All language subtitles for Hiroshima.and.Nagasaki.75.Years.Later.2020.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-TEPES

(ENGINE STARTING)

PAUL TIBBETS: Our job was
to deliver one bomb to Hiroshima.

We wanted pinpoint accuracy.

TIBBETS: It was inconceivable
as to what we were looking at.

ROBERT FURMAN: One plane
had completely devastated the city.

It wasn't there anymore.

NARRATOR: In the decades that followed
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

the men and women of
the Manhattan Project,

gave a series of
candid interviews.

ROBERT. R. WILSON: We
did discuss whether, perhaps,

what we were doing
was morally wrong.

NARRATOR: They talked about
building and using the ultimate weapon,

and the secret
mission that came next.

PHILIP MORRISON:
The radiologist, he said,

"You Americans conducted
a human experiment."

NARRATOR: As the city smoldered,

teams from the Manhattan Project

went to Japan to study
the effects of the bombs.

STAFFORD L. WARREN: The bodies, of
course, of all the dead were in the rubble.

I'll never forget the stench.

NARRATOR: They were
followed by American film crews,

who recorded scenes
of such devastation,

the films were
suppressed for decades.

This is what the Americans saw
and the Japanese lived through

at the end of history's
deadliest experiment,

seventy-five years ago.

(WOMAN SPEAKING JAPANESE)

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER:
We have made a thing,

a most terrible weapon,

that has altered abruptly and
profoundly the nature of the world.

REPORTER: It's war. Our enemies Japan,
Germany and Italy are out in the open.

The nation prepares to protect
its traditions and its way of life.

Our only cause now is victory.

NARRATOR: As the United
States enters World War II,

a group of American scientists
with the support of Albert Einstein

are secretly developing a weapon

with the power
to destroy cities.

The atomic bomb.

Many of the world's leading
physicists are German.

The Americans are terrified that the
Nazis will develop a nuclear device first.

And believe their own
effort is lagging behind.

Codenamed the Manhattan
Project after its first offices,

the American program
gets a new boss,

Brigadier General Leslie Groves.

LESLIE GROVES: I started
to review the laboratories.

Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley,

to see just where
we stood scientifically,

and I was horrified to
see how far they were

from anything that was essential
for us to do any construction with.

They just didn't know anything.

Before that project, none of
them had ever had to produce.

They did research. If it didn't
turn out, well, nobody cared.

If they didn't
feel like working,

that's all right, they
went out and went fishing,

or played golf or sat
around and talked.

There was none
of the feeling that

"The country depends on me."

NARRATOR: Sharing
an office with Groves

is Brigadier General
Kenneth Nichols.

KENNETH NICHOLS:
General Groves, I would say,

is the biggest son of a bitch I've
ever met, bar none. (LAUGHS)

He was very cutting
in his remarks,

and in his treatment of people.

He had the biggest ego of
any individual I'd ever met.

Coupled with ego he had guts.

When he made a
decision, he stuck with it.

You need that type of guy
to get a thing like this done.

NARRATOR: One of the program's
scientists is Samuel K. Allison.

SAMUEL ALLISON: There was a
good deal of irritation and antagonism.

Groves couldn't
understand the fact

that there was practically
no respect for authority.

NARRATOR: To break the deadlock,

Groves needs an ally who can
speak the scientists' language.

His attention is drawn to
a Professor at Berkeley,

known for his great relationship

with the younger physicists,
J. Robert Oppenheimer.

ROBERT BACHER: If one knew
Robert Oppenheimer and knew Groves,

it would be hard to
think of two people

who are more
unalike, dissimilar.

ROBERT SERBER: You know,
Oppenheimer had this inspirational quality.

You know, he spoke very well,

and he had an
appealing character.

GROVES: Oppenheimer's great
mental capacity impressed me.

I was appalled by his
ignorance of American history.

He had no experience in
administration in any way.

NARRATOR: Nevertheless, Groves
saw something in the professor

that made him
override any objections.

GROVES: Oppenheimer
was selected by me,

and the whole basis of it was
that there wasn't a better man.

BACHER: The fact was,

I think Groves had very
great trust in Oppenheimer.

And when he was told things that were
difficult for the project by Oppenheimer,

he'd cope with them in
a very responsive way.

NARRATOR: Now the most
powerful scientist in America,

Oppenheimer's task is daunting.

OPPENHEIMER: The
doubts which then existed

were not of a
metaphysical quality.

NARRATOR: Struggling with the
theoretical problems in designing a bomb,

the Manhattan Project begins
a massive recruitment drive.

And young physicists
like Philip Morrison

suddenly find
themselves in demand.

MORRISON: We could see the
war was coming closer and closer

to the United States
and we were fearful.

Hitler was running Europe.

Germany was the
leader of modern physics,

and seemed to have the
threat of a nuclear weapon.

MORRISON: Physicists were drained
out, everywhere, they disappeared.

We knew very well that something
was going on in Chicago about fission.

And a lot was going on in
Boston about microwaves.

And I imagined that there
was an atomic project,

a uranium project somewhere.

NARRATOR: That uranium project is
focused at the University of Chicago,

where scores of scientists

experiment on ways to
create chain reactions.

MORRISON: In December '42,

Bob Christy who'd been
in my class in Berkeley,

asked me to come to Chicago.

And said, "Now, what do
you think we're doing here?"

I said, "Well, I
don't really know,

"but it's pretty clear to me, it's
something to do with uranium."

He said, "Yes. We
are making bombs."

This was the most
extraordinary thing

that I had ever
heard anyone say.

My life changed absolutely.

NARRATOR: It's late 1942,

and the Axis powers occupy
large portions of Europe, y.

North Africa and Asia.

In America, the
Manhattan Project

is finally making progress in
the race to build an atomic bomb.

But it needs a
radiation specialist

to understand the vast amounts of
radioactivity the bombs will unleash.

Working in Rochester,
New York State,

is Dr. Stafford Warren,

A pioneer in the use of
X-rays to detect breast cancer.

WARREN: Late '42, I was
invited to lunch at the country club,

and I met these two
gentlemen in civilian clothes.

Mr. Groves and Mr. Marshall.

And they said "We'd like
to talk to you in private."

We got upstairs.

They looked in the closet,

and locked the door.

They said that "We
would like to have you work

"on a secret program in
which we need a doctor

"who is familiar with things
that you've been working with."

(CAMERA CLICKS)

I said, "This is radiation?"

He said, "I won't answer
that until we've tried you out."

Then the security people came
and they asked all our neighbors.

They asked, "Does Mrs. Warren
play bridge? Is she a gossip?"

How many children have we got.

Once you're in a highly
classified program,

your life is an open book.

NARRATOR: One of
Warren's first assignments

is to help Groves
build a secret city,

in a remote corner of Tennessee.

At Oak Ridge, factories
will be constructed

to refine uranium, pure
enough to fuel an atomic bomb.

WARREN: Oak Ridge was a
large area of very low-grade farming.

The topography
lent itself very well

to isolating three or four
big operations in little valleys,

and it was difficult
to get there.

The only transportation
was a few taxis in Knoxville.

NARRATOR: Oak
Ridge is so remote,

it needs all the
amenities of a major city.

WARREN: "We've
got to build a hospital."

He said, "We'll also have to
worry about recreation halls,

"and things like that because
this is going to be classified.

"We'll have to have all of
the essential elements here."

Anything that was
necessary to keep them

satisfied with the job.

NARRATOR: Brigadier
General Kenneth Nichols

is in charge of the
day-to-day construction.

But the plumbers, electricians
and carpenters he hires

won't be told why they are
building a city that is not on any map.

KENNETH NICHOLS: We had recruiting teams
out all the time, all over the country

to bring in the type of
labor that we wanted.

All right, I'll be there.

NICHOLS: Generally,
you told a man no more

than he needed to
know to do his job.

A carpenter didn't worry
what we were making.

He might be building
a dormitory here,

working in one of the plants, but he
didn't know what it was going to be.

I just learned a secret.
It's a honey. It's a pip.

But the enemy is listening,
so I'll never let it slip.

'Cause when I learn a
secret, boy, I zipper up my lip.

NICHOLS: We would give
them a cover story, classified.

For example, if we were
making a catalyst with gasoline

to extend the range of bombers.

NARRATOR: 99% of
the people in Oak Ridge

will not find out what they
are actually working on,

until after the war has ended.

NICHOLS: We
started from scratch,

and built the fifth
largest city in Tennessee.

NARRATOR: At its peak, Oak
Ridge will house 75,000 people,

and consume more
electricity than New York City.

Built at a cost of $1.2 billion,

it is funded directly
by the President,

and not even Congress
know about the vast expense.

As huge factories
rise out of the ground,

the scientists hit a roadblock.

They don't have
enough uranium 235,

the key radioactive material
to make multiple bombs.

And so their focus shifts

to the newly discovered
element of plutonium.

MORRISON: I remember very
well, the shipment was given to us.

This is the first shipment

in which the weight
of the plutonium

is greater than the
paper that goes with it.

NARRATOR: But to
make that plutonium

will require the building
of another massive facility

in the wilds of
Washington State.

GROVES: The whole design

of the plutonium chemical
reduction plant at Hanford,

there were two of them,

cost somewhere around
$50 million apiece.

It was based on a millionth
of a pound of plutonium.

ALLISON: We decided on the
Columbia River as the water supply

for the first power reactors
to produce plutonium.

The army was very fearful

that we might make the water in
the Columbia River radioactive.

GROVES: What we were afraid of

was that the discharge of radioactive
material would affect the fish.

NARRATOR: Groves calls in
Stafford Warren to conduct a study.

WARREN: It appeared that

it'd be a good idea to see
whether the radioactive materials

that were in the discharge water

were of sufficient concentration
to be a hazard to the fish.

Because we didn't
want anything to happen

that would give a bad name to
the... Any stage of the process.

GROVES: We would have
been subjected to terrific criticism,

if we destroyed all of
the salmon in the river,

and we would have
scared the country to death.

NARRATOR: It's early 1943,

and the outcome of World
War II hangs in the balance.

At Stalingrad,

Russia successfully beats
back the Nazi onslaught

but it had cost
half a million men.

In the Pacific,

US forces suffer several
thousand casualties

as they take control of the strategically
important island of Guadalcanal

from the Japanese.

And in the United States,

construction is underway on the
classified city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

and the plutonium reactors
at Hanford, Washington State.

But the project needs a centralized
laboratory for the final stage,

building the atomic bombs.

Oppenheimer suggests Los Alamos,

which happens to be near his
vacation home in New Mexico.

OPPENHEIMER: We had a ranch,
Sangre de Cristo, New Mexico.

It's about 3,000 meters high,

and it's 50 miles
by a very rough

and terrible trail from
there to Los Alamos.

GROVES: It was in
an area isolated enough

so that any experiments wouldn't
attract the attention of people.

NARRATOR: At Los Alamos, there is a boys'
school that is struggling financially.

GROVES: It was a
school for rich Easterners

who wanted their sons
to learn what it was

to have a horse
and to live outdoors.

We sort of looked
at it casually.

There were enough
buildings there,

so we could move in and
get started without waiting.

Didn't take me long
to say, "Well, this is it."

NARRATOR: Within
a matter of weeks,

the finest scientific
minds in the country

are ordered to report to the secret
site in the New Mexico Desert.

Among them is Philip Morrison.

MORRISON: I came to Los Alamos
when many people came to Los Alamos.

Many of my old
friends were there

living in a wonderful community.

Of course, we worked
around the clock,

six days a week and Sundays too.

Because every day
we read of the battles

in which our friends
were being killed in droves.

And we were the bottleneck

in the manufacture of a weapon
which if we didn't make first,

would lead to the
loss of the war.

NARRATOR: In the fall of 1944,

ace pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets
gets a call from the brass.

TIBBETS: I was
called to the office

of Commanding General
of the Second Air Force.

He told me that I
had been selected

to organize a unit

that will be capable of
employing this atomic weapon.

Needless to say that I didn't
comprehend everything that was going on.

He said, "You've got to work with
General Groves, you've got to satisfy him."

NARRATOR: The design of
the bomb had not been finalized,

but it's anticipated to be larger
and heavier than any before it.

TIBBETS: We were not
permitted to use radar.

Meaning we were only allowed to
make a release under visual condition.

So they gave us
some practice units.

The shape was the
actual shape of the bomb.

Our particular job was
to deliver one bomb.

We wanted pinpoint accuracy.

NARRATOR: But at Los Alamos,

the scientists' faith in building a
real bomb is about to be shaken.

Here it is, General
Groves, plutonium.

NARRATOR: The bomb's design is based on
the scientists' experiments with uranium.

But the material
Groves has spent

hundreds of millions
of dollars creating

is the lesser known plutonium.

Well, that's the, uh,
first I've ever seen,

but, uh, after this,
if you don't mind,

I wish you'd hold
something under it,

because after all,

there's about over
$50 million in that tube.

MAN: Cut.

NARRATOR: But initial tests
show this plutonium is so volatile,

it can burn itself up before
the weapon leaves the lab,

making it a dud.

MORRISON: The kind of
plutonium material they were making

was too radioactive
ever to make a bomb

according to the design
that was then current.

NARRATOR: Physicist Robert
Bacher witnesses the repercussions.

BACHER: That then caused the
whole project to have an enormous crisis.

The nature of the explosive charge
just needed complete re-design.

Groves, when I told him first,

went just as white
as that sheet of paper.

NARRATOR: Uncertain
now if plutonium will work,

Groves orders the labs
to develop a uranium bomb

and a plutonium
bomb at the same time.

MORRISON: There were two bombs,

in everybody's mind, as
soon as this was discovered,

the Fat Man and Little Boy.

NARRATOR: It will
be a race against time

to get a functional plutonium
design before the war ends.

REPORTER: (ON RADIO) The
red army is advancing street by street

through the burning
ruins of Berlin.

The war in Europe is ending.

On the other side of
the world in the Pacific,

on the islands and coral atolls,

the Japanese are
resisting fanatically.

The toll of United States dead and wounded
on the beaches and the jungles is rising.

FURMAN: As it became apparent
that the Germans would be defeated,

Groves began to talk about
targets in Japan with Roosevelt.

NARRATOR: As the idea of using the
atomic bomb to end the war gains traction,

Colonel Paul Tibbets,
who will drop the bomb,

is brought more
fully into the plan.

TIBBETS: I was called in to a
meeting in February or March of '45,

here in the Pentagon
in which I was told

that certain targets had
been selected in Japan

that had not been bombed.

And the reason was they wanted to
be able to make bomb blast studies

on virgin targets once
the bombs were used.

NARRATOR: As the war progressed,

US planes had fire bombed the industrial
cities that fed the Japanese military machine

but the loss of life
has been staggering.

In Tokyo, 100,00
perish in a single night.

FURMAN: There was a great
problem of trying to find targets

because we had
bombed so many cities.

They tossed around
Kyoto as a prime target

and that was thrown out
because it's a religious center.

NARRATOR: The targets
shortlisted are Yokohama,

Kokura, Niigata,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But suddenly the project is
faced with an unexpected twist.

REPORTER: The grief
stricken nation mourns the death

of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
President of the United States.

Vice-President Harry S. Truman takes
the oath of office as 32nd President.

NARRATOR: Groves is
called in to brief his new boss.

GROVES: As far as I know and I've
never heard anything to the contrary,

Mr. Truman knew
nothing about this project

until he became President.

NARRATOR: Groves quickly receives
the backing of the new president,

but whether the bomb will
actually work is still in doubt.

NARRATOR: On July 16th, as
fighting continues in the Pacific,

the men of the Manhattan project

prepare for the
first test of the bomb

at a site in the desert some
200 miles from Los Alamos.

The entire team works around
the clock to get the test ready,

but the most critical job
falls to Robert Bacher,

head of the
so-called "G Division."

BACHER: G stood for "Gadget".

It was a simple code
word for the bomb.

The problem of getting
ready was pretty rough.

NARRATOR: Designed to be the
most devastating weapon in history,

how much destruction the
explosion will cause is unknown.

Most observers are positioned
20 miles from the bomb site.

But Dr. Stafford Warren fears
that may not be far enough.

WARREN: I was the only one
who had any worry about afterwards.

So we began to lay out a plan

for distributing
the people around

in case we were wiped
out at the headquarters.

There was a ditch there which had
some dry leaves and some hay in it,

so we suggested that
everybody lie down in the ditch.

Oppie, he was in the bunker where
a lot of the control equipment was.

In 40 seconds we'll know.

The stakes are pretty high.

ISIDOR ISAAC RABI: It's
going to work all right, Robert,

and I'm sure,

we'll never be sorry for it.

MAN: (ON RADIO)
40, 39, 38, 37...

26, 25, 24, 23...

Nine, eight, seven, six,

five, four, three,
two, one, now.

WARREN: At first, of course,
there was a feeling of great heat,

as if you had just opened
a great big furnace door.

BACHER: It was
even more impressive

than most everybody
thought it was going to be.

SERBER: It was as if somebody
had set off a flashbulb right in your face.

You got completely
blinded for about 30 seconds.

Then gradually,
your vision cleared.

OPPENHEIMER: I
remembered the Hindu scripture,

"Now I am become death
the destroyer of worlds."

MORRISON: I really
thought it would be terrible.

But, you know, we were
committed by that time.

REPORTER: During a series of
meetings in Potsdam, Germany,

the final doom of Japan is settled
by the big three and their advisors.

Delivering an ultimatum of unconditional
surrender to the Nipponese war lords.

NARRATOR: The day after
the test explosion in New Mexico,

Truman meets his
Soviet and British allies

to discuss how to
end the war in the East.

Let's not forget

that we are fighting for peace.

NARRATOR: Although it does
not talk openly of a nuclear device,

the Potsdam Declaration warns

that if the Japanese do
not immediately surrender,

they will face prompt
and utter destruction.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
the first atomic bomb,

the enriched uranium Little
Boy, leaves Los Alamos

under the watchful eye of General
Grove's assistant, Robert Furman.

FURMAN: When the bomb was ready,

General Groves sent
me out to pick it up,

and I remember the authorities
in Los Alamos wanted a receipt,

so I signed a receipt
for an atomic bomb.

Then they decided it was too
secret for me to keep the receipt.

And they actually developed a receipt
for the receipt that I had just given them.

(LAUGHS)

Then I took the bomb in a
convoy down the mountain.

And then we had a flat tire.

Very secret, very
important project

stood by the side of the
road while some GI fixed a tire.

(LAUGHS)

In Albuquerque, I got
on a plane with the bomb.

There was a plane ahead
of me and one behind me,

and we flew without incident
over to San Francisco,

and took the bomb
aboard the Indianapolis,

which then sailed the Pacific.

What I carried was
really half the bomb.

Because if I had the whole bomb
the thing would blow up at any time.

So the other half
was flown over.

NARRATOR: The
warship USS Indianapolis

carries Furman and the bomb

across the Pacific to the
island of Tinian in record time.

But only three days after
depositing its precious cargo...

The Indianapolis is sunk
by Japanese torpedoes

in shark infested waters.

Of the nearly 1,200 men
onboard, only 316 survive.

At the same time at Los Alamos,

the scientists are having second
thoughts about their experiment.

MORRISON: Once it became
clear the Germans were beaten,

the original sense of fear and
anxiety disappeared from the project.

At Los Alamos, there
was certainly concern

whether somehow the project
was no longer necessary.

NARRATOR: Young
physicists like Robert Wilson

are deeply concerned
by the ethics.

WILSON: I organized a
small meeting at Los Alamos.

The title was "The Impact of
The Gadget on Civilization".

In between 30 and
50 people came.

We did discuss whether perhaps
what we were doing was morally wrong.

MORRISON: There was a
great deal of feeling of hesitancy,

but there was a great deal of feeling
it was not our responsibility to decide.

NARRATOR: With trademark charm,

Oppenheimer intervenes to
keep the scientists on track.

MORRISON: Oppenheimer's
view was that unless we found out

if there was such a
thing as nuclear weapons,

you could hardly build a peace in which
nuclear weapons were not recognized.

WILSON: On that logical basis,

we all decided
that that was right,

and that we ought to
go back in the laboratory,

and work as hard as we could
to demonstrate a nuclear weapon.

NARRATOR: But that does
not entirely settle the matter,

as over 100 scientists from
Oak Ridge and the Chicago lab,

dispatch a secret letter
to the White House,

insisting that the bomb
should not be dropped

without prior warning
to the Japanese.

NARRATOR: The idea
is rejected by the military.

Not least the man whose
job will be to drop the bomb,

Paul Tibbets.

TIBBETS: When we were on
the island, I heard certain things.

One of the things suggested
was that we drop this weapon

where they could see it explode,

and from that realize that we had
a terrible weapon of destruction.

I would liken this to the
fighter in the prize ring.

I don't see any reason
to telegraph your blow.

FURMAN: Everybody on the
military side wanted to see it dropped.

From where we sat, the
Japanese were determined

to fight to the very end.

The whole country was
being directed by the military,

and the military
would not give up.

REPORTER: At Okinawa
alone, 50,000 American casualties.

The military is determined
to fight to the death.

Their plans are carried
out by the Kamikaze pilots.

Sworn to give their lives for the
Emperor and the honor of the nation,

they carry on the only
air war left to Japan.

GROVES: If we didn't use the
bomb, it would have come out.

Sooner or later, in a congressional
hearing, if nowhere else.

And then every mother whose son

was killed after
such and such a date,

the blood is on the
head of the President.

NARRATOR: The debate ends.

And a few days before
the bomb is to be dropped,

scientists Robert Serber
and Philip Morrison

are dispatched across the
Pacific to help arm the bomb.

TIBBETS: The night
before we took off,

the people from Trinity
had arrived in the Marianas,

and they had with them
colored photographs

of the Trinity explosion
in New Mexico.

So we got the gang together.

TIBBETS: Gentlemen,

when we met at Wendover

for the first time
about ten months ago,

I told you at that time
that I had great hopes

that the mission
that we are about

to undertake could end the war.

We didn't use the
word atomic bomb.

We did not use that. But we
said, "Okay. Now this is the bomb."

This is what will happen

when we make
our flight tomorrow.

This is what we're gonna see.

NARRATOR: As the Americans
prepare to use the weapon,

citizens of Hiroshima, like
school girl Fumiko Amano,

go about their lives as best they
can against the backdrop of war.

(FUMIKO AMANO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: It's the early
hours of August the 6th.

On Tinian Island,
pilot Paul Tibbets

assembles the crew of
his plane the Enola Gay.

After months of practice
in the Utah desert,

final preparations are being
made for the first atomic mission.

The culmination of an
experiment years in the making.

No mistakes can be made.

TIBBETS: Take-off was somewhere
around 2:00 in the morning.

It had been agreed that we would
not take off with the bomb armed

because, should there
be an accident of any kind,

the chances of losing
half of the island existed.

NARRATOR: Among the planes
accompanying the Enola Gay,

are two carrying
scientists from Los Alamos

there to survey the
biggest explosion in history.

TIBBETS: We climbed
up to our altitudes,

started on our way to our
rendezvous at Iwo Jima.

NARRATOR: With
1,500 miles to Japan,

Tibbets must
level with the crew.

TIBBETS: Once we were airborne,

I called back where
the enlisted men were,

poured some coffee,

and I told them actually what we
were doing and what we were carrying.

NARRATOR: One concern is the
aftershock could knock the plane

out of the sky.

TIBBETS: About 30 minutes
from our landfall on Japan,

the weather being clear at our
primary, which was Hiroshima,

there was no decision left.

(BELLS TOLLING)

NARRATOR: Oblivious
to what is coming,

Hiroshima residents like
six-year-old Takako Kotani

wake to a beautiful
summer's morning.

(TAKAKO KOTANI
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Takako's family
are planning to leave the city,

believing they will soon be a
target for conventional bombing raids.

(TAKAKO KOTANI
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Having
circled the city at 8:15 a.m.,

the Enola Gay reaches
its release point.

(TAKAKO KOTANI
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

TIBBETS: The bomb blast hit
us in two different shockwaves.

We continued our turn to head
directly back towards Hiroshima.

It was kind of inconceivable as
to what we were looking at there.

This explosion was so big
that it seemed almost unreal.

NARRATOR: Exploding
1,870 feet above the ground,

the bomb unleashes a shockwave

that spreads 15
miles within a minute,

and a ball of fire
one mile high.

(FUMIKO AMANO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

PRESIDENT TRUMAN:
A short time ago,

an American airplane

dropped one bomb on Hiroshima

and destroyed its
usefulness to the enemy.

That bomb has more power
than 20,000 tons of TNT.

It is an atomic bomb

loosed against those
who brought war

to the Far East.

NARRATOR: To the leader
of the Manhattan Project,

this mission has
been successful.

GROVES: After I got the
first news of the dropping,

this was about 11:30 at night,

I went right to sleep.

Oh, no, I never had
any trouble sleeping.

MORRISON: When the
aircraft came back from the raid,

as soon as the pilot
leaped onto the ground,

a big medal was
pinned on his chest.

And that was the
time of triumph.

A large party which
lasted for a long time.

I think we did not understand
the full novelty of our weapon.

NARRATOR: In Tokyo,
the newspapers report

that Hiroshima has been
attacked by a new type of bomb.

There are no details and
the government is skeptical,

as Japanese war-time
leaders will later explain.

HISATSUNE SAKOMIZU:
President Truman first mentioned

that it was an atomic bomb,

but we didn't
believe what he said.

COLONEL SABURO: On
the following day, August 7th,

General Arisue, of
Japanese intelligence,

headed an investigating team,

including the nuclear
physicist Dr. Nishina

and flew to Hiroshima
to investigate.

GENERAL ARISUE: When
the plane flew over Hiroshima,

there was but one dead tree

and it looked like a great claw.

There was nothing there,

but for that dead tree.

GENERAL ARISUE: But
Dr. Nishina, the nuclear physicist,

said it's the atomic bomb.

NARRATOR: But in
spite of this discovery,

the Japanese do not surrender.

And three days later,

the plutonium-fueled Fat
Man is loaded onto a B-29.

The bomb is due to be
dropped on the city of Kokura.

But bad weather
forces the pilot to divert

to Nagasaki.

Exploding over
Nagasaki at 1,650 feet,

but slightly off target,

it's effect is nearly
as devastating

as the uranium
bomb in Hiroshima.

NARRATOR: In spite of pressure
from his generals to continue the war,

Emperor Hirohito
decides to surrender.

(HIROHITO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: In Hiroshima,
the surrender has come too late

for Takako Kotani
and her family.

(TAKAKO KOTANI
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: At Los Alamos,
news of the bomb's explosion

is initially greeted with
a sense of satisfaction.

But at this point, little is
known about the effects

of the atomic bomb experiment.

Awaiting news

is Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Stafford Warren,

the project's
radiation specialist.

WARREN: Well, I think
it was about August 12th.

I suddenly was tracked
down by a GI in a car

who said General
wanted to talk to me.

And he said he was offering me,

not ordering me,

because the situation
was pretty delicate,

the chance to lead a party
into Nagasaki and Hiroshima

to study the casualties

and, above all,
what contamination

of radioactive material
was on the ground.

NARRATOR: When planning
the bomb, physicists calculated

that if it exploded
above a certain altitude,

the dangerous
by-product of radiation

would simply be blown away.

It would be Stafford's
job to find out

if this really had
been the case.

WARREN: The expectation
had been with the high detonation

of the two bombs,

that there would be almost
none on the ground to study.

NARRATOR: Allowed
only one call to his wife,

Warren heads to San Francisco

to begin the long journey west.

WARREN: There
were about 20 of us.

GIs and officers, medics.

When we left San Francisco

everybody was
looking out the windows

to be sure that they
got a good view,

as it might be their
last view of the States.

We had no idea what to expect.

NARRATOR: The
mission comes with risks.

Although the Emperor has
announced the Japanese surrender,

no formal peace
has been reached.

Landing at Tinian,

Warren is joined by scientists
Robert Serber and Philip Morrison

whose job will be to
explore the physical impact

on the bombed cities.

MORRISON: I was frightened.

They had a terrible war.

We burned the hell out of them.

I was especially afraid because we
went ahead of the occupation troops.

NARRATOR: In the
first week of September,

the American mission
arrives in Tokyo

and is divided into two groups.

One will go to Nagasaki,

the other, led by
Stafford Warren,

will go to Hiroshima.

For the traveling
scientists and medics,

the scenes are apocalyptic.

Images captured by the first
American cameramen in color footage,

large sections of which have
never been publicly broadcast

and are shown now with
black and white footage,

confiscated from
Japanese film crews.

WARREN: We headed
to the middle of Hiroshima.

(FLIES BUZZING)

There were flies everywhere.

They were so bad that we had
to close up the windows to the car

to keep the flies out.

Then you would see
a man or a woman

with what looked
like a polka-dot shirt,

but when you got up close,
it was just a mass of flies.

The bodies, of course, of all
the dead were in the rubble.

And the stench was
just something awful.

I'll never forget the stench.

NARRATOR: 185
miles to the southwest,

the second American
team nears Nagasaki.

Their radiation doctor is
Navy reservist Shields Warren.

He's had no prior involvement
in the Manhattan Project,

but on hearing
news of the bombs,

he lobbied his superiors
to send him to Japan.

SHIELDS WARREN: I thought
that we had grave responsibility

to get medical
teams into the area

and that it was very urgent

that the atomic bombs
survivors should be studied.

NARRATOR: As he
approaches Nagasaki,

he is unprepared for
the destruction he sees.

SHIELDS WARREN: We
had come from Isahaya,

winding over terraced hillsides

and entered a tunnel
through the mountains.

When we came out the other side,

we shifted from a view
of a peaceful countryside

to utter devastation.

NARRATOR: In Nagasaki,
the survey discovers the bomb

has damaged or destroyed
88% of the buildings in the city,

over an area of 40 square miles.

SHIELDS WARREN: A large portion
of it was essentially squashed flat.

The steelwork of the
Mitsubishi shipbuilding plant

looked exactly as though

a giant had simply
smeared it with his hands.

You could see grass and plants

that had been
burned into the wood

by the intense heat of the bomb.

NARRATOR: Back in Hiroshima,

a nervous Stafford
Warren and his team

settle in under the watchful
eye of their Japanese hosts.

WARREN: We were the first
ambassadors of the country.

The Japanese had us bivouacked
into what was a very famous hotel.

It was about five
miles down the harbor.

MORRISON: There were
guards, armed guards.

We couldn't understand
them very well.

But I said, "It's very
strange to be here

"if somebody decides
that we are the very culprits

"that blew up their cities."

WARREN: We all decided the
best thing was to act nonchalant,

but sleep on our guns.

NARRATOR: The next day,
they'll meet the victims of the bomb

for the first time.

It's been less than 24 hours
since they arrived in Hiroshima

and the American
team prepares to meet

Japanese victims of the bomb.

WARREN: The second morning
we began to be aware in the bushes

were vague forms
with white bandages.

It turned out that here were
probably 10,000 casualties

being treated in a
kind of outdoor hospital.

We asked, "Are there any of
these that we could do anything for?"

Because we had
penicillin with us,

but they said, "No."

NARRATOR: The Japanese have agreed
to cooperate with the American survey

on the condition that they do not
interfere with the work of local doctors.

They are here only
to observe and record.

SHIELDS WARREN:
Under the terms of the treaty,

we were not allowed to
treat any Japanese ourselves.

Of course, sooner or
later this broke down

and we were treating them
just like the Japanese were.

And lots of things, we ought to
have done but we just couldn't do.

NARRATOR: Initial estimates have put the
fatalities from Hiroshima at more than 70,000,

but the death toll keeps rising

and the doctors'
job is to decipher

what it is about the atomic bomb
that has caused these injuries.

SHIELDS WARREN: One of
our main tasks was to try to decide

how many of the casualties
were due to radiation,

how many to other injuries
instant to the explosion.

It was singularly difficult to get
adequate eyewitness accounts

as the survivors
were overwhelmed.

Time and again they would say,

"I saw a bright flash and then
a cloud rolled over my mind."

NARRATOR: Among the
survivors is Akira Nakamura,

a 14-year-old factory
worker in Nagasaki.

(AKIRA NAKAMURA
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: The
accounts of the explosion

confirm the medics' expectations

about the immediate
effects of the bomb blast,

but what they are really here to discover
is the invisible effect of the radiation.

WARREN: We weren't
particularly interested in skin burns.

Skin burns and things like
that were common to all warfare.

We'd divide our day in half.

In the morning, we
would see casualties.

In the afternoon, we would
look over the destruction

and try to make measurements

what the downwind
contamination might be.

NARRATOR: While Stafford Warren and
his medical team explore the human costs,

physicist Robert Serber studies the
effect on buildings and infrastructure.

SERBER: Bill Penney and I
wandered around Nagasaki

and Hiroshima, now,
for several weeks.

Completely alone.

The thing that was really
astonishing about the whole thing was,

we had no difficulty
at all with the people.

We wandered around the ruins

among the people whose
families had all been killed.

We had no feeling
of danger at all.

NARRATOR: The
scientists want to establish

how the blast effects in an atom
bomb compare to conventional weapons.

To do this, they must verify the
height at which the bomb exploded.

Serber needs to find a building

that is still standing which was
directly in line with the bomb.

SERBER: It's a piece of a wall

of a schoolhouse in Hiroshima,

about half a mile from
where the bomb went off,

and it's flash burned,
scarred by broken glass.

You can see the shadows
of the window sash

and the chord of the shade.

And from the angle of
which this shadow was cast,

we could measure the height
at which the bomb went off.

And this was the evidence,

that it really went off at the height of
what was supposed to be Hiroshima.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
Philip Morrison searches the city

to quantify the
effects of the radiation.

MORRISON: I went
around just as Bob Serber did

and tried to look
for significant clues,

measuring, confirming, the Japanese
measurements out on the site.

NARRATOR: But with a month having
elapsed since the initial detonation,

he needs local help.

MORRISON: I discovered
the man called Kimura.

Kimura lived in a
little, one-room shelter.

And he had a very
nice electrometer

and a stopwatch,
and a slide rule,

and many, many, foils
that he had collected

with phosphorus on them
from the bones of the victims.

And he had measured
these radiation doses,

and done the right
calculations all over the city.

NARRATOR: Contrary
to American expectations,

Kimura's results
show vast quantities

of highly toxic
radioactive matter fell

in doses up to 1.5
million times greater

than that judged safe
for a medical X-ray.

NARRATOR: It's six weeks
since the bombs were dropped.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have
been decimated by the blasts.

And the US scientific
mission is finding people

in both cities suffering the
effects of radioactive fallout.

Throughout the
Manhattan Project,

Stafford Warren has conducted
radiation experiments on animals and fish.

These studies will provide clues

to how much radioactivity has been
absorbed by the Japanese people.

WARREN: We had expected
from our animal experiments to find

a great deal of
gastrointestinal damage

as well as bone marrow damage
and blood count reductions.

In the dogs, we had extensive
information about the timing.

We didn't know what the
timing of these clinical changes

would be in the human because
there was no prior experience.

NARRATOR: While the team had guessed
most deaths would come from the bomb blast,

the radiation is causing a
second wave of fatalities.

Sawako Tamura is one of
the nurses who witnessed it.

(SAWAKO TAMURA
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: These survivors continue
to turn up weeks after the bombing,

puzzling the US scientific team.

WARREN: Day after day we
would come and look at these people

and they would have
purpura, bleeding spots,

about eighth of an inch in diameter,
on various parts of the body.

Mostly face, chest, and arms.

Any place that got slightly bruised
had a hemorrhage underneath

and they would be
a sickly yellow color.

And we did a few
white blood counts

and found 50 cells
instead of 5,000.

The next day we'd come
back and they'd be gone.

They had been
incinerated overnight.

NARRATOR: Across the city,
people who survived the bomb,

like 20-year-old Aoki Shigeru, are afraid
they will develop the same symptoms.

(SHIGERU AOKI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: One theory why
many continue to show symptoms

is that two hours
after the bomb fell,

a storm broke over Hiroshima,

the falling water mixed with
radioactive dust from the explosion,

creating a toxic "black
rain" that fell on the survivors.

(MAKOTO NAGAHARA
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Though the
radiation has killed tens of thousands,

in a rare case, Shields
Warren encounters a doctor

who has actually
benefited from the bomb.

SHIELDS WARREN: One
remembers little oddities.

The professor was
suffering from leukemia,

and he was actually
helped by the bomb.

He got about 300 R and it
shrank his spleen appreciatively.

NARRATOR: It's a singular
case of good fortune.

The team discovers radioactive fallout
extends for 30 miles beyond the city.

In the final toll it's estimated

140,000 people died
from the initial explosions,

but a further 60,000 die from radiation
sickness between August and November.

As the team is ordered home, talk turns
to the helpful role of the local Japanese.

SHIELDS WARREN:
By the 26th of September,

we had located
most of the survivors.

Without the wholehearted
cooperation of the Japanese,

we wouldn't have been able to
accomplish a fraction of what we did.

I was tremendously
impressed by the cooperation

that we had, not only from
the scientific Japanese,

but at every level.

MORRISON: The only

nuanced but clearly
present resistance

that I found from any Japanese,

in my entire tour through Japan,

the radiologist Suzuki

from the University of Tokyo,

very distinguished.

He said the following
thing which I'll never forget.

Very polite, quite good English,

"Dr. Morrison."

"Yes."

"I have some experience in
radiation, whole body radiation,

"but mine was only

"a few dogs.

"You Americans conducted
a human experiment."

NARRATOR: October 1945,
and the scientific mission

to study the effects of the
bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

returns to America.

On landing in Santa Fe,

Stafford Warren is
immediately taken

by General Groves to Los Alamos

for a grand ceremony

celebrating the
success of the bomb.

WARREN: The E ceremony,

a capital E for
excellent performance

during the war.

In any case, the Manhattan
Engineer District job was done.

It had delivered the bombs,

better than they had expected
from the military standpoint of view.

I got home about 9:00 that night

and I slept almost
three days solid.

NARRATOR: One month later,

Groves is called before
a Senate Committee

in Washington DC

convened to understand

whether the billion-dollar
experiment has been a success.

GROVES: The atomic bomb
mission which we had overseas

made no attempt at
Nagasaki and Hiroshima

to secure or estimate
the exact casualties

because the mission
did not survey the cities

until over a month

after the dropping of the bombs.

The best overall estimates
come from the Japanese.

At Hiroshima, the
casualties, dead and missing,

were somewhere between
70,000 and 120,000.

The injured between
75,000 and 200,000.

At Nagasaki,

the dead and missing were
between 40 and 45,000,

and the injured about 40,000.

The atomic bomb

made it impossible

for the Japanese
to continue the war.

Senator, in answer
to your question

as to what are the prospects
of an effective defense

against the atomic bomb,

I would state

that there are no prospects

at the present time of
an effective defense.

NARRATOR: At the hearing, the
Senate accepts Groves' declaration

that because the
bombs ended the war,

hundreds of thousands of Japanese
and American lives were saved,

but he makes no disclosure

of the mission's
findings on radiation.

And the team who went to Japan

are given no time to
write up their results,

as leading members are asked

to help plan the
testing of new bombs.

WARREN: Unfortunately,
when I got home,

I had those two problems,

one was the unwinding
of the military operation,

and the other was
the Bikini preparations.

I was transferred to
the Joint Task Force

by General Groves

very soon after I got back,

before I could
do any writing up.

MAN: Three, two, one.

WARREN: The only write-up is the
Army Historical Unit's report of my office,

and that is rather sketchy.

And then Shields Warren
was appointed as my successor.

SHIELDS WARREN: Eventually,
a monograph on the acute effects

of the atomic bomb
in Japan came out.

This was delayed

for a long time through red tape

and did not appear until 1951.

NARRATOR: The film
footage and medical reports

were stored in warehouses

and classified,

deemed too sensitive to be
viewed or shared for decades.

To the future head
of atomic safety,

Shields Warren, it became clear

that most people wanted to
draw a line under the bombings.

NEWSREEL: Washington is jubilant

and in Chicago

more than a million sing
and dance in the streets.

SHIELDS WARREN: I was in
and out of Washington enough

after the Hiroshima
bomb had exploded

to know that there were no
plans to follow up study, medically.

It was quickly apparent that the
general tendency in government,

and indeed the
public as a whole,

once the war and immediate
post-War period was over,

was to go back
to things as usual

and not realize

the entirely new
type of scientific world

into which the development

of the atomic
bomb had thrust us.

NARRATOR: The war
may have been over

but there was great regret

amongst team members
like Philip Morrison.

He'd been part of the atomic
experiment from the beginning

but had also witnessed
the huge impact

the bombs had on
a civilian population.

MORRISON: I was pretty conflicted
about the whole history of the war.

It was such a
terrible thing to do,

but we never saw
that it could be avoided.

In two years the
whole society changed,

and the world changed,

to the murder in
some obscure way

of a whole city.

Nobody really
understood our weapon,

nobody could see
what the future meant,

how great it would come to be,

how numerous they
would come to be.

NARRATOR: In the years that follow
the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

deaths continue to grow with
60,000 more people perishing

from radiation related illnesses
across the next seven decades.

The morality of dropping the
bombs continues to be debated,

but for those who built them,

its success remains
a necessary evil,

to end a war that had
already cost millions of lives.

Well, the Manhattan Project
is a tremendous project.

It built three or four cities.

It managed research in
six or seven universities.

It's a miracle that the
bomb was developed.

It's wonderful that we were
able to use it to end the war.

The dropping of the atomic bomb

started the Atomic Age.

It's the biggest thing
that we have to manage.

NARRATOR: A message
reiterated by the architect of the bomb,

J. Robert Oppenheimer.

I have been asked whether

in the years to come
it will be possible to kill

40 million American people

in the 20 largest American towns

by the use of atomic
bombs in a single night.

I am afraid that the answer
to that question is yes.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
will spend the rest of his life

speaking publicly about
the dangers of his invention.

OPPENHEIMER:
Members of the academy,

some of you will have
seen photographs

of the Nagasaki strike,

seen the great steel girders of
factories twisted and wrecked.

Some of you will have seen pictures
of the people who were burned.

We have made a thing that by all
standards of the world we grew up in

is an evil thing.

A most terrible weapon.

It has altered abruptly
and profoundly

the nature of the world.

During our lifetime,

atomic weapons could be
either a great or a small trouble.

The pattern of the
use of atomic weapons

was set at Hiroshima.

They are weapons of aggression,

of surprise and of terror.

For not even a better
understanding of the physical world

should make us content
to see these weapons

turned to the
devastation of the earth.

If they are ever used again,

I think that it will not
help to avert such a war

if we try to rub the
edges off this new terror

that we have helped
bring to the world.

I think the only hope

for our future safety

must lie in the collaboration

based on confidence
and good faith

with the other
peoples of the world.

NARRATOR: 75 years after
the dropping of the bomb,

the message is echoed
by the Japanese survivors

for whom the
experiment never ended.

(SHIGERU AOKI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

(TAKAKO KOTANI
SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Every
year on August 6th,

Japanese gather with
lanterns to remember the dead

and remind the world
of the scars of the bomb.

(SAWAKO TAMURA
SPEAKING JAPANESE)