and rolled out in level flight

when it seemed like somebody had grabbed hold of my aeroplane

and gave it a real hard shaking,

because this was the shock wave that had come up.

This was something that I was glad to feel

because it gave me a moment of relief-

after all, having worked on that bomb for well over a year,

that 53 seconds while I'm turning the aeroplane

I'm wondering "Is it or is it not going to work?"

And, of course, the shock wave hitting us was indication it had worked.

Therefore I felt that success had been achieved.

When the bomb came I saw a yellowish flash

and I was buried in the darkness.

The two-storeyed wooden building that was my house, with eight rooms in it,

was blown down to pieces and covered me up.

When I regained consciousness

everything was pitch dark all around me.

I tried to stand up, but my leg was broken.

I tried to speak and I found that six of my teeth had been broken.

Then I realised that my face was burnt and my back was burnt.

There was a slash right across from one shoulder down to the waist.

I crawled to the river bank and when I got there

I saw hundreds of bodies come floating down the river.

And it was then that I realised with a shock that all Hiroshima had been hit.

The day was clear

when we dropped that bomb -

it was a clear sunshiny day and visibility was unrestricted -

so as we came back around,

again facing the direction of Hiroshima,

we saw this cloud coming up.

The cloud by this time - now two minutes - the cloud was up at our altitude.

We were at 33,000 feet at this time,

and the cloud was up there

and continuing to go right on up in a boiling fashion -

it was rolling and boiling.

The surface was nothing but... a black, boiling...

the only thing I can say, like a barrel of tar -

probably the best description I can give.

This was the way it looked down there.

Where before there had been a city -

distinctive houses, buildings

and everything that you could see from our altitude -

now you couldn't see anything except this black, boiling debris down below.

We took pictures as rapidly as we could.

My immediate concern after that was "It's time to get out of here."

I encountered long, ceaseless lines of escapees.

All of them had no clothes whatsoever on their bodies.

And the skin

from their faces, arms and breast

peeling off and hanging loose -

and yet without any expression.

In deep silence they are escaping.

I thought it was a procession of ghosts.

The words went back

basically to the effect that the bombing conditions were clear,

the target had been hit, the results were better than had been anticipated,

and that message was sent on back.

From there on it was just a proposition

of letting everybody talk for a few minutes

and get it out of their system.

The excitement was over -

pretty soon it became a rather routine flight back home.

As a matter of fact, it was routine enough

that I let Bob Lewis and the autopilot fly that aeroplane

and went back and got some sleep for about the first time in 30 hours -

and I was ready for it.

A long drawn-out war,

you begin to get casualties from the side-effects of exhaustion, privation...

disease and things of that sort.

So getting it over with as quick as possible

is a moral responsibility of everyone concerned.

Now, it's true that we knew the war was over

and if we just waited a little while it would be over,

because the Japanese were negotiating,

and we knew this because we'd broken their code

and we were listening to their communications.

But I believe that President Truman made the proper decision to use it...

because it probably hastened the negotiations

and even if we just saved one day,

to me it would be worthwhile, you have to do it.

I thought it was absolutely unnecessary,

because by the time the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima

we were conducting negotiations with the Soviet government,

looking towards an early end of hostilities.

And we were completely exhausted.

And the navy and army, too,

were slowly becoming...

more amenable to the idea of peace.

It's an appalling subject to talk about,

and the United States has, consciously and unconsciously,

a great deal of guilt complex about its use.

But Truman made the decision on the basis of the military necessities.

And I think an impartial analysis,

particularly from the Japanese themselves -

more evidence is coming out that they would've fought on fanatically.

You know, they did fight on fanatically

in some of the islands,

in spite of the surrender.

And the emperor wouldn't have had the courage

to have called it off, or the support to call it off.

When I heard about the atomic bomb I was so astonished,

and I frankly said, "The American people are brutal."

I wondered if the American people were really civilised.

But at the same time

I thought this may become a key

for Japan to end the war.

It was two days before the Japanese government realised

what the atomic bomb was and what it had done.

70,000 had died in Hiroshima.

Another 70,000 were injured.

97% of the city's buildings were destroyed or severely damaged.

President Truman, on hearing the news,

called it "the greatest thing in history".

The peace group in the Japanese cabinet

hoped that the bomb might persuade the war faction to accept surrender.

As the cabinet met on the morning of August 9,

it received further shattering news.

The previous evening, in Moscow,

Molotov had finally received the Japanese ambassador

and bluntly told him that Russia was about to declare war on Japan.

Eight hours later - exactly three months after the defeat of Germany,

just as Stalin had promised -

Russia attacked the Japanese army in Manchuria.

Japanese hopes of Russian mediation were at an end.

American hopes of finishing the war before Russia became involved

were thwarted.

Later that same morning,

the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki.

It killed 60,000 people.

But even now the Japanese militants

held out for a surrender without an occupation.

The peace party wanted only to preserve the emperor's position.

For the first time, to break the deadlock,

the emperor, Hirohito, was called in to decide.

He chose peace.

I shall never forget the emotion of that time.

Everybody started to cry, so I looked at the emperor's face.

He just kept silent,

but he wore white gloves on his hands...

He wiped his own face several times,

so we could know the emperor himself,

His Majesty the emperor himself, was crying.

I shall never forget the emotion

in this room at that time.

On August 10, the Japanese made it known they would surrender

if the emperor were allowed to stay.

On August 12, the Allies sent a noncommittal reply.

By this time, Japan's army was near revolt.

Even if a thousand atom bombs had been dropped,

and even if Japan had been completely devastated,

you must remember that Japan's honour was at stake,

the pride of the Japanese at that time

who felt that the only honourable way out of the war was not to surrender,

but to die to the last man.

The Americans dropped leaflets

urging the Japanese to surrender.

These almost upset the delicate manoeuvrings of the peace party.

That could have caused a lot of trouble.

Civilians and soldiers all over the country

were completely unaware of what was going on.

If they had found out that the government was negotiating peace

with the United States,

the situation would have become impossible.

It might even have led to a revolution.

So I felt we had to reach a final decision as fast as possible.

Once again, on August 14,

the emperor met a divided Supreme War Council

and told them they must accept the Allied ultimatum.

He himself would broadcast the next day.

That night, a group of junior officers invaded the palace

and tried to seize the recording of the emperor's message.

They couldn't find it. The coup failed.

At noon on August 15,

the Japanese people heard their emperor's voice for the first time.

"The war", he told them, "has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage."

"Moreover, the enemy has begun to use a new and most cruel bomb."

"Should we continue to fight,

it will not only result in an ultimate collapse

and obliteration of the Japanese nation,

but also the total destruction of human civilisation."

"We must, therefore, endure the unendurable."

When the emperor addressed the nation through his broadcast,

I know that 99 men out of 100

were taken aback.

They expected the emperor to urge them to fight on.

So the shock was tremendous.

And all the army officers, particularly the younger ones,

who said that they had to fight to the bitter end,

were naturally disillusioned.

Some even tried to remonstrate

with the decision taken by the cabinet for surrender.

In a way it could be said that the atomic bombings

and Russia's sudden attack on Japan

helped to bring about the end of the war.

If those events had not happened,

Japan, at that stage, probably could not have stopped fighting.

The war had ended, but not the dying.

And radiation sickness - which the Americans had not foreseen -

would kill thousands more in the years to come.

The morning of September 2, 1945:

the United States battleship Missouri is anchored in Tokyo Bay.

The new Japanese foreign minister, Shigemitsu,

limps on board to sign the surrender document.

The Allied commander, General MacArthur.

I now invite the representatives of the emperor of Japan

and the Japanese government

and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters

to sign the instrument of surrender at the places indicated.

The foreign minister's aide, Kase, watched the ceremony.

I saw many thousands of sailors everywhere on this huge vessel,

and just in front of us were delegates of the victorious powers,

in military uniforms glittering with gold.

And looking at them,

I wondered how Japan ever thought she could defeat all those nations.

Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world,

and that God will preserve it always.

These proceedings are closed.