SO, I'D LIKE TO START OUT TALKING A BIT ABOUT THE THIRTIES. THE DEPRESSION IN THE UNITED STATES AND A BURGEONING INTEREST IN MARXISM AMONG THE INTELLECTUALS IN THIS COUNTRY. AND THE, THE SOVIET EXPERIMENT WHAT WAS, WHAT WAS IT LIKE LIVING IN, IN THE STATES IN THE, IN THE EARLY THIRTIES, MID, EARLY TO MID THIRTIES BEFORE YOU WENT TO THE FAR EAST, DURING THE DEPRESSION.

Well it depended on a number of things. Your experiences during the depression depended on one, the economics of your family that you came from. And whether you were sheltered from the depression or whether you were thrust into the center of it. Whether you were paying any attention to it intellectually, whether you weren't, Marxism in this country historically had been wrapped up in something called the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and others. But it never really got very far politically in the United States. The Great Depression and the Soviet experience as we heard about it in America, our per, the American perception of what was going on in the Soviet Union, changed these things. You've got to remember that not until 1933, when Roosevelt became President, did we even recognize the Soviet Union. Going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and the Bolshevik Revolution. When I, I was in college during the dep, the crash, I went to college in '29, the fall of '29, everything was great. The Stock Market collapsed that October and the great collapse. By the time I got out of college in '32, we had a quarter of the working population on the street. We had Hoovervilles, so-called, named after the poor unfortunate Republican president of the day. People living in tar paper shacks. Now intellectually, this kind of experience stirred a lot of young people to examine Marxism, more than the normal academic process would have called for. And a great many who, who knows the number, a great many, a great number of people became so attracted to it, or contrary wise, repelled by the experience of the American economy during the Depression, that they thought the, Marx had found the answer to all our problems. To all man's problems. So they became committed Marxists, of one decree or another. Of one per, persuasion of Marxism. Some were Trotskyites, some were Stanlinists, et cetera. And a lot of these people, a number of these people, not a lot, a number of these people turned out to be traitors. In the end, when, when we got around many years later, going back and looking at this period and talking about who gave secrets to the Russians, ands why, it began to come out that a great deal of this was out of an intellectual conviction. Most of these people were not doing this money. It was not that kind of espionage. The Depression was a traumatic experience to this country. Traumatic. I think this country only had two traumatic experiences. The Civil War and the Great Depression. That's, that's, let's think about that in two hundred years since the American Revolution.

LET'S GO TO A WIDER...

I don't know whether you want me to go on with that account, or what...

WELL THE POINT THAT THAT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO, TO MAKE, WHICH YOU MADE, I WOULD ASK YOU TO, MAYBE YOU COULD SAY IT AGAIN A LITTLE MORE CONCISELY. IS THE, THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND AN INTEREST IN MARXISM. IN, IN, IN A FAIRLY SHORT RESPONSE, IF YOU COULD.

Okay. You want to try it again?

YEAH.

Mar...

I'M SORRY COULD YOU LOOK AT ME...

Yeah. Marxism in the United States before the Great Depression I think was essentially an intellectual exercise with some exceptions of this American Socialist movement during the First World War period, for example. What changed all that was the Great Depression. And it was a definite rela, correlation between the Great Depression and the development of Communism, to the decree that it ever developed in this country. But what it did develop was a hard core of communist enthusiasts and members of the American Communist Party. Many of whom were so convinced of the the rightness of the Soviet experience, the Soviet style of Marxism, that they became tools of the Soviet Union. They became extensions of Soviet foreign policy. And this was a tactic that Stalin used worldwide, and very effectively. And some of these people actually became espionage agents for the Soviet Union, as we found out in a lot of cases after World War II.

OKAY, THANK YOU. I THINK THAT WAS BET, THAT WAS MORE CONCISE, SO THEN WHEN, WHEN THE NAZIS INVADED POLAND, DID, WAS THE WEST AWARE OF THE PACT BETWEEN THE NAZIS AND THE SOVIET BEFORE THE INVASION OR DID THAT JUST COME OUT LATER? DO YOU RECALL?

Yes. The great turning point in his, historically and the great traumatic point, intellectually, for, for people who had Marxists persuasions, was the Hitler-Stalin pact. Here was the lion and the lamb, or the two devils getting together, whatever way you want to describe it. These two guys, the followers of Stalin had been taught to condemn Hitler as the ultimate enemy of mankind. Suddenly they're saying nice things about each other, signing a pact, and dividing up Poland between them. That, you either, you either fished out then, or you were a totally committed communist till the end. And it washed out large numbers of American Marxists. Historically it was one of the great traumas of the left in American history.

OKAY. I'M SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION. WOULD, SO THE PEOPLE WHO WERE INTERESTED IN MARXISM INTELLECTUALLY, OR COMMITTED TO MARXISM INTELLECTUALLY WERE SOMEWHAT TRAUMATIZED BY THE SOVIET PACT. WHAT, DID IT HAVE MUCH EFFECT ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC IN GENERAL, THOSE WHO WEREN'T COMMITTED TO MARXISM. DID, HOW, DID THE COUNTRY ON THE WHOLE REACT TO THE ALIGNING OF, OF HITLER AND STALIN?

You have to remember that the United States from the end of the First World War until Pearl Harbor, was basically isolationists. People in this country really didn't want to have anything to do with Europe. There were exceptions, of course. And towards the latter period, especially after the war began in Europe at the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the, the country was divided into two groups. The interventionists and the isolationists. But this country had been isolationist for a long, long time. So that the, the coming of the war, in Europe, sharpened this division in this country. Those people who said we should have nothing to do with Europe's troubles these, these are a bunch of people just fighting for spoils among themselves. Let's stay out of it, remember what George Washington said, no entangling and alliances. That was a very popular view in this country. And the Depression made it more popular. We didn't have time to worry about foreign affairs, we were worrying about how to get a, a square meal. And only, actually not until Pearl Harbor, did the country come together, The period between September of '39 when Hitler went into Poland, and December of '41, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, was a period of wrenching change, the beginning of great wrenching change. And included in that of course, was Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, in June of '41.

SO WHEN HITLER AND STALIN BOTH INVADED POLAND, WHEN THEY ALLIED THEIR FORCES IN '39, THE IF YOU WERE TO GAUGE THE, THE ATTITUDE OF, OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC ON THE WHOLE, THEY DIDN'T CARE?

When Hitler and Stalin signed their pact, everybody in this country knew about it. It was the headline on every, paper. It was on the radio. There was no television of course. The, the general public reaction was a plague on both your houses. We hope you knock each other off you two SOBs.

TERRIFIC ANSWER. OKAY, GOOD. THAT, THAT WAS NICE AND CONCISE.

Isn't that right?

As soon as they were both attacking each other, they said we'll keep our hands off, let 'em kill each other. Yeah, yeah.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE, YOU'RE, I SEE WHAT YOU'RE SAYING...

But his questions are not on the, not going to be shown.

SHE'S SAYING, WHAT SHE'S SAYING THAT THE QUESTION THAT THAT ANSWERS IS WHEN THE GERMANS INVADED THE SOVIET UNION, NOT WHEN THE PACT WAS SIGNED. WAS YOUR ANSWER TO THE GERMANS INVADED THE SOVIET UNION, IN JUNE OF '41 OR…

Oh no, no. No it was when, when Hitler signed, Hitler and Stalin signed, Stalin signed the pact and divided Poland, we, I was saying the American attitude was a plague on both your houses, to Hell with the both of you. You're both S.O.B's. The invasion of Russia created another kind of problem.

OKAY. WE'LL GET TO THAT IN A MINUTE. YOU TOUCHED OH, EARLIER YOU TALKED A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ISOLATIONISM I JUST WANTED TO ASK YOU A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THAT, I MAY BE REPEATING MYSELF, BUT SOMETIMES ONE ANSWER IS A LITTLE MORE USEABLE THAN OTHER. DID THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN ANOTHER EUROPEAN WAR? WHEN, WHEN, WHEN THEY SAW THE WAR BEGINNING IN EUROPE...

In '39.

THIRTY-NINE.

In '39.

WHAT WAS THEIR ATTITUDE ABOUT THAT WAR?

When the war began in Europe in '39, I think that the basic public attitude and what polling there was at that time I'm sure would sustain, was that this is none of our business. Let's stay out of this. With exceptions. With exceptions. There lobbies for the British, the French, even some for the Germans and Italians. Basically though, stay out of it, it's not our business. We got hooked once in the First World War, we're not going to get hooked again. You must remember the First World War was not all that remote at that time.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE PRESIDENT, WHAT, WHAT WAS THE, HIS ATTITUDE AS FAR AS IT WAS KNOWN AT THE TIME, FDR'S ATTITUDE, I, I RECALL I THINK THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HERE YOU MENTIONED THAT THE IN 1940 THERE WAS SO MUCH, STILL SO MUCH RESISTANCE TO GETTING INVOLVED IN THE DRAFT LAW, ONLY PASSED JUST BY ONE VOTE, IT'S MAYBE YOU COULD MENTION THAT AND...

...about thirty, thirty-nine. I've forgotten exactly when that draft law vote was.

IT WAS 1940.

Forty, was it?

THE ELECTION.

Third term election where he promised to keep us out of war... Franklin Roosevelt...

EXCUSE ME, I'M GOING TO ASK YOU TO START AGAIN BECAUSE THE CHAIR WAS CREAKING RIGHT ON THE...

Okay.

YOUR FIRST WORDS THERE.

Okay.

AND, AND COULD YOU ALSO LOOK AT ME WHEN...

Yeah, the light is doing a little of this to me. I think the way one must look at Franklin Roosevelt in the, this period of history, and the beginning of the war in Europe, is to recall these experiences in the First World War and subsequently. He had been an internationalist, and supported Woodrow Wilson, was a sub-cab, cabinet member in the Wilson administration. He ran for Vice President in 1920 and was overwhelmingly defeated by isolationists Republicans, Harding and Coolidge. And he was therefore very leery of getting involved in any kind of foreign adventure that wouldn't have brought public support. He never forgot the lesson of the First World War and the post-war. The failure of the Versailles peace after the First World War. Therefore, when the war, he tried to prevent war from starting in Europe in September of '39, not very effectively obviously, and historically not very skillfully. Nonetheless, he made some efforts. But the US had no influence abroad. We didn't belong to the Uni, to the League of Nations in those days, wouldn't even join it. So that we had very little influence. And his attitude was essentially the attitude of the American public, let's stay out of this. Until the war progressed to the point where he began to see that he could make a case to the American public, that our interests somehow or other were beginning to be involved. And that was the later part of the story, of course.

NOW WE JUST HAVE A FEW SECONDS ON THIS TAPE, SO WE'LL STOP AND CHANGE TAPES.

OKAY, NOW WHERE WERE WE?

Roosevelt.

YES. THE ELECTIONS 1940. GETTING AMERICA INTO WAR.MAYBE WE COULD SAY SOMETHING ABOUT... HIS PLATFORM IN 1940.

Third Term election.

THIRD TERM ELECTION, AND MAYBE YOU CAN ALSO MENTION THAT THE SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT...SO MAYBE YOU COULD JUST TELL ME ABOUT HIS THIRD TERM...

In 1940 when Roosevelt ran...

EXCUSE ME, I THINK I STILL, HADN'T SAID THE LAST WORD, AS YOU WERE SAYING YOUR FIRST WORD.

Okay.

...A SECOND AND THEN START.

In 1940 when Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term, his justification was really, the situation, the war in Europe. At the start of the previous year, whether he wanted to run or not is, is immaterial at this point. But he ran on a platform of not getting in, keeping the United States out of war. And I won't send your boys into a foreign war. Made a speech in Boston that plagued him the rest of his life. The truth of the matter probably is, that he didn't know at that point, how the war was going to turn out, whether the US was going to have to get in it. It was a collection of imponderables. But he was trying to position the Uni, the US, I think, to be able to help Britain and France if, in the American national interest, as he saw it. So he indulged in deception. Political deception. I think most of the American public took him, because he was such an immense political, towering political figure, of, of immense political power. Most of the American public thought that he, when he said he wouldn't take us into a foreign war, that that's what he meant. Now if you examine the words that he said, they're sort of an esoteric and a footnote that allowed him an escape clause, but people never hear those things in speeches. Historically we went into the war because somebody attacked us. And everybody agreed, okay, we were attacked, we have to go to war. But when he said this, he was indulging in, I think without any question, a certain degree of deception. In what he thought to be the national good.

OKAY. AND WHAT, WHAT ABOUT THE SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT...?

One of the reasons that he was so deceptive.

EXCUSE ME, I'M GOING TO ASK YOU TO SAY FDR OR ROOSEVELT INSTEAD OF HE...

Yeah... one of the reasons that Roosevelt was deceptive was his reading of American public opinion. Which was so basically still isolationist, there was a lot of evidence of it. The Selective Service, the draft, was extended in 1940 in a vote in the House of Representatives by a margin of one. A lot of people have claimed they provided that margin of one, including Lyndon Johnson, who was then a young congressman. And also by the fact that he made his, a speech once in Chicago, by quarantining the aggressor. And he got into a lot of trouble over that, a lot of criticism. And he said later on, it's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder, when you're leading and find nobody's behind you. There was not the public backing for America to go into the war at that point.

OKAY. LOIS?

Oh, I got that date wrong?

NO. LOIS WAS SUGGESTING THAT, THAT THE NOTION OF QUARANTINING THE AGRESSOR IN, IN YOUR RESPONSE WASN'T, GOT US... IT INTRODUCES ANOTHER...

Another subject...

AND SO MAYBE WE, WE COULD ASK YOU TO MENTION THE SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT PASSING ON, BY ONLY ONE VOTE, AND FDR'S...

And leave that out.

AND LEAVE OUT THE QUARANTINE AND THE AGRESSOR PART.

Okay. Let's see. Let me try it this way. Roosevelt's deception about not getting us into war to the degree that it was a, really a deception, is based on his reading of American public opinion at that time. And I think you read it correctly because the public was isolationist. There was not support for the United States to get involved in the War in Europe. One of the evidences of this, was the extension of the Selective, Selective Service Act, the draft act. And it pa, was passed by the House in 1940 by a single vote. Well that's pretty damned good evidence that the country's not really very much behind you. That's the way he read it. That's why he was so cautious.

OKAY. NOW, IN 1941 THE NAZIS INVADE USSR. HOW DOES THAT SIT WITH THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, WHAT IS, WHAT IS THE AMERICAN, WHAT IS THE PUBLIC OPINION AT THAT TIME, NOW, NOW THAT SOVIETS HAVE BEEN INVADED BY THE NAZIS, AND, WELL JUST WAIT. WE'VE GOT AN AIRPLANE WE'RE GOING TO LET IT PASS. AND HERE MAYBE IF, IF WE CAN, I REMEMBER READING SOMEWHERE ABOUT THEN SENATOR TRUMAN MAKING A REMARK IN THE SENATE ABOUT WHAT WAS IT...?

Russia

YEAH. GIVE YOU A CHANCE TO SWALLOW YOUR ICE...

YOU WERE BACK IN THE STATES AT THAT POINT WEREN'T YOU?

Yeah. I was here. Okay, is the sound okay?

YEAH, BUT YOU'VE GOT ICE IN YOUR MOUTH.

What?

ARE YOU, YOU THROUGH WITH YOUR ICE?

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union this was a rather traumatic problem for American opinion looking back on it. I think at the time, many people continued to say, a plague on both your houses. Hitler and Stalin were equal villains. Let them kill each other off. Uh, they'd been, they'd been enemies, then they'd been allies now they were fighting a tremendous war. Neither of them meant any good to us. Let them kill each other off. But there also began to be a very large body of opinion that said, we've got to come to the Russian's help. Because that is the only way of saving Britain. And here one must never forget the tremendous influence on the American public of Winston Churchill. And his influence as a person who spoke to Americans in their own language and in such marvelous use of that language, I think can never be overrated historically. It's a very important fact of the war. And Roosevelt and Churchill by then had established a very good personal relationship and they...the invasion of, of Russia by Hitler, Churchill said something to the effect that if, if the devil was on Russia's side screw them, screw the...

STOP. WOULD YOU START THAT THOUGHT AGAIN PLEASE... ARE WE READY? OKAY.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, there was a tremendous problem for the American public here, and the tremendous division in what people thought. There was a large body of opinion that was still saying a pox on both your houses. Here are two dictators, let them kill each other off. To Hell with both of them. But there were also people who began to say, this, we've got to do something to help the Russians because Hitler was giving them a very hard time at the beginning. We've got to do something to help the Russians because that's the only way to save the British. And why do we want to save the British? Not just because they were our British cousins and spoke the same language. But to a very, very large degree, and very important historically, because of Winston Churchill. Churchill was such a, an immense figure and such a great leader of the British. And he had so much influence on American opinion. He spoke our language and he spoke it so well, that there was a tremendous sympathy with him. The, the, British had stood alone against Hitler after the fall of the Lowlands in France, and Britain needed help and one big way to help them was to help the Russians because it took the pressure off the British. There were a lot of things going on that we now know that we didn't know then. About the war and its conduct. But I think that is the basic point.

WHAT, WHAT ARE YOU REFERRING TO...?

Oh, that Hitler had called off the invasion quite awhile before he turned around and to invade the Russians. He wasn't going to invade Britain, but, but nobody knew that. At least the public didn't know it. I don't...

LET ME JUST ASK YOU TO, TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CHURCHILL AGAIN, JUST STARTING WITH THAT THOUGHT RATHER THAN LEADING INTO THAT THOUGHT. JUST HOW, HOW IMPORTANT CHURCHILL WAS FROM THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.

Churchill, who was, whose mother was American you remember, had a tremendous appeal in this country. He was a real gutsy guy that Americans liked and admired. Even the people who'd, who were afraid that he was trying to suck us into war. And he was of course. Had to admire him. That bulldog picture of him that you've all seen, everybody's seen, so epitomized him and Britain. And this had a tremendous influence, propaganda, it's part of the propaganda of wartime. And I don't think it can ever be, his influence can ever be underestimated in judging the development of the American public opinion as we finally got in, moved towards, and got into World War II.

THANK YOU. WE STARTED TALKING ABOUT THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE SOVIET UNION, OR THE ATTITUDE ABOUT NAZI INVASION OF THE SOVIET UNION, NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THE ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TOWARD THE SOVIETS, NOW THAT THEY WERE FIGHTING THE NAZIS. AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT THE...

You want that prop in it?

HERE LET ME GET THAT FOR YOU.

Is that alright there... war relief?

SO THE QUESTION IS, HOW, HOW WAS THE PUBLIC OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES CHANGING TOWARD THE SOVIET UNION NOW, THAT THE SOVIET UNION HAD BECOME THIS GREAT HEROIC UNDERDOG AGAINST THE NAZIS IN EUROPE?

The Soviet Union became our official ally. That is the, the United States government, FDR, and the Soviet government became allies against Hitler. Even though we weren't fighting Hitler we became allies in the sense that we began to help. One of the ways we began to help was raising a lot of money for Russian war relief. I have here an old program of a Russian war relief benefit in June 30 of 1942. And here you have everybody who was anybody at the day, of the day. The wife of the Russian ambassador Mrs. Letvinoff, Paul Robeson the singer, Lowell Thomas the radio commentator, Phil Murray the labor leader, Melvin Douglass the popular movie act, actor, and so on. All these people in the arts, here, and in New York, and on the West Coast and elsewhere in this country, got together in concerts and benefits of one kind or another to raise money. I remember my wife and I going to a benefit at Constitution Hall in Washington. One of these Russian war relief benefits. Mrs. Roosevelt was there, young Andre Gromyko who was then in the Russian Embassy was there. And a lot, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the widow of the President was there. Everybody who was anybody, so to speak, was there. And they, we had the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by then famous white Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky. And we all ended up standing up the, both the international and the Star Spangled Banner. This is how the official attitude changed. Now there were many people who thought this was a terrible thing to do. That we ought not to be consorting with the devil. Stalin. And who resented this would have no part of it. But the official attitude was to help, and of course once Hitler declared war on us, at the time of Pearl Harbor, it made it much easier, and the opposition disappeared at that point. But in this period in between, is, is, is what I'm talking about, the period in between.

OKAY, GOOD. I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU TO PUT THE PROGRAM BACK WHERE IT WAS AND WE'LL DO A WIDER SHOT WHERE WE CAN SEE YOU PICKING IT UP AND, AND LOOKING AT IT.

Okay.

PERHAPS, WE DON'T HAVE TO…

I forgot to read that thing.

WE CAN DO IT THIS TIME, YEAH MAYBE IF SOMEWHERE IN THERE. LET ME JUST ASK YOU THE QUESTION AGAIN.

Yeah.

OKAY. WE, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO INTO AS MUCH DETAIL...

Yeah.

OR PERHAPS YOU COULD READ THAT PART OF IT, IF YOU LIKE...

THE CONCERT'S REALLY NICE THOUGH. AT CONSTITUTION HALL...

YEAH, WELL WE HAVE, WE HAVE THAT... ALRIGHT, SO YOU STARTED, YOU STARTED OFF BY TALKING ABOUT THE CHANGING ATTITUDE TOWARD THE RUSSIANS IN THIS COUNTRY AND YOU, AS AN EXAMPLE YOU'LL BRING, BRING THAT IN AND READ FROM IT. OKAY...

Once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, attitudes began to change in this country, and the government led the change in attitude. There began to be a lot of semi-official efforts, and official efforts to support the Russian war effort. Russian war relief for example. Russians were desperate for help. For example here is a, an old program of a Russian war relief benefit concert in 1942. It says on the back, I pledge blank dollars for hospital and medical supplies desperately needed by our heroic allies on the Russian front. And they were desperately needed. I remember another concert at Constitution Hall, the DAR Hall in Washington, where we had Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the widow of the President, all sorts of cabinet and other notable people, the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the White Russian director Serge Koussevitzky, and we all ended up singing The Internationale and the Star Spangled Banner. That's the kind of atmosphere that came about in this town, in Washington, after the invasion of Russia.

ACTUALLY IT'S RIGHT ON TARGET. OKAY. HOW DID YOU, HOW DID YOU FIRST HEAR THE NEWS OF PEARL HARBOR?

Sunday morning we were sitting in our living room reading the comics and the radio was on, and suddenly we heard about Pearl Harbor.

NOW GIVE US THE LONG VERSION.

Sunday morning December 7th, 1941, I did not smile in that one...

THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SHORT VERSION AND THE LONG VERSION.

Yeah, yeah.

We were actually on the floor reading the newspaper...

Well, that's right, I was, I was trying to remember, I think you're right.

Right, we were on the floor reading the comics when we heard... Now we've got an airplane. You were working for...

I was working for...

WE ARE READY.

Okay?

OKAY.

On Sunday, December 7th, my wife and I were sitting on floor, floor, reading the Sunday comics. And the radio was on and we heard about Pearl Harbor. And it was impossible to believe, but they kept saying it over and over again. And since I was a journalist, I got the Hell out of home and got to my office right away. I was working for the Washington Times Herald at that point, I was working for Eleanor Patterson, who was an isolationist. And I'll tell you something very interesting, when I got in her office that morning, she called in half a dozen people and she turned and looked at us and she said, do you think he arranged this? He, of course, she meant Franklin Roosevelt. She was the first person I ever heard blame Roosevelt for Pearl Harbor, and it's still going on. And that was within a couple of hours of when it happened.

WHAT, WHAT THE REACTION IN THE COUNTRY, WHAT HAPPENED?

Disbelief was the general public reaction to Pearl Harbor. Disbelief. You know the story about the people in the football stadium watching the Redskins and so on, everybody's heard that, people couldn't conceive and then, of this, then they began to think to themselves, what in the earth are these crazy Japanese doing taking on us, the great big, tough United States how can they be so stupid? Well there were some people we now know in Japan who also thought it was a stupid thing. We didn't know that at the time. And then there was uh... the great American habit, let's roll up our sleeves and finish it off. However long it takes, we're all in it together. And we were.

GREAT, PROBABLY A LOT OF...

Separately.

And then you went around to look at the Japanese Embassy like a lot of other people.

Well, see, she's talking about this particular thing.

OKAY.

Okay?

YEAH.

In Washington, a lot of people were at Griffith Stadium, which was then our athletic field, watching the Redskins football game, and there was a public address system. And nobody announced that Pearl Harbor had been attacked on the public address system. People didn't carry portable radios around in those days. So people didn't know that this had happened. Suddenly on the public address system, they heard; Admiral so and so call your office at once. General so and so report to you office at once. People began to, between watching the game, say what the hell is going on? And nobody as far as I know, ever publicly told the rest of the audience, there were thousands of people there, that Japan had been, had bombed Pearl Harbor. Perhaps they did some time during the game, but that's how the news came to the biggest group meeting in Washington that day.

SO, WAS THERE, BESIDES EARLIER YOU SAID THERE'S THIS AMERICAN FEELING OF LET'S ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES AND GET IT DONE. WAS THERE, WAS THERE ALSO A FEELING OF VULNERABILITY OF THIS CONTINENT FOR THE FIRST TIME?

Yes.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT?

Yeah... Looking back on Pearl Harbor it seems like a stupid decision by the Japanese. But you must remember that Americans were scared the night of Pearl Harbor. Scared. There was a, scares, all over this country. The headlines in the newspapers were fanatic. They were full of rumors. There were talk, there was talk about Japanese planes being over the West Coast submarines landing people on the West Coast. The most insane rumors swept this country. And we didn't know whether the Germans, Hitler was going to come into the war that same day, we didn't know whether this was a coordinated attack from East and West. The country was subject to the worst kinds of rumors. And the secrecy about what actually happened at Pearl Harbor, the depth of the disaster there, was said to be a military necessity, and I suppose it was, perhaps, but that just added to the fear and hysteria that swept the country. It took quite a few days before this began to calm down. People got a grip on themselves.

SO...THAT WAS THE END OF ISOLATIONISM. THIS CONTINENT WAS NO LONGER ISOLATED...

That's right. Yeah. You want to say that?

YEAH.

Of course the big thing that Pearl Harbor did, it ended American isolationism. Historically, it ended it forever. To this day, today. Because we realized that we were not impregnable we were not sitting here happily between two oceans. Nobody had invented ICBMs or anything like it at the time. The airplanes had attacked Hawaii and later Alaska. And we realized that we were vulnerable.

HERE THEY COME AGAIN, EVERY TIME THEY WANT TO USE THAT. OKAY...

Are they very loud on the...

NOT TOO.

Not too bad... It's a good thing you came on a Sunday, 'cause there are not as many flights.

By the, by the time uh...

WE'RE MARCHING RAPIDLY THROUGH TIME HERE. WHEN FDR DIED, WHAT WAS THE FEELING IN THE COUNTRY AS TRUMAN, OBVIOUSLY THERE WAS MOURNING FOR FDR, WAS, WAS THERE A REAL FEELING THAT WE'RE IN TROUBLE NOW. WE, WE HAVE, ALL OF A SUDDEN WE HAVE A LEADER WHO HAS VERY LITTLE EXPERIENCE, WHO IS THIS GUY TRUMAN? WAS THERE, WAS THERE THAT KIND OF...

ACTUALLY, DO YOU THINK HE CAN BACK UP AND DESCRIBE THE PUBLIC REACTION TO FDR'S DEATH AND MOVE...

OKAY. WE'LL WAIT TILL THIS PLANE. YOU OKAY?

Yeah.

READY? WE'LL JUST HAVE A LITTLE ZOOM... OKAY.

Roosevelt's death was a tremendous shock to this country even though people had seen him looking rather haggard at some points in the previous election, in the fourth term election the previous November. When he died in April of '45, it was a colossal shock. He'd been President more than twelve years. Uh...

OKAY NOW, CAN WE START UP AGAIN?

Roosevelt's death in April of '45 was a tremendous shock to this country. He'd been President for twelve years. And people had come to accept him. He was like "Mom and Pop" in your life, he was always there. He was the national father. Of this country and had been through the Depression and through, almost to the end of the war. People had come to accept him as such a fixture. There were a lot of people who said who is this Truman? They didn't even know Truman's name, let alone anything about him. Very few people knew anything about Truman. People around Washington had some idea about him, and of course, some people knew him well. But generally the public didn't know him. And he was a funny little man with thick glasses, and he didn't have a commanding voice the way Roosevelt did. So it was, it was an immense change. And it seemed to be, and was, people said it was sort of from the sublime to the ridiculous. And uh, Arthur Krock, the great columnist of the New York Times, even got off a crack somewhere along the line "To err is Truman." This is the attitude people had about Harry Truman. They underestimated him.

OKAY. LET ME ASK WHILE WE'RE LETTING PLANE GO, DO YOU HAVE ANY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH TRUMAN, OR DID YOU NOT MEET HIM UNTIL MUCH LATER, OR?

I didn't know him in the Senate, or, I was in uniform at this time. Uh, during the, when he was Vice President briefly. I didn't have anything to do with him until really the '48 election.

OKAY. WE'LL, WE'LL DO THAT ONE. OKAY, THE GERMANS HAD BEEN DEFEATED, THE JAPANESE EMERGES AS ENEMY NUMBER ONE. I KNOW YOU HAD DONE A LOT OF RESEARCH ABOUT KAMIKAZES. MAYBE YOU COULD TELL US ABOUT THE US PERCEPTION OF THE JAPANESE...

At the, what period are we talking about?

WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE, UH, '45...

Before we dropped the, before we dropped the bomb.

BEFORE WE DROPPED THE BOMB...

As the atmosphere at the time of the bomb, uh, we dropped the bomb...

EXACTLY.

Is that what you're talking about?

AND, AND WOULD YOU LOOK AT ME PLEASE.

I was just listening to that noise.

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS IS WHEN YOU LOOK THAT WAY WE GET MORE REFLECTION IN YOUR GLASSES.

Oh.

YOU CAN LOOK THAT WAY.

This way is.

THAT'S BEAUTIFUL.

That's not so bad, okay.

LOOKING RIGHT IN HERE IS...

Yeah... It's hard to remember this far, distant from the time, the intensity of American hatred of Japan and the Japanese. I'm sure there was a high racial content to this. But the basic reason I think is, that the Japanese fought a hell of a tough war. They gave us a very hard time. With much less to work with, physically, than we had. They were a tough foe. They were very bad in their prison camps, they treated our prisoners miserably in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia. All that is well known. I think that at the time we got to the point of ending the war, the finish of the war, the hatred of Japan in this country was at a, all time high.

WE WERE ABOUT READY TO END THE WAR, THE HATRED WAS AT AN ALL TIME HIGH...

Yeah.

AND, AND YOU MEAN...WORK IN THE KAMIKAZE...

I was about to do that... You must remember that just before, in June, summer before we dropped the bomb, twice on Japan, we had fought a murderous, bloody campaign to capture the island of Okinawa. And in this campaign the Japanese had concentrated their kamikaze attack. It had started earlier but this was the height of it. Suicide attacks. It's hard for Americans to comprehend the idea of pilots killing themselves by ramming their planes into American ships. But this is what they did. And they did a tremendous amount of damage to the American fleet, and they worried the American military establishment, about what it would be like if we actually tried to land on the shore of Japan. Which was a plan for November. So that went into the psychology in this country, in the front office, the White House and the military, the Pentagon, as to whether dropping the bomb made military sense. And the psychology was really anything to end this war. The war in Europe had ended in May. We're talking about the end of the Summer here, August. And I think that, I have always felt that the rationale for dropping the bomb, made sense. This is a matter of great dispute, of course.

OKAY, GOOD...VERY GOOD. OKAY. I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU NOW ABOUT HOW YOU FIRST HEARD THE NEWS OF THE DROPPING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB. AND THEN WE'LL, WE'LL TALK ABOUT THE PUBLIC ATTITUDE TOWARD THAT. DID YOU HEAR TRUMAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT ON THE RADIO, OR STIMSON'S SPEECH OR...

What time of day was it announced?

I DON'T KNOW, DO YOU?

I don't remember.

HE HAD A-

I think I've...I'm a little hazy about that. I think I first saw it in the, probably the afternoon paper, the old Evening Star.

EXCUSE ME JUST A SECOND...

I was working, I was working at the Pentagon then...

OKAY, OKAY...WELL THEN IF YOU DON'T...

I, I haven't got a sharp reco...

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE PUBLIC ATTITUDE WHEN, WHEN THE NEWS OF HIROSHIMA WAS, WAS MADE PUBLIC? WAS THERE ANY FEELING THAT THIS WAS SOMETHING NEW, THIS BOMB? OR WAS IT MOST, MOSTLY JUST, YOU KNOW BEING OVERJOYED THAT THE WAR WAS OVER, OR ABOUT TO BE OVER?

You know we're dealing in something called public attitude here...

I think there was a tremendous sense of public relief when the bomb was dropped, the first bomb was dropped on Japan, on the assumption that this was going to end the war. You have to remember that there were twelve or thirteen million Americans in uniform during the war. And an awful lot of families, aside from the casualties we'd already had in Europe, which were very large. That, an awful lot of families expected their sons and husbands were going to be shipped from Europe to Japan, to invade Japan. And so they, there was very good psychological reason for people to hope at least, that the bomb would end the war. They didn't know what the bomb was. Of course physicists knew what it was. And a few people in the government, and some journalists and so on. But basically, the public took it on faith as a great new weapon. It was not just an extension of dynamite or machine guns, it was a great new weapon. People recognized that, and they thought here somehow or other is a new instrument if, and they've dropped it, and this is going to finish the whole damn thing off. We hope.

TERRIFIC. OKAY. WE'RE GETTING THERE. THERE'S LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL. WE CAN'T SEE IT YET, BUT WE KNOW IT'S THERE.

Okay.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT,I KNOW YOU WORKED IN, IN INTELLIGENCE DURING THE WAR AS, AS A JAPANESE EXPERT, AFTER HAVING BEEN IN JAPAN. WAS THERE ANYTHING THAT CAME TO YOUR ATTENTION ABOUT JAPANESE COMMUNICATIONS JUST PRIOR TO THE BOMBING, THE ATOMIC BOMBING, THAT WOULD HAVE INDICATED THAT, HOW CLOSE OR FAR THE JAPANESE WERE FROM SURRENDERING AND WHETHER OR NOT THE ATOMIC WEAPON WAS REALLY NECESSARY TO INDUCE SURRENDER? IS THAT SOMETHING YOU FEEL...

Yeah. I was just trying to think how, how to explain it briefly... just before the war ended at that period, I was working in the Pentagon in, in, in military intelligence in, on kamikaze. Trying to keep track of Japanese kamikazes, in light of the coming in, invasion of Japan. I lost my thought there...

WE'LL JUST WAIT A MINUTE.

What was it we were, what'd you, how'd you ask me that question?

WHETHER YOU, HAD ANY...

Oh, yes. Yes. I know what I wanted, I know what I wanted to say, let's, let's do it again.

FINE. WE ARE...

Okay? Just before the end of the war, I was working in the Pentagon in Japanese intelligence. Keeping track of kamikaze units in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. That was military intercepts, that I was dealing with. Japanese military intercepts. There was also a lot of diplomatic intercepts being read by people in the Pentagon. I didn't have any reason to read these, but by some luck of the draw, I managed to read some of them. And so, I had some idea in those final days, before the dropping of the bomb, there was a lot of discussion going on between Tokyo and the Japanese diplomats in Europe about trying to arrange a, end of the war. They didn't use the term surrender, I don't think, that bluntly. Or getting the Russians to help arrange an end of the war. But I tell you one of the problems about using that evidence and all those telegrams have now been printed, is that that was only part of the Japanese government that we were hearing about. That was the diplomatic part. Those were the people who wanted to end the war, we know. I was dealing in the kamikaze field with people who were prepared to fight on. In fact, when I went to Japan, after the war, and interrogated a lot of these kamikaze people, military officers, after the war was over, they said they would never have even spoken to me if the Japanese hadn't ordered the surrender and the end of the war. And the Japanese General broke down and cried in front of me. He was so ashamed of having to do this, but did it because his emperor had ordered him, or so he reasoned.

COULD I ASK AGAIN, MAYBE A LITTLE SHORTER RESPONSE TO THAT. MAYBE YOU COULD SAY THAT YOU WERE WORKING IN THE PENTAGON AND, AND SAW SOME OF THE DIPLOMATIC PROGRAMS...BUT THAT REALLY DIDN'T, THAT WASN'T THE WHOLE STORY.

Yeah. That's.

THAT THERE WAS THE MILITARY SIDE WHICH YOU ALSO SAW.

Okay. Turn it around that way? Okay...In the last few days of the war, when I was working in the Pentagon, I did re, see, some of the mili, diplomatic traffic. But it, the telegrams that were going bet, intercepted telegrams between the foreign office in Tokyo, and the Japanese Embassies in Europe. Including Moscow. When the Japanese foreign office was trying to do something about a re, getting the war to come to a close. Arranging some kind of end of the war and keeping the emperor on the throne. The trouble with looking at that alone, however, is it's only part of the story. That's the diplomatic side of the story. I personally was dealing with the military side, with the Japanese kamikaze business. And, and the military people were the ones who wanted to continue to fight the war. You have to balance these two things to come to any judgment about it.

SO IN YOUR ESTIMATION, FROM WHAT YOU KNEW OF PEOPLE YOU TALKED TO. DID, DID YOU HAVE A FEELING THAT, THAT THE ATOMIC BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI WAS NECESSARY TO END THE WAR WITHOUT AN INVASION? WE MIGHT AS WELL WAIT FOR THE... OKAY.

My feeling at the time, and my feeling today is that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima probably brought the war to the end. Bango. Now it, it can be argued and it has been argued that the Japanese were about to surrender. I'm not saying that Nagasaki was necessary. I think it was a mistake to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki. But I think the example of the first bomb was so tremendous, the impact was so tremendous, that it was the coup de grace that ended the resistance to ending the war in Japan. Historically I think that's a fact.

OKAY, GOOD. I WANTED TO A COUPLE MORE THINGS, OH, THE WAR, GETTING OUT OF CHRONOLOGY HERE FOR A SECOND, THE WHOLE ACCEPTANCE IN WAR OF BOMBING CIVILIAN POPULATIONS, CAME, CAME TO BE DURING WORLD WAR II. DO YOU ANY RELA, RECOLLECTIONS OF, IN THE, 1937, THE JAPANESE BOMBING YOU KNOW, OF CHINA...

Well you see, I do, because I've been in China.

YOU HAVE, LOIS FOUND THIS.

I've been in China.

DO YOU REMEMBER...

Yeah, there's a story about this picture.

YEAH.

Do you know the story about this picture? The baby was placed there.

REALLY?

Yeah. By the photographer.

NO KIDDING.

Yeah. I think uh... I think the guy's name was Gordon Howley(?), wasn't he?

HE'S ACTUALLY, IT'S GOT HIS NAME ON THERE?

The great movie tone photographer? Oh, no. This is H.S. Newsreel, Wong. Yeah... this is out of Life, or what's this from?

THAT'S FROM LIFE.

This was certainly one of the most dramatic war pictures ever made. But I read somewhere and you, I could never tell you where, that he had posed this kid. And the story is, there is also a story about Hitler doing the jig when the French surrendered in Compiègne. You know that story? That was done by a, a British cameraman. Who juggled the film to put the jig... see you guys are in a profession where a certain amount of this hanky panky can operate. Nonetheless, these things of course are tremendously important in wartime. But I had seen, this, this district that's bomb, that was bombed here, this is uh, Shanghai south station. I, when I was living in Shanghai...

I'M GOING TO ASK YOU START...

I saw the damage...

WHAT, THE QUESTION...

What is the question?

THE QUESTION IS, COULD YOU DESCRIBE FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE, HOW WORLD OPINION REALLY CHANGED DURING THE COURSE OF THE WAR FROM, FROM OUTRAGE IN 1937 AT THE FACT THAT CIVILIAN POPULATIONS COULD BE TARGETED IN WAR, TO HIROSHIMA IN 1945?

Well let's think about that a second. Do you remember Lois, hearing about Guernica at the time? I remember during the Spanish Civil War, hearing that the German Condor Unit, I think it was called, wasn't it? Was bombing the loyalists in Spain.

Civilians.

Civilian...cities, civilians. It was in fact a tryout of weapons by both sides as, as we...

For what they did later to...

We look back, that's right, Rotterdam and Coventry. They hit, Hitler did. That really was the, let's see, that would have been '37 and this Shanghai was also '37, wasn't it? Two sides of the world, just about the same time...

NOW ONE OF THE THINGS...

But the Japanese had already bombed in well I don't know that they had done any aerial bombing in Manchuria, before then.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY SENSE OF, OF MORAL OUTRAGE ABOUT THE BOMBING OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS WHEN IT FIRST STARTED?

Spain is the first place I have any sense of it. And Shanghai. Spain and Shanghai. And they were both about the same time. Moral outrage... I don't think that the, we were still isolationists. We didn't, Americans, I think a lot of Americans didn't want to believe this, they thought it was war propaganda. There was not a, not what came to be in Coventry. Coventry became the symbol of this, 'cause the British exploited it. So the bombing of Dresden which killed more people than were killed in Hiroshima, the fire bombing of, of Dresden, there was no, I don't think I ever heard anybody object to this. This was a war to the death. Kill 'me any way you can. They're killing us any way we, they can. The outrage about killing civilians, World War II established the fact that civilians were at risk like everybody else. I guess it's... I guess that's really what it comes down to. Now whether this be, whether this became a, public attitude as early as '37, I don't think it generally did. It did probably and surely with some people, with, with activists, with people who had some particular involvement in Asia or Europe. I don't think that the general public was staying away from this stuff, and pictures like that printed in Luce's magazine, Luce was known as interventionist, and people said Henry Luce wants to get us in war, that's why he prints those pictures. Maybe they said they're fake. I don't know whether they did or not. I never knew anything about that picture till twenty years later, I suppose, or more than that. I don't know just how to answer that question.

LET, LET'S LET THAT GO. I KNOW THAT WHAT, WHEN YOU WENT TO NAGASAKI AS PART OF THE STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY. WHAT, WHAT WAS THE, WHAT WAS THE MISSION THERE OF YOUR GROUP, WHY, WHY DID YOU GO AND WHEN YOU WENT THERE, WASN'T, WEREN'T YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE RADIATION?

I didn't know a goddamn thing about it.

TELL ME ABOUT THAT, THAT'S INTERESTING.

By chance of circumstance, I happened to be on the beach in Kyushu, on the first of November in 1945, which was the day we were going to invade Japan. On that beach, and a couple others nearby. I was there because I'd taken an intelligence team, we'd gone to Nagasaki. That's where I saw the atomic bomb damage. And then we toured the island interrogating the Japanese officers and collecting intelligence and so on. Nagasaki was a shambles. We went out we had a picture taken at a marker that had been put in the ground, ground zero. The bomb went off way up in the air of course. This was underneath the center where it went off. We didn't know anything about radiation. Nobody told us it was dangerous. It really wasn't dangerous, as it turned out. I had three children after that. Because the bomb exploded in the air. Same is true in Hiroshima, which we also visited. We were innocents. As were the American people. As were most people, about nuclear weapons.

WHAT WAS, WHAT WAS IT LIKE, SEEING NAGASAKI AND HIROSHIMA THEN?

Nagasaki was, is, is a city with a lot of mountains to one side of it. So that the force of the blast was on one side of this particular mountain, or range of mountains. On the other side, the mountains protected the other side. Hiroshima was flat and the damage was much greater, many more people were killed there. The two bombs were different, but essentially the attack was the same. The thing I remember most vividly about Hiroshima, is the fire engines and the doctors. The hospital, I went a week out there, about three months after, after the bomb was dropped, I made a point of asking what happened to the doctors, the nurses, what was the recuperative possibilities, for people in this city? They were all killed. There wasn't anybody to help you if you could, if you survived and managed to get to something that looked like a hospital. The fire engines were burned down to skeletons in the fire houses. They never got out the door. That's the vivid impression I still have.

The wartime alliance between the US and the Soviet Union to the degree that it had existed, as a necessity during the war, collapsed pretty fast at the end of the war. It was in fact, collapsing faster, the record now shows than we realized at the time. And the old antipathies about the Russians, that had existed pre war, and during the Hitler-Stalin pact period, surfaced again. And Russian became anathema very quickly. The Cold War, in other words, was on us very fast. And the Russians seemed to reciprocate the Cold War. We were in a very mean, nasty situation pretty quickly. I think this is a historic relationship of these two great powers. First they're antithetical in their aims and purposes. It has existed since the Bolshevik Revolution until today. The alliance was a false, semi, non-permanent point, in that long relationship.

THANK YOU. LET ME JUST DO SOME... YOU IMPLIED THAT IT WAS, THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE TWO COUNTRIES AFTER THE WAR, JUST SORT OF PRETTY MUCH RETURNED TO NORMAL AFTER BEING SKEWED DURING THE WAR TIME. BUT WERE, WERE THERE ANY, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE, WERE THERE ANY EVENTS THAT TRIGGERED THE, THE ANTIPATHY?

Oh, yeah. Well here it depends on exactly, you're talking about into the early part of the Truman years. And the Gouzenko spy case...

WELL ACTUALLY JUST, THE END OF '45 AND INTO '46. LAST TIME YOU WERE, WE WERE HERE, I THINK YOU USE, YOU SAID YALTA BECAME A DIRTY WORD...

Politically yes, and, yes. That's true too, I'd forgotten about, we'd talked about Yalta.

THERE WAS A FEELING IN THIS COUNTRY WASN'T THERE THAT, THAT ROOSEVELT HAD, HAD SOLD SOME OF EASTERN EUROPE DOWN THE RIVER...

Yeah, that's right. It was, it was a sick old man, et cetera, et cetera. And the Republicans did their best to further that politically. Yeah. You want to talk about that a little bit? Okay?

YES.

At the end of the war the Soviet-American alliance, or almost before the end of the war, collapsed. And the Soviet-American relationship reverted to its pre war hostility. The Cold War came upon us all. On both sides. In this country, there was uh, there was a lot, there was a lot of opinion that we had been too generous to the Russians. We'd given them too much aid. They weren't paying back anything. At Yalta Roosevelt had been weak and tired and old, sick, and he'd probably given away too much in Eastern Europe. I don't personally believe that. I, I don't think the record shows it, but there was a strong opinion of this kind, and there still is, in this country. And it was used by the Republicans against the Democrats, against Truman, of course who had to defend Roosevelt's record... want to say one more thing on, to add to that too...

GO AHEAD WHAT...

On top of that you must remember that it was not very long after the end of the war that the spy story started. And I think the so-called Gouzenko spy case in Canada, which was the way Americans began to hear about a lot of Soviet espionage. And Americans involved in espionage for the Soviet Union. All that stuff started tumbling out. And it all had political implications, of course. And Truman became very embattled because of this. And that added to the disillusionment with the Russians. And we were really in a cold, cold situation.

OKAY, GOOD. JUST ONE LAST... I THINK YOU'VE SAID IN-YOUR BOOK THAT IT WAS DOOMED. THERE WAS NO WAY THAT ANY INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF ATOMIC ENERGY COULD HAVE BEEN ATTAINED THEN. AND PROBABLY BECAUSE OF" THE TERRIBLE SHAPE THAT THE SOVIET UNION WAS IN, THAT THEY WOULD NEVER AGREE TO...

I don't have to explain what the Baruch Plan was, you been, you've all been through that.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO SAY, WHAT, WHAT WAS YOUR PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT?

I didn't have any, in that.

WE, WE'RE JUST ASKING FOR YOUR OPINION...

Okay. Ready?

YES.

I think the Baruch Plan was doomed from the beginning because it was a proposition offered by the one nuclear power to what became the other super power. In a way that the other superpower the Soviet Union, considered, locked them into permanent second place, or worse. It was, there was no balance there, which is always necessary to make any kind of arms agreement. It didn't exist. For one thing, we, the United States for the most part, were unaware of the extent of the devastation of the Soviet Union during World War II, of the extent of a loss of life. And the Russians were so secretive, Stalin was so secretive, he tried to keep this secret as much as he could. He didn't let Americans move around his country. And it did affect our thinking. We were blindsided to a certain degree, about the Soviet Union. They were much weaker than we realized at the end of the war, and at the time of the Baruch Plan.

SO IN YOUR VIEW THERE WAS, THERE WAS NO WAY THAT THE BARUCH PLAN COULD HAVE WORKED AT THAT TIME.

So you have to make a judgment in the end I think that the Baruch Plan, although it was marvelous on paper, was totally unrealistic. It couldn't work, it couldn't happen in that set of circumstance, circumstances, at that point in history.

THE QUESTION THAT WE'VE BEEN ASKING A LOT OF PEOPLE WE'VE TALKED TO, AND THAT IS... WHAT DO YOU, DO YOU THINK THERE'S ONE ASPECT OF THE WHOLE NUCLEAR ERA THESE LAST FORTY YEARS THAT'S BEEN VASTLY MISUNDERSTOOD? ARE THERE SOME, POINT THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE...

Misunderstood, or... the extraordinary thing about the period. That kind of thing?

OR THE MOST SURPRISING...

I do. Yeah, I agree. I have, I have an idea.

OKAY. ARE WE... WE'RE IN THE AIR? OKAY.

I think the extraordinary thing about the whole nuclear age since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima until today, is that we've never dropped another. And nobody else has. And that there are, while there what, five countries with bombs that we know of, and several others probably. This weapon has scared the hell out of so many people in so many governments, that it is not a military weapon. It is a psychological, political weapon. Unless it should get in the hands of terrorists, which is something we have not faced, and God knows what would happen if we had to face it. The remarkable thing is, peace has lasted as long as it has. Much longer than between the First and Second World War.