Three Deadly Days in August: James M. Scott on Truman, Hirohito & the Two Bombs That Ended the War

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is Thursday, August 6, 2026. I'll probably put this conversation actually out on Sunday, August 9, 2026 in three days' time. Eighty-one years ago, those three days were massively consequential in not just American, but in world history. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on Japan, on Hiroshima, the so-called Little Boy bomb, on August 6. And then three days later on August 9, they dropped the Fat Man on Nagasaki. This is, a subject which is addressed through these three days in August 1945 or addressed in a major new book by one of America's leading historians, James M. Scott, Empire of Ashes, about these three days, Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War. James is joining us from Charleston where he lives. James, congratulations on the new book. How would you advise Americans to remember these three days? Probably most people will be busy with their lives. But how would you like Americans? Perhaps your students at the Citadel where I know you're a residence— a scholar in residence about leadership. How should Americans be thinking about remembering those three days in August 1945?

00:02:07 James M. Scott: Yeah. It's as you noted, it's one of the most consequential periods, not only in American history, but also in world history. It's when we really cross that Rubicon into the, nuclear era in which Truman faced the most consequential decision perhaps of any world leader, which is to use a bomb that could annihilate an entire city and all the inhabitants from any of the inhabitants they're in, women, children, you name it. So it really is a an incredibly consequential pivotal moment in which really so much of the world's history kinda hung in balance as to how the war was gonna end. Was it gonna end then? You know, what would we end up having to invade? So it really is a pretty pivotal moment. It's a moment now that I think is really relevant for us to sort of step back and to reexamine because, you know, nuclear weapons are at the forefront again of our discussions. Putin has been, you know, frequently threatening to use them, tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The Americans, military fighting in Iran is ostensibly to prevent them from using nuclear weapons. What I'm kinda hoping to show with this book is that these are, these are consequential decisions that require serious study and shouldn't be flippantly thrown about. Like, I think, unfortunately, it's so often talked about in today's day and age with, you know, whether or not we use these weapons. I mean, it's, it's a bit it's a very serious discussion.

00:03:33 Andrew Keen: To put it mildly, we've done many shows on what you call this very serious discussion. We did one a few years ago with Lesley Blume who had a wonderful book. I'm sure you're familiar with it, James. Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

00:03:49 James M. Scott: Mhmm.

00:03:51 Andrew Keen: About, Hersey, John Hersey and his coverage. We also did a show more recently with an old friend of the show, Evan Thomas, on the

00:04:02 James M. Scott: Mhmm.

00:04:02 Andrew Keen: Moral ambiguity of, the decision to drop these weapons. Her his book also did rather well, got over almost 1,500, five star reviews on, on Amazon, Road to Surrender. So I know, you've written extensively on this period, many books, including, not just Empire of Ashes, but, your book Target Tokyo, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize back in 2016. So, James, so much has been written on this period. What why Empire of Ashes? What are you trying to do in this book, or what have you found in this book that we didn't know before?

00:04:47 James M. Scott: Yes. This book actually really grew out of a previous project that I was working on, which came out in 2022, called Black Snow. And that book really examined the, fire raid campaign against the American fire raid campaign against Japan, with a focus particularly on the March 9, 1945 raid on Tokyo. And so often today's day and age when people think of sort of firebombings and whatnot, they many people even recall [ed.: apparently "don't even recall"] a fire raid on Tokyo, and yet it was the single most destructive conventional raid of its kind of the war. That said, you mentioned Dresden, and, of course, everybody knows Dresden even though Tokyo about four times as many people died there. And so I was really curious about that. I had, I'd actually written another book about some American submariners who'd been in a prison camp in Tokyo during that time period and it sort of sparked my interest. So I dug in on it. And doing that, I looked at that entire campaign because what people don't realize is that 159-day campaign from March through the end of the war is one of the most destructive conventional campaigns in the war, really in history. 64 Japanese cities were burned. 170 square miles of urban areas were burned down as a result of that. All of that takes place before the United States ever even drops its first atomic bomb. And so when I was in Japan doing research for that book, spent a lot of time interviewing survivors.

00:06:06 Andrew Keen: Which is Black Snow?

00:06:07 James M. Scott: Black snow. Correct. Yeah. Spent a lot of time interviewing survivors of the fire raid. So I traveled down to Hiroshima, and I interviewed some survivors there. I got some accounts out of the archive, the museum there. And so when I came back and I wrote the initial draft of Black Snow, I incorporated a lot of that material in it. And my editor and I were we're going through that first draft, and he very wisely said, you know, this is not a book about Hiroshima. It's a book about Tokyo. He said that's a different book. Let's pull that material out and set it aside and come back to that. And that's effectively what we did. So we published Black Snow. And then when that was done, I wanted to kind of take that material I had. I went back to Japan. I did more interviews, went and visited Nagasaki, got more accounts. And then really what interested me most was that was the decision that Truman is really faced with. And I think it's one of those decisions that's like, you know, perhaps the most consequential decision any world leader has ever faced. I mean, do I annihilate an enemy city? And what goes into that? You know, what goes into that process? And the flip side of that, of course, is I wanted to look at the Japanese perspective, which is what is it like to be on the receiving end of that? And how does that weapon play a role in the decision making process with emperor Hirohito? Because at the end of the day, people forget that the atomic bomb is destructive as it really was. It was inherently a political weapon, you know, and that and it gets to the heart of the end of the war, which is there's a difference between defeat and surrender. You know, we think of you know, Japan was people argue it was already defeated and whatnot. But there is a big chasm between defeat and surrender. I mean, surrender is inherently a political decision. And so I wanted to kinda get at the politics surrounding that decision and the consequences as a result of it.

00:07:50 Andrew Keen: It's more than the politics, though, isn't it, James? It's the morality. You give a pretty sympathetic view of Truman. You're not alone. As I said, Evan Thomas's book on, on the same subject, Road to Surrender, is also quite sympathetic. Of course, he is viewed in many ways as a heroic figure. How would you contrast morally Truman and Hirohito? I mean, Hirohito, of course, hasn't had quite as good a press, understandably, as Truman. Was one the moral man, the other immoral, amoral? How would you compare and contrast the two men?

00:08:30 James M. Scott: Well, I think if you wanna get at the morality of the bomb, I think it's important. I think that's almost it's a little bit different discussion than looking at the morality of Truman and Hirohito. I think the morality of the bomb is really one that you need to look at through the lens of what were the options Truman faced at that time, and sort of choosing what would be sort of the lesser evil, so to speak. I think that's a different question than looking at the morality of these two individuals. I think, you know, it's not so much just morality either because it's really gets at the strength of these individuals because I think that's at the heart of Hirohito, which is he is effectively often a relatively weak figure in Japanese life. And then part of that is the environment, political environment in which he operates. Japanese culture at that time, even though he is ostensibly at the center of political, cultural, and spiritual life, is you know, he is a figurehead in many ways, and he has been sort of bypassed by stronger personalities in his military that have spent much of the 1920s and 1930s really consolidating and building power, and often doing it with the threat of political violence. And so you saw, you know, in the 1930s an attempted coup. The [unclear] you see assassinations are pretty rampant during that time period. So, of course, Hirohito operates in a world in which that overshadows everything. And it's not really until 1945, I think, that he kind of wakes up to the realization of what his own power is in an effort to try and bring about an end to the war. And even then his early moves are done in secrecy because of his fears over his own safety. I mean, his efforts to sort of reach out to former political leaders to, to sort of find out, gauge what their interest is on sort of whether or not Japan should consider surrendering or not. He has to do that sort of incognito to prevent upsetting the army. It's not really until June, I think, of '45 that you kinda see him rise to the occasion and become much, much stronger. It's a different question than his morality. Truman, on the other hand, I think, is a strong personality. He's also I do think he is a very moral individual as well. I think you see that in the, his decision making process over the atomic bomb. It's not something that's flippant. You do see too after the first two uses of the weapon, he stops any future use of it. He doesn't want any unnecessary, death and destruction if it's not needed at that point. And so I think he, you know, even though he was a firm believer in that he made the right decision, in fact, he would go all the way to his death defending that decision, he didn't wanna see it used gratuitously against the Japanese. And I think Truman, it's important also to factor in his where he came from in his decision making process, which was he's a product of the First World War. He'd been an artillery officer there in France. He'd seen the horror there, the trenches and the mud. And I think he then comes into power at a time that is a very awful battlefield scenario for the Americans. He comes in during the middle of the battle of Okinawa, which, of course, is the bloodiest fight of the Pacific War. It's gonna lead to just 25,000 combat fatigue cases alone more than any other battle in the war. And I've been to Okinawa. I've walked the battlefield there. I've been through the caves and the tunnels. I've done the same thing on Iwo Jima. And I've kinda seen sort of to appreciate what that battlefield reality was like for the troops is pretty awful. And so I think Truman is framing his decision making process through what ultimately an invasion of the Japanese home islands, which he's already approved in the summer of 1945, is gonna look like. And how awful that's gonna be, not just for the Americans, but for also the Japanese. And sort of the flip side of that is would [unclear: possibly "the bomb"] be a better alternative.

00:12:23 Andrew Keen: I'm not sure how useful counterfactuals are, but I'm gonna ask you one. You've mentioned Truman and, of course, FDR. One of the astonishing things, at least from my point of view, is that as vice president, Truman didn't even know the existence of the atomic project. So, he only learned. Is that true, James, that he only learned about it when he after FDR's death?

00:12:50 James M. Scott: He brushed up against it prior to that. His investigators on the Truman Committee had actually stumbled across, the operation out of Hanford for the

00:12:58 Andrew Keen: Manhattan Project. Yeah. Which is weird. He wasn't intimate with it. I mean, he wasn't

00:13:04 James M. Scott: No. not in No. He was

00:13:05 Andrew Keen: Anyway, my counterfactual, which obviously can't or can't be proved one way or the other, do you think FDR would have done the same thing? What would be your reading of had FDR lived a couple more years or a few more months, in fact? Would you have done the same thing as Truman?

00:13:22 James M. Scott: Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt about it. FDR did not lift a finger to try and stop the firebombing campaign. And I think it's an important thing to note, and I talked about this in my previous book. The firebombing campaign is really the first big test of American morality with the with voluminous civilian deaths. You know, up until then, the United States had really adhered to this policy of daylight precision, high altitude bombing. In fact, we operated that way in the war in Europe, as well even as, you know, the RAF was intending to do more fire raids. So it's not until March 1945 when the United States under Curtis LeMay make the decision to abandon that. And it's partly a practical decision in that it's Japan is very difficult country to bomb at that point. The distances are tremendous. They're operating a new plane, the B-29, which has a lot of problems, finding those distances. And, of course, the bigger issue of Japanese weather and the jet streams means Japan was a very difficult country to bomb. It's often cloudy or rainy. The jet stream [unclear: possibly "wrecked"] bomber accuracy. And these things had combined to sort of stymie the ability to get bombs on target. And LeMay makes the decision to switch over to firebombing. And there was a real concern inside the Pentagon as to how the American public would react to that. And so what happened is after that when that first mission takes place, one of the senior Air Force, like, guys who's out on, Guam cables back to the Pentagon and says you have to be prepared for this. And they, they start monitoring what the editorial pages are gonna say. They start monitoring radio broadcast. They're looking at what lawmakers are saying on the, floors, the Senate and the House. Is there gonna be any pushback to killing massive amounts of civilians? And, of course, that first raid kills 105,000 men, women, and children. And surprisingly, there is no pushback. In fact, Time magazine, one of their headlines after that raid said, quote, properly kindled Japanese cities will burn like the autumn leaves. LeMay really took that as a green light and ramps up his firebombing campaign to the point he burns through, 64 Japanese cities. So the question about where the American public would be at that point is pretty much already been decided largely, by then. And so FDR throughout that entire process, never objects, to any of it. He has an opportunity to rein it in. He says nothing. In fact, Henry Stimson, who is war secretary during that time period, and who is really in a lot of ways, the sort of the CEO of the Manhattan Project, even though Leslie Groves is sort of the runs it. It's I guess I would say Henry Stimson's more of the board chairman and Groves is the CEO. Stimson actually writes in his diary that he's stunned that there isn't more public pushback against what is happening in the fire raids against Japan. And so when Truman comes in, he basically inherits all the same advisers that were advising FDR. And all those same advisers backed the decision to use the atomic bombs. I don't think there's anything in his track record. There's nothing in his the advisers that surrounded him. There's nothing that sort of points to FDR doing anything differently than what Truman did. And so, in fact, actually, after the bomb after John Hersey publishes his book, Hiroshima, Roosevelt's son, Elliott, tries to come out and publicly say, you know, hey. My father never would have done this. And, actually, Henry Stimson at that point, claps back and says publicly, he says, no. Absolutely not. Your father was committed to using this weapon. And so there was a little bit of a spat, but, of course, that's postwar.

00:16:45 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I think we could call that more of a spat. I mean, that's maybe a Yeah. Almost of a book. You've mentioned Curtis LeMay a couple of times. Your book, Black Snow, its subtitle is Curtis LeMay, the firebombing of Tokyo and the road to the atomic bomb. Curtis LeMay, of course, hasn't had quite as good a press as Harry Truman. He is Doctor Strangelove, and a man who some people, I think, question his very sanity. What's the role of LeMay and the military in, in these three days, or does Truman hold them up? My understanding and usually, I'm wrong on these things, sir, James, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Is Truman was, to put it politely, slightly ambivalent about May— LeMay. Is that fair?

00:17:39 James M. Scott: Yeah. I mean, he was not I mean, Truman, quite frankly, had very little contact with LeMay at this point. Had no contact with LeMay at this point. I mean, this was being you know, LeMay was out in the Mariana Islands. The 509th Composite Group was being run completely off of Tinian. LeMay was on, Guam, which is about 90 miles from there. The conduit for the Manhattan Project was through Henry Stimson and through Leslie Groves in Washington. And so they were through, radio communications and radio telegraphs sending orders and messages back and forth to the Pacific on that point. LeMay's role in the Manhattan Project is he is brought in before the bomb, is completed to help plan how that bomb is gonna be utilized. It's LeMay is the one who actually gives them the suggestion that rather than initially, the idea was that you would fly massive amounts of protection planes, other bombers to sort of protect the Enola Gay. And it was LeMay who came up with the idea of just flying the plane in by itself with just the, the instrument planes accompanying it. That he had so accustomed the Japanese to the daily weather flights of B-29s that they wouldn't be surprised when a single B-29 or just a few B-29s appeared in the skies overhead. So LeMay helps out with that. He's also pretty instrumental as well and the push to hurry up and get the second bomb on Japan. The Nagasaki bomb, he and Leslie Groves both [unclear] on that. So not so much dealing with Truman on that. I mean, is much more of an operator in the field, whereas Truman is kinda, you know, back in Potsdam at that point. You know, once that decision's been made, it's sort of turned over to the Manhattan Project and the Air Force for delivery.

00:19:20 Andrew Keen: Was there any point to the second bomb, James? Could would they have surrendered anyway? I know that some historians have questioned the need. I mean, many, of course, have questioned the need for the first bomb, but others have suggested that having dropped the bomb proved you've got this revolutionary weapon. It guaranteed the Japanese survival's surrender, so why drop the second bomb?

00:19:44 James M. Scott: Actually, the second bomb is far more consequential than the first. One of the arguments that was being made at that time by Japanese leaders was that there's no way the Americans have more than one of these things. Okay. And so and you have to remember, the atomic energy at that point was like AI is today. I mean, it was all the buzz in physics at that point. You know, over 100 academic articles have been published, literally just in, like, 1939 alone. I mean, everybody was looking at the promise at the heart of an atom, and it wasn't just for bombs. People were already talking about, well, we maybe we could power submarines and warships with these things. I mean, there was so much promise built around what could be delivered from an atom that I really compare it to what you're seeing today with AI. Like, how is it going to transform industry and things of that nature? So much so that schools like Berkeley and University of Chicago were building out new physics programs just to be able to tap into this. So the Japanese were aware of that. They had their own atomic energy program. It was far, far more I mean, it was basically didn't go anywhere similar to the Germans. So they were very aware though of atomic energy, and they also knew the huge financial obstacles involved in it. And so when the US drops its first bomb, so Japan's leaders were pretty adamant. Hey, we know that these things are super expensive and super difficult to build. It's doubtful the Americans have much of these things. So our regime has survived intact. We will continue with the plan, which is to fight the Americans on our beaches. That decision to drop that second bomb so soon after the first is really the most consequential one because it shatters that illusion of the Japanese militaries at that point that the Americans only have one of these things. I mean, if the Americans can drop these things every 75 hours, you know, then what— they may have 20 of these things. They may have 200 of them. And at that point, the realization really takes hold that this hope that if we hold out and get the Americans on our shores, we can have this climactic battle and get better, surrender terms goes out the window.

00:21:38 Andrew Keen: I take your point, and I understand that it's a compelling argument. But, surely, there were communication channels where the Americans could let the Japanese know that they had more of these weapons.

00:21:52 James M. Scott: Actually, there weren't other than dropping leaflets. We weren't in any contact with them.

00:21:56 Andrew Keen: You couldn't do it through

00:21:58 James M. Scott: We would have to get through neutral countries, and you're dealing at that point with translations and whatnot. If you look at just how cumbersome the process is to try and just to get these surrendered messages back and forth and how long and drawn out that is, communication was not that easy with the Japanese.

00:22:13 Andrew Keen: You couldn't email those days, James?

00:22:15 James M. Scott: Well, I mean, you know, if you got on Twitter, you might be able to get a quick one out.

00:22:19 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Quick, put it on, put it on TikTok.

00:22:23 James M. Scott: Yeah.

00:22:24 Andrew Keen: I've been, and as I think everybody should if they can, to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. I think that and going to Auschwitz, everybody has a kind of responsibility if they have the opportunity to be in these cities. I'm sure you spent much time there. Your book deals with and it's a memorial that addresses the terrible human suffering of these bombs, although I'm not sure it's necessarily critical of the dropping of the bomb. Obviously, we'll talk about reaction in Japan, later in this conversation, James. But, your book deals with the human suffering as that museum does. How as a writer and a historian do you do that? Or how did you want to do it in Empire of Ashes? What do you want people to read about it in this coverage of these terrible three days in world history?

00:23:21 James M. Scott: Well, I think in all of my books, I lean very heavily on the civilian experience because war is not something that operates in a vacuum and particularly war at this level. Civilians are gonna be the ones that are gonna pay the biggest consequences. I did that with my book, Black Snow, looking at the fire raids. I spent significant time in Tokyo interviewing people in their houses, getting their letters, getting their photographs. I did the same thing here with Empire of Ashes. I've done the same thing in the Philippines, looking at atrocity survivors and victims of the brutality there. I think that's a big part of understanding war. And, of course, World War II is one of the most calamitous events in human history. And, you know, and at the heart of it, it is, you know, we talk about just the numbers and the scope of it. I mean, millions and millions of lives. And so you could try to ground it as much as you can and what that civilian experience was like. And I think that's the only way, for people to really grapple with it. You know, if you think about that line from the musical Hamilton, you know, I wanna be in the room where it happened. And I kinda take that approach to history, which is I wanna put readers on the ground where it happened. I wanna put them in the White House. I wanna put them in the Imperial Palace. But in these kinds of scenarios, I want them to understand what that civilian experience was like because, you know, you've been to Hiroshima. And other than that museum and other than a few of the buildings around there, like the Genbaku Dome or few of the other schools, there's nothing to indicate the horror of what went on there. Same is true for Nagasaki. These are both beautiful functioning cities today. You know, you go to the museums, you see the artifacts, but you don't get that real sense of what it was like in 1945. And so fortunately, you know, through research and through the accounts of both those museums have done a fantastic job, not only in the presentation of the, the artifacts, but in gathering the stories of the survivors. Because, of course, so many of these people have now passed away. They have archives with those accounts. One other thing they do that I think is really wonderful and that we take advantage of, I lead tours to both cities, is that if you go as an American tour group or [unclear: possibly "religious order"], whatever, you can have a meeting with a survivor and hear their story directly. And we do that. I think it's so important for guests today to hear directly from people who experience that.

00:25:33 Andrew Keen: So you've done the research on the ground, both for the firebombing of Tokyo in Black Snow and then, in Empire of Ashes. Is there a difference in the way in which civilians experienced the firebombing of, of Tokyo? As you said, hundreds of thousands of people were killed there, but not instantly like, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What's the difference in the civilian experience?

00:26:02 James M. Scott: That's a good question. I'll tell you, it's surprisingly not as much as you might think. I mean, initially, the when the atomic bomb goes off, that kill radius is pretty large, but it's but a lot of the people died who died weren't necessarily killed right away. So what happens, of course, is when the bomb goes off, it does the heat right there underneath ground zero and sort of extending out and around there is extraordinary. But what it does is it blew down the majority of the buildings that were there and it created a huge kindling pile. And then what you see arise out of that is a firestorm and that firestorm is gonna then burn all of the debris and everything that's there. And so a lot of the people died not necessarily from the atomic bomb blast, but from the subsequent fires and, of course, the radiation. When you go to Tokyo and what people don't realize is that what it's like in the middle of a firestorm, it's not like being around a campfire. I mean, there these are extraordinarily high temperatures. I mean, temperature is so high that concrete melts, that nickels and coins fuse together, that you see roofs that collapse inside of houses. You'll see the roof tiles fuse together with kitchenware. And so what happens if you go to the museum in Tokyo for the fire raids and it's a small private museum, it's nothing like the size or scope of the ones in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You see a lot of the same types of artifacts that you see on display in the other museums. You see the fused coins. You see the dishware melted with tile or corrugated metal. You see sewing needles that have all fused together or typewriters that have melted. And so you looking at them both, the at the end of the day, it comes down to heat and the violence of high heat, in both of these. Now radiation sickness takes on a whole different era for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People close in on ground zero would begin to experience radiation sickness within thirty minutes, the high nausea, the swelling, the vomiting, the thirst, things like that, which would be different. But in general, when it comes down to the there are great similarities in the experience between the three.

00:28:04 Andrew Keen: There's a biblical and apocalyptic quality, of course, to the way you describe it and the way others have described it. Were the victims in Hiroshima or Nagasaki? I mean, obviously, they weren't thinking in historical terms. They weren't thinking like historians. They were simply trying to survive if they were lucky enough to survive. But did they imagine that something different had happened, that somehow the heavens had opened or hell had come to earth?

00:28:33 James M. Scott: Yeah. And that's a good question. And, no, I think more than anything, it was just stunning. And you look at there were only five photographs taken in Hiroshima the day of the blast. There was one police I mean, one, newspaper photographer who went out and took those five images that we have. And what you see about these images is you largely see people sitting because they're exhausted, they're sick, they're overwhelmed. One of the accounts I read said the time meant nothing to people at that point. I mean, whether you had a wristwatch or not, you didn't know. Organized rescue wouldn't make it into Hiroshima for thirty hours. Nagasaki is a very different story. Organized help gets in there very, very quickly because the geography is different. But most of the survivors were stunned. They just they were trying to get to the river banks, trying to get water. They were dealing with the nausea. They were dealing with the swelling from the, the, the rays that have been released by the, the bomb. It so it's really what you see is it's a, just almost a malaise, a shock, a disorientation that comes out of so much of it. And what you see then happens is a lot of these people when they get to the river banks, they're wading out in the water. They're thirsty. They're trying to cool their wounds, and they die. They drown. And so you see tons and tons of bodies sort of wash out with the tide. It becomes so much in the river in Nagasaki that it actually creates a dam in the river there in Nagasaki, a human dam of bodies. And so it's, it's a horrible, horrible experience. And, and it's one of the things I tried to sort of communicate to readers as much as I could what it was like.

00:30:17 Andrew Keen: And when did that get out to that the of what happened? When did both Truman and Hirohito begin to understand the immensity of the of all this? I mean, was it within twenty-four hours in the three days between these— these [unclear]?

00:30:35 James M. Scott: So here Hirohito knew pretty soon. I mean, they were getting reports in from tech in Tokyo that Hiroshima had been hit and been hit really badly. And

00:30:42 Andrew Keen: so But more than really badly, James, that's the ultimate euphemism. I mean, how were they describing it?

00:30:50 James M. Scott: They had they were actually told that pretty much of the city had been wiped out. And then they get their first real accounts from senior leadership by the time of the bombing of Nagasaki, in fact. So one of the Japanese generals who had been in that area by then, excuse me, had made it to Tokyo and reported it on just how bad things were. So they had a pretty good handle on just how bad things were. The Americans, it would take us a while before we got in. Our first flights over Hiroshima were blotted out because of the clouds and the mushroom, cloud and whatnot. But very within, you know, eight to ten hours, we started getting photographs and at that point they were looking and you could see how much of the city in the reports basically said it looked like the city had been swept clean that. And if you look and I've got a photograph in Empire of Ashes, I believe it shows sort of the target area before and after sort of side by side and you can see where on the pre area all the built up buildings, houses, offices, things like that. And after this, it's just wiped. It's just erased, like it's been wiped and swept clean. So we're getting aerial reports into that. Wouldn't really be until the Japanese surrender that we got our first teams in there to really get a handle on just how bad it was on the ground. But we had an idea of it looking at the aerial photography.

00:32:03 Andrew Keen: In the Oppenheimer movie, of course, it suggested that Oppenheimer had a degree of regret about what he'd unleashed on the world. And there's a moment in that film or a scene in the film where relations between Truman and Oppenheimer are profoundly chilly, very unpleasant. Did Truman ever have any regrets? Did he second guess himself when he learned about the human suffering as a consequence of this decision?

00:32:35 James M. Scott: If he did, he never put it in writing or talked about it. He, literally until the day he died, he stood behind that decision. And I've looked at his postwar correspondence, pretty extensively on that, and he pretty much repeats the same thing. In fact, I think more indicative of anything is the fight he ended up getting into about thirteen years after the war with the mayor and city council of Hiroshima. Excuse me. In fact, The, city, Hiroshima was very upset over some comments and Truman was quoted in a radio broadcast saying he had no regrets. And so they sent him a letter, you know, like a resolution that they passed saying, you know, you should be more regretful over this. And Truman was really offended by that. And so he punched back. So to speak, he basically wrote out this response saying, you know, I did what I had to do, but it was Japan's fault. Japan started this war. You know, it was the aggressor here. And, and so it wasn't just enough that he sent this letter back. He actually held a press conference at his museum there in Independence, Missouri, and he got the media there. He passed it out. He made those comments. And so he kinda gets in this sort of back and forth with postwar political leaders in Japan about it. But, no, he did not. Nothing I've seen in any of the historical record in any way, shape, or form indicates any sort of regret on his part.

00:33:47 Andrew Keen: At least he didn't threaten another bomb. What do you make of that interaction between him and Oppenheimer from the movie?

00:33:55 James M. Scott: Well, that's Oppenheimer's perspective. And, and so, you know, that's the way Or

00:33:59 Andrew Keen: it's the director of the movie's perspective, I mean, via Oppenheimer.

00:34:02 James M. Scott: Yeah. It comes out of the, Kai Bird's book on it. But no. But, I mean, I think Truman, I think it's probably overly dramatized in the film, but I do think it speaks to what Truman really, you know, his famous saying always was the buck stops here. And I think he very much viewed it as he was be the one that would shoulder the moral blame for it, or the responsibility for it that, you know and you see that throughout the rise of the Manhattan Project with some of the scientists there who felt like even though they had been tasked for one thing, which was to build the bomb, they felt in the end some of them did that they should have a greater say in how that weapon was utilized. But in the way that the structure of the American military is in civilian control, those decisions actually don't lie with those scientists, but actually with Truman. And I think that's effectively how Truman viewed it, which is I'm the commander in chief. I'm the one that has to make this decision. All that responsibility rests upon me. And I think that's kinda his take on it.

00:35:01 Andrew Keen: Yeah. The buck stops with Truman. And, of course, the buck stops with the author. Often, people criticize books for

00:35:07 James M. Scott: Mhmm.

00:35:07 Andrew Keen: One kind of bias or another, James. You know that as well as anyone. I'm guessing that your books get translated into Japanese, and, certainly, you have Japanese readers. Do you think, this new book, Empire of Ashes, will be received and reviewed differently in Japan than it is in the US? It's already getting, great reviews and review in the, in the Wall Street Journal, which, I'm sure will help with, sales. Empire of Ashes, an explosive end to the war is the headline there. How does your work and how will this book go down in Japan?

00:35:45 James M. Scott: The book's already been sold, to be published, in Japan. So it'll be out next August in Japan. Black Snow was published in Japan as well. Black Snow did very well in Japan. You know, I've got the same publisher, the same editor for Empire of Ashes. He's read the book and very excited to publish it. And I think, my question I think the book will probably be received similarly to Black Snow, I would think. And, you know, and part of that, I think, is one of the things I try to do with this book is not make a pronounced moral judgment in one way or the other. What I really wanted to do was lay out what happened in Washington. What was Truman's perspective? What was the decision making process there? And what happened in Japan? And sort of layout out as much as I could and then let the readers grapple with those bigger issues. Nobody needs to hear James Scott in Charleston, South Carolina tell you what it is you should think about this. My goal was to lay it all out there. And I did the same thing with Black Snow and a lot of my previous books, which is, hey, put it out there, show all sides, You know? And too often in past, books have been only from the American perspective. Not enough focus on the Japanese. But I wanted to put both sides out there as completely as possible and let readers make that call. So I think, you know, we'll we will know next summer. In fact, I was just emailing with my editor in Japan, this earlier today. I'm probably gonna be in Japan about the time the book comes out and hopefully do some media for it over there when I'm, in next August.

00:37:09 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Be interesting. I'd be very curious. Maybe we'll get you back on the show. I mean, are there still you know, you wrote a book called, Black Snow. Are there still some gray areas here? I mean, you don't know everything. Is, what are the still the unanswered questions that even you in this new book, Empire of Ashes, haven't answered? Or is everything pretty much known, at least in your mind, about why and how these weapons were used?

00:37:36 James M. Scott: Well, I think more than anything, what we've seen is sort of the pendulum over the last eight decades has kinda gone back and forth about, you know, whether the bombs should have been used, should have not, things like that. And I do think we're kind of at the point now where much of the documentation is out there. You know, we now have we now understand how far along Japan was and its plans to defend Kyushu and what that battle would have looked like. And, you know, we've gotten some more nuggets recently about, you know, from Hirohito's perspective. I mean, he was Hiroshima for him, he grappled he understood very immediately the significance of the bomb, what it was, and the urgency that was surrounding it and the need to surrender. But I do think from a documentary standpoint, we've got 95% of what we're gonna get. There may be some other nuggets out there, things like show up in different archives or families, things like that. But I do think we've got a lot of that. But, you know, history is always about new interpretations and what people bring to it.

00:38:41 Andrew Keen: It's all history. It never ends. In November, I know it's the 85th anniversary of Pearl Harbor [ed.: the Pearl Harbor anniversary falls on December 7]. You're gonna be speaking at the National World War II Museum. Should there be I wanna say a celebration, but memorials, not just of events like Pearl Harbor, but this decision. So in four years' time, should there be an 85th anniversary of in August of, of, 2030? Should we be remembering what happened? Do Americans I mean, your book will sell well, but it's not gonna be a you're not gonna sell, like, some best selling books. It's still an academic or not an academic book, but it's a book for a historical audience.

00:39:29 James M. Scott: Mhmm.

00:39:31 Andrew Keen: Should Americans know more about this, James? I'm guessing that they're probably not in our audience because we've got a relatively well educated audience. But many Americans are not familiar with this story, are they? And they should be.

00:39:43 James M. Scott: Well, Andrew, first off, you've gotta help me make this thing a best seller now. We can't talk about underselling the book.

00:39:49 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I did not. I realized I was getting myself into trouble putting my by suggesting that you weren't a best seller.

00:39:55 James M. Scott: Come on. You gotta help me. We gotta you gotta tell all your

00:39:57 Andrew Keen: I have to buy a couple of hundred thousand copies from you, James. I have a word with your publisher.

00:40:01 James M. Scott: Thank you. Thank you. So no. I look. I do think this is, you know, it's this is one of those things. If anything, I think Hiroshima overshadows so much of the Pacific War. You know, and I spend a lot of time, I've spent decades studying the Pacific War, you know, and traveling to these places, these remote islands that most Americans couldn't find on a map. I mean, I've places like Peleliu or Tinian or Truk Lagoon. I mean, most people have very few ideas about this because in fact, there are certain moments in the Pacific war that do overshadow so much else. I mean, the battle of Midway is one Pearl Harbor is another. And, of course, Hiroshima is one of those as well. Is it studied? Should it be studied more? Of course. I think that about everything. I think the humanities and history are under onslaught from everything these days. I mean, people need to get off TikTok and start picking up history books. You know, that is a big part of it. But I do think that, you know, I in fact, actually, I went and spoke at a university class a couple of years ago dedicated just to the question on whether or not the atomic bomb should be used. So I do think these are it's out there. It's gonna be continued to be covered. I always think history could be covered in greater detail and more of it. I've got two kids. I've got one in college and one in high school, and I think it's a, you know, one loves history, one doesn't. And I dragged them to bat dragged them everywhere from Pearl Harbor.

00:41:25 Andrew Keen: Forced them both to buy the book.

00:41:27 James M. Scott: No. You neither of my kids have read any of my books. Can you believe that? And it's funny.

00:41:31 Andrew Keen: It's not can because, my kids haven't read my books either. So

00:41:34 James M. Scott: Well, you know, it's funny. Not until my son, who's 17, it wasn't until he finally, in high school, started to like history. And it wasn't until one of his history teachers brought up one of my books in class that my son actually dawned on him what I do for a living, and then it might be something that's interesting. Up until then, he just simply didn't care. But, but no. It's, you know, history is a tough subject. I mean, you know, if you saw that Wall Street Journal article a couple of months ago about the death of the dad book, it's terrifying. History, people just they're not as interested in it as they should be these days. And, you know, and yet these things are so relevant. Like

00:42:12 Andrew Keen: And in the debate about, final question, James, in the debate about America making America great again or maybe reacting against America being great again, what does this chapter tell us about America? What should it? You coauthored a book about a less heroic or perhaps less victorious moment in American history, Targeted: Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing. So you're all too familiar with less glorious chapters in American contemporary history. What does this, event, so critical in world history? What should it tell us about twenty-first century? Or what can it tell us about twenty-first century American history? Is it about moral leadership, military leadership?

00:43:03 James M. Scott: Well, you know, I think there's so many lessons you could take out of this. I mean, you could take the lesson of just the ingenuity that it went to create the Manhattan Project. I mean, what went into that is just one of the most fascinating stories. I mean, $2 billion building top secret cities, harnessing the minds of greatest scientific minds in the world at that point in industry in order to really turn a theory into a, a weapon. You look at the, campaigns across the whole Pacific War that led us to that moment, what it took to get to Tinian Island, which, of course, is a small coral runway, which from which the Enola Gay took off. This is actually a piece of that runway right here.

00:43:45 Andrew Keen: James is showing us the piece for people who are just listening.

00:43:49 James M. Scott: Yeah. This is a piece of the coral from which the Enola Gay took off. I mean, the industrial might that it took to conquer an ocean and the logistics to put us within range.

00:43:57 Andrew Keen: And we should remind people that, the Enola Gay, of course, was the name of the plane that dropped. Was it both, just the first one. Right?

00:44:03 James M. Scott: Just the first one. Bockscar was the one that dropped it on, on Nagasaki. So, I mean, the logistics involved, the science involved, and, of course, you know, the, and certainly the moral questions involved and what went into that decision making process, the creation of the interim committees, the target committees, the debates amongst scientists. I mean, these were not flippant easy decisions. And I think that is something that's too often in the postwar period. We try to boil it down as to, you know, yes, no, right, wrong or whatnot. And it's not that simple. I mean, these were complex issues and these were smart individuals who debated them. You hear people say, well, why didn't we do a test drop or why didn't we, you know, tell the Japanese we had it? These were questions that were debated at that point. You know, these were scenarios that were the highest levels of our government were considered. You know, of course, all of that is talked about in here, so we can't spoil all of it. So, yeah.

00:44:55 Andrew Keen: It's gonna be an, I think, James, could be an instant bestseller. It's gonna sell tens of hundreds of thousands of copies between now and August 9. The,

00:45:06 James M. Scott: Andrew, we've got you speaking the right language now.

00:45:08 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Empire of the Ashes [ed.: Empire of Ashes] is out. The world and as James Scott says, history is not simple. And I think what James has done in Empire of Ashes is recognize that without making it too complicated, making it very readable and relevant to, August 2026. So, James, really, an honor to speak, and I'd love to get you back on the show actually after the Japanese editions come out. When you when will that be next year?

00:45:36 James M. Scott: It comes out next I think next August 6. I think it's

00:45:38 Andrew Keen: Okay. Well, maybe, we'll make a date, August 2027. We'll get you back on the show and hear about the reaction in Japan. So best of luck with the book. Thank you so much.

00:45:48 James M. Scott: Thank you. Take care.