Episode 536: The Manhattan Project Part IV - I Am Become Death

There's no place to escape to. This is The Last Talk On The Left. That's when the cannonball some started. What was that? Jeopardy! What do you mean? Because they would just be trying to make the Queen's. Oh, you mean, like, the ultimate non greasy, Zeppoli. You were the idea of like a Zeppoli that has the power to sure, but he doesn't always go up into your beard or your mouth. Wait, and you know, you know, the British royalty, the queen. No, no, no, no, no, like LaFrax city.

No, my, my town. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, LaFrax. Yeah, LaFrax. Yeah, I'm talking about. Oh, I see what you're saying. So you're making. So this is a pun. I'm just saying, no, I don't know if it's a pun. I just don't know the Manhattan Project. But you want to call it the Queen's Project. And then you're gonna talk about how Queen's people are fat. No, no, no, no, no, we're telling them. I mean, it's a real melting pot. Yeah. Yeah. Let me go and go into a Zeppoli.

You know, if you ever had a Zeppoli, a good Zeppoli, never. Yeah, of course, you have Marcus. You've never had a Zeppoli. Is it a funnel cake? Is it just a funnel cake by different now? No, it's a Zeppoli. You've had, I'm sure you've had it. You're a sweet, sweet tooth. You've read sausages and peppers for like a proper stand. Yeah. Yeah. You've never been to like a San Ginerro. You never go to remember San Ginerro festival. I'm starving. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I remember San Ginerro festival.

I've yeah been. Yeah. Queen used to do that every fucking week. We used to go use a bouncy castle for all the fat men to go stare and watch the kids fake smokes of cars. I've been like, don't break your fucking leg. And it's all right. Dude, that was the rap it. Oh, you know, I've been in Project. It's the Queen's Project. Welcome to the last podcast on the left. Everyone been hanging out with Marcus and I do hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry. I'm sorry. That's all right.

Not a problem. Okay. We are on to part four of the Manhattan Project. Don't worry. This one's just as long. Last three. And if it was the Queen's Project. I mean, it was I just was I was talking to you. It was only the Queen. I just needed to center my thoughts on a single bit. Yeah. We've got it. So when we last left the Manhattan Project, the espionage wing had successfully captured every member of the German team that had failed to produce an atomic bomb for the Nazi. The Pokemon match.

These men were the infamous uranium club and American forces have been successful in keeping them all out of Soviet hands. Good work, boy. Yes, job. But when it comes to the science wing of the Manhattan Project, the main show, we've got to turn the hands on our World War II clock back about six months before the official defeat of the Nazi clock that reflects years instead of the daily time. Well, you mean more like I do think a calendar. It's a calendar.

I want to make sure I'm saying back in the show this week. Yeah. To make sure we really get to the center of our analogies. Turn the pages back on the calendar. Well, now six months. We'll really understand how difficult it is to sandbag a whole show. We don't only have to turn back the calendar, we got to leave Europe all together.

Okay. And refocus our series on Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the bomb was being built and the Pacific theater of World War II, where the path for the bomb was being paved, so to speak. Now, if you'll remember, the Manhattan Project had two sites producing fuel for two different types of atomic bombs, because General Leslie Groves had gone with a scattershot approach to make sure we hit our target of developing a bomb before the Nazis did.

Or maybe it was because he knew, according to some sources, I have collected that he knew that the trigger bomb would never work. And they had to find a new way to fake a bomb to work all the way up to a fake testing site in order to fake the bombings at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, because it's so much easier to fake. I giant international incident of war that changes the face of the planet and the history than to just do it. Big if true. Big if true. I read a book that I'm deeply triggered by.

Yeah. It sounds like it. Well, out of the sighted Oak Ridge and Tennessee, you had uranium. The stuff enriched there had taken a long road from the uranium mines of the Belgian Congo to Nazi Germany. And it was like a road trip. Was it fun? Yeah, it was a road trip, a dog, Lixon Pino butter off of somebody's generals on the way. It was really fun. Got a road trip to be better. It's like good and spacious. I was thinking more a skinny guy had sex with a larger lady. Never went to that.

I remember I was like, it ain't can't be. They won't be together. That's an odd couple they never choose. That's great. Yeah, sometimes they do. Well, this is the uranium that Boris Pash had stolen from the Soviets immediately after Germany's surrender. And that uranium would be used in the little boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It's kind of crazy that I'm both little boy and fat man. That's what you're not doing. That's what you're not doing. Yes. And I'm the thin man.

That's which is the prototype bomb. What's been? Oh, he's just the plane. Yes, easy. Ben 29. Ben A.K.A. An oligay. That's you. An oligay. That was the name of the plane. All right. Only a dirty, Marty girl. Well, Hanford site in Washington state, though, that was producing plutonium straight up American stuff that would be used in a bomb called fat man that would annihilate the city of Nagasaki.

Man, making of the atomic bomb, I forgot just how fucking huge the Hanford site was and what they did. They built a, it's like a, it's the size of an inside the fucking the Empire state building, but it's on its side and it's a uranium blast slash plutonium enriching factory. It was insane. I have no problem with what the bomb did killing all those people. Okay, but let's get correct here. It's a person of weight, a person pretty gout, a person who has diabetes.

Well, the stuff from Hanford site that would also be the stuff used in the very first nuclear explosion in history. The Trinity test. Now, by March of 1944, both sites had produced enough nuclear material for three bombs, two to drop and one to test, which one to lick. The scientists at Los Alamos had also produced two mechanisms for detonating the different materials, the gun method and the implosion method, both of which are far too complicated for us to explain. Here I'll try.

Okay. The gun methods all about slapping shit together. Okay. And I sometimes like, I'll have one piece of roast beef and I'm like, that's not enough. And I put it in. I put another slice on there, right? Because I like to just eat a free hand. Of course. I don't spend time making sandwiches. That's sure. Absolutely. That's what bodybuilders do. Look at me. All I'm doing is building my body. Absolutely. And that's how you do you slap them together.

You shoot one beta uranium and another one and makes a boom boom. And the other one is a simultaneously a circle of explosions around a piece of whatever it is, the built up plutonium, whatever it is at uranium in order. We should be compilating. We should be trying to know what you got. But it explodes.

It explodes in a circle in a perfect de Decahedron, which is also the symbolic actual entity of the 3D version of the universe, which is why when J. Robert Aminheimer blew up the second bomb that used the implosion technique, that's what ripped open the fucking veil that allowed the aliens to come through and look at us. It was a symbolic gesture, so Alistair Crowley gets in there as well. Okay. Well, you are correct in that it was a plutonium bomb.

Now that I'm thinking about the implosion method was the plutonium method. However the second bomb dropped was a uranium bomb that was used with the trigger method. So therefore, your argument is no one's voice. I just got it. I'm trying to understand this is doing great. It's kind of like a species reveal for the aliens as well. But the explosions and bomb create a little, it squishes the material, then it blows up. Yeah. Like that. Perfect. Milded.

But incredibly, the gamble of general groves, the scattershot gamble, it paid off double. As it turned out, both plutonium and uranium were viable for weaponization. It's like they want us to kill the Japanese. I was like they wanted us to kill the Nazis, but then they finished up too quick. And I'm sorry to my wife for that as well.

Yeah. Additionally, the gun method for detonation that used uranium was almost guaranteed to work to the point where they felt like testing it was a waste of precious uranium to 35. And if you're the author that wrote an entire book trying to debunk the fact that there was a bombing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you just have to understand they did test it to see if it could work. There was already there. It's not like you're fighting with shadows. But the already knew your fighting with shadows.

No one knew that that book existed. I don't think that author is still alive. No, I don't know. However, the implosion method using plutonium, that was far more complicated and plutonium was easier to produce. So a full scale test was planned to see if the Manhattan Project could go two for two. Oh wow. Now the name chosen for the test, Trinity. That was a deliberate choice made by Robert Oppenheim. So nerdy. It was very nerdy. It was inspired by a poem about death by World War I poet John Dunn.

Beautiful writer, by the way. But this poem contemplated the idea that while dying leads to death, it might also lead to resurrection. This was tied to the false hope that Manhattan Project scientists like Neal's Bohr held onto in order to justify developing an atomic weapon. Reasoning that nuclear weapons were so destructive that they could end all wars. Unfortunately, Neal's Bohr had not been familiar with the concept of a proxy war.

I was trying to say that we should name a daughter because that's my wife's name, she's a fucked a bit. Your wife's name is Gooner. Yeah. Well, that's a weird one. Yeah, she's a masculine wife. I actually only spend so much time working in science. Now, before the bomb was even tested, B29 bombers were already training themselves to drop these massive seven ton weapons on specific targets. What do you got to train? You dropped the fucking thing. Do you get a few mostly gravity? I will.

A lot goes into it. I really want to send you because I truly can't. Hit the button, drop things. I was just saying, there was a part of me that was just like, truly like, oh, you know, it's the same as any bombing run. They had to completely refigure the planes. They did develop a whole delivery mechanism. They had to do, they had to train because the way of dropping the style of bombs was completely different than any other type of bomb. They did a pirouette. What are they up to?

Because they have to get away from it as fast as possible. It's how you drop it. You had to be dropped and detonated to certain height and also the actual payloads of it are much heavier than any other type of bomb. Also, they were talking about the failsafe shit. It's great. There's a lot of shit. There's a lot of stuff like, what if the bomb doesn't work? What if the bomb doesn't release? All of a sudden, you're flying. You've got this thing now. It was now set to explode.

You have this like, set this way to like, you're supposed to disengage it. The implosion bomb, they said, would actually survive. They thought maybe that if it fell out of a plane and that landed and was a dud, it would be fine. That like the center of it would hold, but the trigger one was so vulnerable that if it basically even fell and didn't break, if it fell and didn't go off, it could break open and then just create a thousand years of radiation poisoning in a place that exists.

So they would have to crawl inside of the gun mechanism and inside of the bomb, pull the gun mechanism out of it and then release it whatever's left. It's very scary. Yeah. Well, you just got to have someone who, you know, you got to have a little bitch. Oh, no, that little bitch was like, there was a gun. That guy, that was that guy. Yeah. And he was not pleased. No, I'm sure not. We'll talk about him later.

All right. Fantastic. And we, I think we did actually accidentally, like remember, there's that story of the, I think I guess it had to have been an implosion bomb that was accidentally dropped in like North Carolina. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about that. Yeah. Now, for the mission to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the Manhattan Project tapped a 29 year old pilot named Paul Tibbets.

Tibbets had survived countless bombing missions over Germany and had a year's experience flying the relatively new B29s. He was given a 45 minute long briefing that explained what the bomb was just a little bit and so far as the scientist briefing him as Tibbets, hey, do you know what an atom is? He said, yo, yeah, Adam is my brother Steve. He's, uh, friend. Yeah, absolutely. I got a 45 minute training video via hip hop lyrics and I worked at Wendy's.

Yeah. And Tibbets said, yeah, I know what an atom is. Yeah. And the scientist said, good, that's all you need to know. No, no, no, no, I need to know more than that. That's all he needs to know. Then supposedly the scientist wrapped up the conversation in a particularly 1940's cinematic fashion. He said, quote, if got a lot of responsibility, if you use it wrong, if you fail, I can see you winding up in prison. Otherwise, you might be a hero. Hell yeah, man. This is going to be great.

I'm going to have a parade. And so starting in December of 1944, Tibbets began flying missions over Japan in B29's loaded with so called pumpkin bombs that were roughly the same size and weight of an atomic bomb. Much like the Fat Man bomb, each pumpkin bomb was about 10 feet long, five feet in circumference and it weighed about five tons. Man. Hell of a pumpkin. I definitely would get super nervous as I'm sitting in the rolling hills of Japan watching them drop these giant like obviously.

Fake bomb, right? Like fake bombs are landing and you're like, oh, that looks like a pretty big bomb. And it's like, oh, they're practicing for what are they practicing? Very large scale sort of green goblin approach. Yeah, very similar. Yeah, they must have been like, what are they up to? It's not good. Well, it can't be good. Well, some of them were in art. Some though were filled with explosives. So they didn't really get just for fun just to see what would happen. Already bombing them.

Yeah, well, yeah. But the main point of a pumpkin bomb was to make sure that the pilot didn't drop a two billion dollar weapon on the outskirts of the target or worse from a funding perspective in the middle of the ocean. Think of the funding, of course you always have to. How is Epstein going to give us more money after this? I don't know. You have to call my my face.

As such, 49 training missions were flown with a variety of B29s, all with colorful names, that were sometimes a bit too conspicuous. You had strange cargo. Sounds like a fun movie with Humphrey Bogart. He's all sound like the super tough condoms. They sell it like various like, you know, very shady sex stores. Yeah, the ones where it's like a rough rider and I'm like, I don't need them. Yeah, I don't think I need that one.

It's like, like, re you having sex with Chun Lee, but all you see is reuse ass and it's weird. Oh, hello. Another plane. Tap secret. Oh, what's in that? It's ridiculous. Fantastic 80s spoof spy movie though. Yeah, you had one called Big Stink. That is just an insult to the insult to everyone on that fucking plane. One called the great artist. Right. Interesting. You had necessary evil. Okay. Now we're then on the fucking nose. Yeah. All right. Exactly. What is this? A football movie.

And most conspicuously up and Adam. That's not gonna shoot you. They know it's coming if you kill me. But before you have, if you do deliver a pun before you shoot me, the fucking head will be so pissed. Oh, yeah. But one of the problems with dropping a big horribly expensive bomb on Japan was that there was still one island with a very active Japanese airstrip between the American airbase of Sipan and the Japanese mainland.

I thought you were going to say one problem might be the death of all the innocent people, but no, okay. It's something good. It's something good. The funding, the practicalities. I do think that we can all that is the Pentagon. Every meeting. Think of the funding. Oh, it's every meeting. Well, that island where the airstrip was located, that became the site of the deadliest day in Marine Corps history.

It became a byword for victory at high cost perseverance, whilst waiting through the blood of your comrades. And most of all, the savagery of warfare. Worries hell. Are we getting into the sloughing now? No, it's not sloughing. You wait, dude. That island was none other than E.O. G. That's the only way you could say it, too. I found that. I've tried to say E.O. G. You know what it was? In any other way, but I can't. It's history channel voices in there.

I can't get rid of it because again, if you want to get your fucking of your grandpa for still alive, he's about 90 at this point. Yeah. You want to get him going? Just go two words. E.O. G. The stage was that goddamn picture that went viral, even before the internet, of the flag. That was actually a staged picture. They all were. They had to, because it was them winning and then they would go and make an official winning thing. It wasn't winning.

It was like on the third day of battle, like they just arrived. They did a Super Bowl shuffle. And if the bear didn't win the Super Bowl, that would be, they would be laughing. Yeah. It's literally, it's pre-shooting all the stuff from New Year's Eve. Although while it was stage, the Johnny Cash song, the ballad of Ira Hayes, was very real. That was about one of the guys who did raise the flag on Iwo Jima. Oh, well. Yeah. Ira Hayes. Drunken Ira Hayes. He don't answer anymore. He's a judge.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Very few, but some dead. Pretty kind of far wide of them. But in strategic terms, Iwo Jima was incredibly important to the Pacific Theatre of the War because it was dead center between Tokyo and the island of Sipan, which we talked about at the end of episode two.

Sipan, you know, all the Mariana Sylons were the largest airport in the world existed at this time. Sipan was the one where all the people jumped off the cliffs when we were coming because they thought we were going to like, we were going to go ho-hoag. Yeah. And then that was where we would launch the Enola Gay Farm. Yeah, Antinion was the cute one that was shaped like the island of Manhattan and they named all the streets after a streets in New York City. That's real fun. That is fun.

That is fun. Ewa Jima, therefore, became an essential location to take if American forces wanted to stop Japanese air attacks, not to mention the fact that Ewa Jima was a perfect base for damaged bombers and rescue missions. Now while the Manhattan Project was not the sole reason for the Battle of Ewa Jima, the Battle was certainly essential to the Manhattan Project's success.

And since it is a fascinating and brutal struggle, let's get into what the Marine Corps and the Japanese Imperial Army both went through during that long month in the winter of 1945. I mean, we're really in Marcus' history, happy places. Yeah, I would use super glue on the tarmac. I glue all their plans down. Jell-hung, I'm going slippery. That's going to cancel each other out now. They're just able to fly again. I hate time, I don't know.

The Japanese general in charge of defending Ewa Jima, Tata Michi Kodabayashi. He came from a long line of men who had all served the emperor, but where Kodabayashi was a general, the four generations before him. And this tells you where Japan was in their history. The four generations before him had been fucking samurai. Yeah, man. Also every time Marcus you say his name, you look up like you want an applause break. But I will say that just millions of people say that name every day.

Oh, and you're still making someone extremely mad. No matter what. Kodabayashi. Kodabayashi. Killian. Interestingly though, Kodabayashi had studied in the United States at Harvard as a military attaché in his youth. A lot of guys studied in America.

When he wasn't Harvard though, Kodabayashi roadtrip across the country and took a special interest in Detroit as a military man, Kodabayashi immediately saw that the industrial mechanisms of America could be turned into a massive, unstoppable war machine with in his words, the push of a button. Yeah, I don't want my weapons made it a Ford plant fixer repair daily. The fourth, the Ford plants that was many, many, many, many of our war machines. Yeah, fixer repair daily.

But he paid a ten-season dose and reform didn't love the Nazis though. That's it. He loved it. He did. Well, in this, Kodabayashi was absolutely correct. And when he learned that his people plan to attack Pearl Harbor, he privately told his family that America was the last country in the world that Japan should fight. And all it took was one trip to Motown. I'm telling you, no, no, no, you go down there because you know what, he should have brought back was a goddamn trumpet.

He should have saw him all down and been like, damn it. We know we need no Japan needs to sow. Motown was really swinging yet out there in the 20s. The Motown was 50s, 60s. Is that when Scott was invented? Not the shit. That shit. That's not the body. What Kim, what Kim control invented? Uh-huh. Kim control. You see the video? Kim control. No, I'll send you that video. Very interesting. But I was thinking the deep dish pizza and I'm not sure if that was invented.

No, that's Chicago. They have Detroit style. Detroit style is also deep dish. We're going to move on. What is fried bottom? Fried bottom? Sesame. We're going to move on. Corn meal. Push it. Moving on. What this tells us is that some of the Japanese generals knew even before December 7, 1941 that a war against America was unwinnable. And as it turned out, Karabayashi would be forced to lead the defense against American invasion in one of the last major land battles of World War II.

Wow. Now, General Karabayashi knew that while his men could hold Iwajima for a time at enormous cost to the Marines, defeat both Iwajima and in the war at large was inevitable. Therefore, the last thing he wrote to his wife Yoshi before he left was, do not plan for my return. There we go. Wow. Pushes out to Kate. Yeah. And then she just, she don't worry, man. She was already cheating. Yeah. She had a big cherry with her tongue and moved on. But even with impossible odds.

Karabayashi was determined to make the United States pay heavily for every inch of Iwajima and pay heavily we did. First, Karabayashi emptied the island of civilians and brought in enslaved Korean laborers to turn most of the island itself into an elaborate death trap. Wait, do you see what I do with my home when I'm selling it? I'm excited. Over the course of nine months, the enslaved Koreans had built a massive system of intricate tunnels.

Some as deep as 75 feet below ground and all of them were wired with electricity. Hey, Larry, what do you think of what do you think happens if I step right over here? They also got damn evil. Poor is hell. They also built caves, pillboxes, command posts, gun emplacements and all of it was dug directly into the island's soft volcanic rock. It's interesting. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's incredible.

It also just shows you because we're spending billions and billions of dollars and like we got to shovel a couple of pieces of feces. Yeah, it's a way to nail and we're going to do pretty good. They did it all with hand tools. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, damn. Also, but they were also doing it with enslaved people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're slaves. We're not. Yeah, that's the thing is that using the enslaved people, that tends to cut down on a lot of the costs, a lot of time and all that.

It does. It really does. Yeah. You be surprised. It was crazy. It was crazy. I've got mission to possible nine goals. They're in Colvin. It brings overhead way down. I mean, I think if you're in war to the civilians are probably fighting for free also. Yeah. Well, the civilians in this case were taken out completely because at this time, Korea was a Japanese quote unquote colony. And so a lot of them were working against their will for the Japanese. This is still a united Korea.

Interesting. But as such, the Japanese were able to utilize such terrifying tactics as the infamous spider tracks. These trap doors were littered around the island. This is pretty much how they worked. Marine will be walking forward, forward, forward. He'd be there with all of his buddies. That's the wonder of Jane to live a red belt. Yeah. You know, wrote about seven months ago. Yeah, she did. We're definitely still married. They were so romantic back then.

And he's thinking they've advanced into the island. Nothing's behind them. Everything's in front of them. All he has to worry about is what's right in front of them. When all of a sudden behind them, a fucking trap door opens. It's me. A Japanese sniper pops up and just starts picking off Marines. And then by the time they figure out what's going on, that sniper is gone and just fucking running down the tunnel to the next position.

Now as general Kerbayashi put it in a document issue to his troops, each man would make it his duty to kill 10 of the enemy before dying. And until they were all destroyed to the last man, each Japanese soldier was duty bound to harass the enemy with guerrilla tactics. And this was actually different from how most Japanese generals handled land battles. A lot of them used bonsai tactics, the suicide attacks. Yeah, with they'd like jump on them. Yeah, with grenades and shit.

They'd usually do it at night and they would just run towards the enemy and try to kill as many as they possibly could before the enemy killed them. And general Kerbayashi, he thought this was futile. He thought this was a waste. He was like bonsai, kamikaze, it's fucking stupid. Why are you doing this? It's a waste of human life. When we can just go and hide and come out and kill him with guerrilla tactics. That's what we're trying to do.

And yes, they viewed it as kind of ungentlemanly or against bushido, like then a concept of like like gentleman warfare. You're supposed to see the guy. You're supposed to set up a time when you arrive. And when they realize like, no, we're not going to do this. I'm already being tasked with an impossible thing. Yeah, I grandfather herb from the American side. He used to rail against snipers saying that there are cowards because they did not look at the enemy in the eye.

And to surprise somebody and kill them, it was considered, you know, trashy. I mean, it literally was trash. You just saying it was like, so they were like the snookies. But he was in the Korean war. But yeah, Korean war is different. Obviously. Obviously. Yeah. You know what, I'm going to go and say, I'm really like, I'm pro our sniper community. I just want to say, I mean, I just want to say straight up to our sniper community. We're cool. I love what you do. Good work. Keep doing it.

Stay silent. I don't know. That's what I thought with the Chris Kyle thing American sniper. He killed a bunch of people. But I mean, it's extraordinarily difficult to be a sniper. Yeah. 10% time. That's pretty cool. And it's extremely the weapons have gotten pretty good. I seriously against Ben Kessel is also the biggest target. Yeah. Easiest target. Yeah. Is the three of us? Yeah. Absolutely. And I switch up my fucking ways. Up down. Up down. Up down. Side, side, side.

Yeah. But you got that big. You got a much larger center of gravity. I'd be the hardest one to hit. I think that my meat actually would you catch a bullet that was less lethal. Yeah. Yeah. And then you just pretend like you're dead. Yeah. So a lot of, well, sadly. Yeah. One you with Gima. A lot of those guys actually a lot of the soldiers ignored the order and went in Bonzae anyway.

Yeah. Or regardless, considering how the Japanese Imperial Army of World War II is considered to be one of the most tenacious armies in world history, the men took Korobayashi's directive to heart, which meant that the Marines were in for a long haul. Got stamina. Me wo, Tuma. It's difficult to go Bonzae. You got to climb to the second rope. You got to have the guy lying there. You got to stun him first. Oh, yeah. You got to get the manager looking over there because you got your girlfriend.

You know, he's fighting with the rest. Yokozuna, Bonzae indeed. He also shat on Bret Hart's chest once. Or did Bret Hart shit either way, somebody shat. And Yokozuna was involved. You know, that's what I think. Now, at this point, I'd like to say to our combat veteran listeners, specifically our Marines that we are going to get deep into what actually happened on you with Gima. But turn up that hearing aid and really try to remember.

Remember how you were traumatized by say, if you're private Ryan, you ready to do it with come jokes? I'm going to say if you ain't up for combat today, feel free to skip ahead about 15 minutes or so. Okay. So at 9 a.m. on February 19th, 1945, we need some American music. We need to come in like with that silent, like, you know, like whatever that, you know, early morning, you know, like, you know, they do in the Pacific, yeah, in the show. Yeah. And tap slightly playing.

And I might be proud of that. So maybe I can give this first paragraph a little bit of a different voice. So gravitas. At 9 a.m. on February 19th, 1945, two divisions of Marines arrived at the beaches of Iwo Gima to no resistance. And less than an hour, 9,000 men were sure a wash and what they all described as an eerie silence. E.g. No. No, the Marines have been told that they were going to land on a beautiful beach. No resistance.

But what they found instead was a 15 foot high slope of soft volcanic ash that slowed them down considerably. Yeah. Because they do march. Well, what the Japanese had done is when they dug out those tunnels, what they had dug out, they had thrown on the beaches. And that gummed up the works entirely. This is a big problem because the plan was for the Marines to land on a clear beach in waves. And each group was supposed to be much further inland when the next group arrived.

But because of the ash, the Marines were slowed down considerably and they got bunched up on the beach. I mean, they really should have sent the memo out to the Japanese telling them we're coming. Could you please not do that? Let's think about this. It's difficult for us. Always send a text. Always. And once General Kura Bayashi felt that there were enough Marines ashore to make it worthwhile, the shelling and machine gunfire began. So nothing to them.

This is easier than they said it was going to be, huh? That's what they thought. That's what they thought. You know, and that happened quite a bit. I mean, it also happened like an Okinawa two where it's just they just don't know that there is a tactic right being played upon them. Yeah, it's very smart. Yeah. From the recesses of the caves up above dug into the volcanic rock, Japanese machine gun gunners opened fire from the darkness.

Marines attempted to return fire, but they only had brief muzzle flashes to ascertain the machine gunner's position. And besides that, the constant shelling of artillery made it difficult to line up a shop. Soon the machine gunners and the artillery had filled the beach with dead bodies. And since they were bunched up in such a relatively small area, each shell blew the corpses into smaller and smaller pieces, sending them flying into the air. The beach was soon littered with limbs and torsos.

There were continually taken out and back in by the tide and strewn amongst the gourd where dozens, if not hundreds of Valentine's Day cards that have been delivered to the dead and dying Marines just days before. And I actually have to say I did get an early screener of Oppenheimer. And when they played its reigning men over the sea, I thought that I could not believe it. to bring 11 e to this. Well, the honestly, I do appreciate it. Because then it's segue. Do it's raining man. It was very.

It was a rendition. The rendition was much nicer. Yeah. Wow. Wow. What a bowl. This is just rude. Pete Davidson just shows up. He was like a magic crab. Oh, we had it that we'd be great at that too. Well, I'm that first day out of the 30,000 Marines who landed 2,420 died. This was written in the making of the atomic bomb. Men tripped over 15 foot long strings of intestines as they tried to avoid bodies that had been cut in half at the waist by machine gunfire.

Due to the artillery shells, legs, arms and heads bearing only next lay 50 feet from the closest torso, which may or may not have been once enjoying to those limbs. But despite the gore and horror, the Marines pushed through. Wow. We're taking the EWO GM. That is so I might just say can we go back? Well, but also we've done now. You're such a good soldier. Your intestines are fighting. Oh, my god. It really is the beginning of suicide squad.

And this is day one behind those 30,000 Marines who stormed the beach at EWO GMA, a further 40,000 join them in the following days for a brutal battle that would last well over a month, making it the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history. On the second day of battle, one soldier remembered seeing a fellow Marine receive a direct hit to the face from a Japanese shell. It blew away his jaw, exposing his teeth while also blowing open his skull.

Lying atop the Marines right here was a ball of gray matter that used to be his brains, but incredibly he was still alive. Oh, all the Marine could do was make motion with his right hand asking one of his corpsmen to finish the job. And quite swiftly, one of his fellow Marines obliged the request. And I tell you what, yeah, yeah, when I saw all that, yeah, it was a lot, but now I'm fine. You're fine? I'm absolutely fine.

Yeah. You know, the thing I have really learned from that truly, honestly, one of the biggest things I learned from EWO GMA. You're sunscreen. Yeah, you're going to want some sunscreen. If you could apply it to your brain somehow. God, just the idea. I think I used to. But you know what? Don't worry about it in 20 years. We're going to have the microwave. You're going to love the microwave. Actually, I think the microwave is only about like 10 years.

Yeah. Listen, 40, 50 years from now, you might get to see Scarlet Johansson naked and under the skin. Just remember that reference. By 1955, like, yeah, you're going to be screaming all night long and keeping your wife awake. And she's going to be terrified of you. Your children are going to be terrified of you. But guess what? Your wife is not going to have to worry about slaving over a hot oven all day long because she's going to have a brand new and bitch and call the microwave.

The microwave also popcorn that works on the stove. Easy, easy life. Giffybub. By the fifth day, the Marines had come upon a pot. That actually was that young Marines last name. Alexander Giffy. That's where it came from. That's all it ought to be. Yes. Now by the fifth day, the Marines had come upon a plateau that was home to four defensive positions that came to be known respectively as Hill 282, Monami Village, the amphitheater and Turkey knob. Oh, turkey knob. Who named that one?

I'd imagine some good old boy from the minds of Tennessee. Yeah, turkey knob. He's looking for some smoke turkey. I'm missing. These collective defenses made up the most impenetrable fortress on Iwo Jima and it therefore came to be known as the meat grinder. I don't like that. You could send me not into that part of war. However, the Japanese could only hold out for so long, not only were the men on the island running out of supplies, but Japan itself had very little to give.

The only resupply came when three Japanese planes tried parachuting medical supplies, food and ammunition. All three were shot down and only a small amount of relief fell within Japanese territory. This was the only attempt to resupply the Japanese during the Battle of Iwo Jima because that's all they had. The Marines, meanwhile, were not only one hell of a fighting force, but they were also blessed with, if you look at it in a relative sense, impenetrable supplies.

Yeah, because we had built a whole chain of supplies up to this point. It's all right there. Yeah. We've taken the Philippines, we're fucking, we're in it. Like we're there. And of course, that is owed to the incredible industrial power that General Kurabayashi had seen for himself decades earlier. He was seeing himself proven right. Therefore, the Marines slowly took Iwo Jima, inch by inch. Yikes. Good day in Karlovois. Yeah. Anch by inch. Now, when it came to the terrifying weapon.

Yeah. What I'm talking about here. Yeah. We're talking about Iwo Jima. Now, when it came to the terrifying weapons of World War II, the one that soldiers, and especially the Japanese, to knit a fear most, was the flame thrower. Yeah. That makes sense. Let's check it out. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely top three. Now, in one thinks of a flame thrower, you've seen the dickripper.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Now, in one thinks of the flame thrower, you usually have an image of a guy with a big tank on his back, standing 10 feet from another soldier, let him lose a stream of drippy flame that immediately engulfs the target. Oh, you don't want to cast me? Yeah. Oh, you don't want to cast me? Yeah. I think about all the time. Of course. Yeah, of course. And indeed, some men did die like this.

A flame thrower jet burns at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, just a hair hotter than the temperature inside a crematory. While death does come relatively quick, it is preceded by instant agony and terror as the thickened fuel clings to the skin and clothes, making stop, drop and roll a non-starter. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you're so fucking dead. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times it doesn't happen with easy access to a pool. Oh, that's a force. Yeah. You never really like an Airbnb.

You never like hit with one like Adam Vegas like resort. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like even if pooled with, because it sticks to you. Big of it is a flame coat. It's a flame coat. Yeah. A whole body suit. Yeah. I think of that. Oh, man, that's horrible. Flame throwers weren't always great weapons as many flame thrower operators learned on D-Day. Oh, yeah. They're carrying a pack of gasoline. I learned it from their last playthrough of Wolfenstein. Yeah. You just shoot it in the explodes, is that?

Yeah. Yeah. A single bullet to a flame thrower tank usually caused the operator to explode in a ball of napalm and flame. And you just go, ah! Ah! Great stuntman work. Yeah. That's what these wars have provided for the past almost 100 years of cinema. Wonderful work for stuntmen. Well, therefore, flame throwers were mostly used in battles like Iwojima to clear out caves and bunkers. They weren't front line guys. Makes sense.

During a push at the meat grinder, for example, the entrance to a cave was first saturated with fuel, then the flame thrower was brought in to flush them out. Those who didn't asphyxiate in the cave when they tried running further in to escape the flames, those guys were set on fire. Oh, man. And they ran out of the cave as burning torches. Yes. Ah! According to the Marines, the flame throwers were the only weapons that the Japanese truly feared, but the flames were only half the point.

While the flame thrower does indeed produce death and destruction, you've also got to be fucking insane to use a flame thrower. I think so. And that sort of psychological edge was important in battles like Iwojima. Oh, yeah. It's intimidating. It's an intimidating look. Well, it's ex-factors. Dan Carlin brings up all the time. Those things that are a part of history that you are like, just the... No one wants to be hit with one. I don't want to be hit with one.

And as soon as the flame throwers get broken out, everyone's like, oh, man. Oh, shit. We already called this place the meat grinder, which I thought was fairly unpleasant enough. And I thought it would discourage people coming here. But apparently the flame throwers are really going to make this sort of a hot meat grinder. I guess, yeah.

I mean, I suppose the meat grinder does make you think that there's some weapon that just grinds up human bones as you approach people, but I don't think that's really practical. It took him a week to take the meat grinder. And they called it the meat grinder just because it was waves after what they couldn't figure out. They just couldn't figure out how to fuck it. They knew they could figure it out eventually, but it took a lot of lives.

And in honor of Pride, of course, make sure to go for two for ones between four to seven at meat grinder. Right here in beautiful Burbank, California. Now, after a month of fighting on Iwojima, almost 7,000 Marines have been killed while almost 22,000 have been wounded. The Japanese, meanwhile, have lost 20,000 men. Only 216 were taken prisoner. And out of those 216, most were only captured because they'd been knocked unconscious and it just been found lying on the ground.

That's what I would do. Oh, yeah, I'd be asleep. I'd just take a bark to the head. You don't want me to be in any, you don't want me to have military secrets. I'm an afold. Yeah, I'm going to go right to the other team. Same here. No, didn't even have any secrets. They were slaves. So they were just told to run out there, brother. These are Japanese soldiers I'm talking about. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no, that's the thing. You didn't put the laborers in battle. Oh, no, they were all trily-chewing.

These are extraordinarily well-trained, vicious, vicious soldiers. Included in the dead was General Kurabayashi, who felt that it was his duty to die defending the island. It was thought that Kurabayashi was the only high-ranking Japanese general to die in the war while personally leading his men in battle. But while you may think that the high-marine death toll would make him an object of hatred, he was instead respected.

And the man in charge of operations at Iwo Jima actually requested that the general's body be found so he could be given a proper burial. Back in Iwo Jima, there were rules. Doesn't seem like there were many rules, but that seems like one. Well, I remember that there was actually a quote like after the first, like after the second or third day, you know, with all the sand and all that, the general in charge said, I don't know who's in charge over there, but he's one smart son of a bitch.

Wow. Look at that. What a great day to chew on a stogie. They were more polite than what happened in Vietnam. No, that's a whole thing. That's a whole different. That's a whole different can of worms. Yep. That would men, women. I don't know why they keep selling these cans of worms. Who's man? Well, fishermen probably.

There were, however, holdouts on Iwo Jima, at least 3000 Japanese soldiers waged a three month long gorilla campaign against the garrison force at Iwo Jima after the battle was won. And more incredible with the two machine gunners who held out until January of 1949. Yeah. Wow. Three and a half years after the Japanese surrender. Well, those guys just, they hid, right? Where they, they were lost and then they just kept thinking the war never ended.

They didn't know so they aired on the side of the war ain't over. And then they killed Amelia Earhart. That's possible. We don't know. It's not true. Amelia Earhart arrived. I can maybe seduce them all in a sort of get sexy version of a Gilligan's Island. Yeah. It's an area, but I don't know, but I don't know. Gilligan's Island was sexy. She was the horneous lost woman since the last one. Virgin Mary. Virgin Mary. She never did get plugged. Well, she did. I think she got plugged after it.

They never talked about what happened after the virgin. I did. She did on Joseph. Yeah. What you got her shit pop by the Lord. It's a long list. Try to get up in that. Get them seconds. Well, that's fun though. That must have actually been a fun three years. Thinking the war is still going on, but then there isn't a war. I think it must have been true to do all the, you know, late and almost sexual. Wow. That's with your buddies. It's different. It's different. It's different.

You know, you know, it's lonely. It's lonely. You can't believe they put that in that movie. Right from North way. Now, to this point, you, Ajima, was a bit of a microcosm of the attitudes the Japanese military had towards the war. Some like the general knew that it was futile to keep fighting, but did so anyway out of honor while others fanatically kept going because they either didn't want to surrender or they didn't believe that Japan would ever do so.

In other words, battles like Iwajima went a long way towards the necessary evil argument when it came to dropping to atomic bombs on Japan. But it was just going to tell you one thing, Barry, I'm having the time of my life. I feel like there is a little bit of that. And I also, because this is a very specific battle, but they used that as it was. Yes. Well, you know, that's the thing. Why they dropped the bomb. They, it's so hazy. It's so hazy. It's a long, just historical discussion.

Yeah. They would use these, they would cherry pick and because they're bringing shit to the president to kind of pitch. Why we need to use the bomb? And this is like one of those ways they did it. They framed this number one. Cool. It's cool. It's cool. It's cool. Make a big noise. Well, not just that, but you know, these battles are being shown in newsreels all across America all the time, like after every single battle, the newsreels come back. Everyone goes to the movie theater.

They sit and they, they're fucking brutal. These newsreels. Absolutely brutal. You can say, yeah, I'll just buy that by Kassablan. That's all these bombs. These potty pots are written together. And you can't you say, yes, Colonel Stevens, come and give them a hand. And then what movie would play after that? I'm trying to think nineteen what 40 cinema? Ninety forty four. No, Kassablanca, you know, actually a newsreel before Kassablanca is a great preview. Oh, it is.

Because that movie is historic in some ways. It is. No. So with Iwo J. Miteken, there were no significant obstacles in the way of a steady stream of fire bombers that absolutely ravaged the cities of Japan prior to the dropping of the atomic bomb. It's almost like the fire bombs were like just as bad. Just as bad. Yeah. Well, almost I'd say almost as bad because the fires went out pretty fast. Yeah, they were and then it was over. Yeah. Oh, that's sad. Are you guys talking about your marriages?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Still single. I know. Don't tell Jerry. Oh, yeah. I know a couple of dogs. Pretty mad near that. But while the targets were meant to mostly be industrial and military, most times residential areas were burned in the process, just as it had been in Germany. As one spokesman for the Air Force put it, the entire population of Japan was a proper military target. No matter who it was. Basically because they because of pro-harm because of pro-harm.

So once they hit us, that's what he's basically saying. And we had a lot of civilians die in Pearl Harbor. Yes. So we're like, that was what they decided to do that. They definitely didn't need to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And they did that. Yeah. It was bad. And it was. So on March 10th, 1945, bombers dropped gel bombs ranging from six to 1,000 pounds on the residential district of Shidemachi in Tokyo, which was then home to 750,000 pieces. Shidemachi. That's a lot of bombs. There you go.

You did it. Shidemachi. There you go. Shidemachi. There you go. Shidemachi. Shidemachi. Shidemachi. There we go. See, many structures in Japan at the time were built of highly flammable paper and wood. And during the fire bombing of Tokyo, the wind was blowing hard enough and the buildings were burning fast enough that the fire actually got ahead of the bombers. But they dropped fire bombs on the fires anyway. There was like, hold on fire. This fire is really aggressive.

They really want to fight today. The description of making of the atomic bomb is harrowing about how it's a town of fuel and they knew it and they dropped it on it and they watched it form into this fucking literal like fire hurricane tunnel. That like it became this fire. The bombers had to lift up. They had to put oxygen masks on. The planes were getting hot. Yeah. I would believe it. And the planes were 6,000 feet up and they still had to put on oxygen masks.

Wow. The only thing that stopped the fire after it destroyed 15.9 square miles of Tokyo was a river. And by the end of it, at least 100,000 people were burned alive. Additionally, over a million had been injured and a million were homeless. But even though they were faced with this horror, even though we knew exactly what happened and what it looked like, Air Force General Curtis Lamey, who earned such nicknames as old iron pants. Oh. It's away, Lamey. And most chillingly, the demon.

Well, that one's a little on the nose. He ordered more. Hey. Lamey also did some pretty controversial stuff in Vietnam. Hey, hello. Hey, hello. It's me, General Lamey. I just want to say first of all, yeah, I know we dropped a lot of fire bombs already. Everybody's kind of up in arms about that. I know that. So I figured I could do is, you know, why not instead we'll send a wave of water and ice bombs. Funny little joke. Let's really burn it up. I actually would love to see.

We already burned it quite a bit. Yeah. Can I actually, can I go burn one? Can someone burn me a Japanese person so I can set him personally on fire? Thank you. I'm just giving blood lust. Yeah, no, no, they call me the demon for some reason. The demon. Well, over the next six days, the Air Force fire bombed four more cities until they ran out of fire bombs. And in all, they burned over 32 square miles of Japanese cities at the conservative estimated cost of 150,000 lives.

That number, by the way, beats the lowest estimate of deaths attributed to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by about 40,000. See? That means that technically, technically to the point of pure slaughter, fire bombing was more effective and less expensive than an atomic bomb. Yay. Well, here you go. But in the end, but we did with what? That's, well, that's the thing. In the end, it's all about that big mushroom cloud. It really is. You really see the mushroom cloud.

And you do want to see it. Apparently it was beautiful. We'll come to that next episode. Mm-hmm. Well, we've all seen it happen. We've seen some of the mushroom cloud. No, they've seen mushroom clouds. There's only one picture of the mushroom cloud at a Hiroshima. Next week, I'll go into more detail of the horrific beauty of the mushroom cloud. Yes, indeed. I'm happy it wasn't a broccoli cloud. You first smell one of those. You just get right into it. Yeah. Anybody you been eating some broccoli?

I'm trying to die from diabetes. Yeah. Like you better if you did. And so you may be part of the broccoli brigade. All right. Everyone turn around and march backwards. And fart, and fart, and fart. There's our general captain Marcus Sparks. God damn it. I'd be here to win the war. I thought that was a broccoli. Yeah. You really fart, bonnet, please. That's stupid. Yeah, well.

And so you may be asking, while America was burning hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians alive in their homes over the course of a few days, what were the boys over at the Manhattan Project up to when it came to figuring out how to vaporize almost as many people in just an instant? They put up a reduction of arsenic and old lace. That is real. It's completely legit. They held protests. They were developing a little family. It felt like a camp atmosphere. They were all working out there.

A whole generation of babies were born there. And they were very, they were loose cannons. Technically, they were kind of having a lot of fun. But it was very stressful. Now, the mushroom cloud babies. Well, by late 1944, Richard Feynman and Otto Frisch had conducted what they called the Dragon Experiment, which proved that a chain reaction could be used to create a massive explosion and a military capacity.

As a result, both types of bombs, plutonium and uranium were on track to be completed by late summer of 1945. But on April 12th, just when the world was on the cusp of victory against Germany, President Franklin Roosevelt suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in the middle of having his portrait painted at his home in Hyde Park, New York. And he died that afternoon. OK, stay still. Stay still. Stay still. Yeah. He's moving like I'm done with the painting. I'm done. I'm going out. He can leave.

Honestly, they painted him mid, it was he on the slam dunk competition. He was him versus Will Chamberlain's grandpa. Oh, yeah. Wow. It was kind of crazy. The air he got, but he did have to throw. Yeah. Here was a guy through. Man, I just watched Conan the Barbarian, Will Chamberlain's great. Oh, yeah. Go, yes. It's always great. But replacing FDR was one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century when it came to setting the stage for the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

And it could well be argued that had this man not been in charge, the dropping of the atomic bomb might have been handled different. Fuck you. I know what I was doing. Yeah. I don't think even he wanted it. No, I don't. Such a little bitch. No, he wanted it. He absolutely wanted it because everyone thought he was weak and he's like, nemes, who he? Well, that's not necessarily. He was tiny. He was definitely a carton of president.

Yes. Well, instead of FDR, the man who had the power to make the decision of if, when, and how the bomb would be dropped was FDR's vice president, Harry S. Truman. Now Truman had not been FDR's vice president throughout his 13 year run in office. And Truman had in fact been placed on the ticket during FDR's fourth run specifically because it was seen as a near certainty that FDR would die in office that term. So if you were agreeing to be a vice president, you were agreeing to be president.

You knew, yeah, you knew it was coming. Yeah. And isn't history repeating. It is. Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice? See, FDR's previous running mate, Henry Wallace, he had made a lot of enemies on the more conservative side of the Democratic party because he opposed racial segregation and had a more Bernie Sanders approach to the economy. Well, I mean, FDR was, was technically left to win, right? But he did kind of a trying to appeal to a bunch of people.

It's very complicated, obviously, it's passed me. Well, Wallace was very left wing. Like Wallace was left wing to the point where like he went to the Soviet Union and they showed him the gulags, but they showed him like a sanitized version of the gulags. Like they were like, yes, these are all volunteers. Look at all these good, good, good, good. And the way we put it, those at fight, it's home away from home. Yeah. Yeah. You write your political screens one time, people said nothing.

Yeah. And I'm going to get a, I'm going to get like a, what would be the opposite of live laugh? Home is where the farts are. Yeah. That's what you mean. Well, Wallace is great. But Wallace was also very naive when it came to the Soviet Union. And that's what people feared most. They feared that he openly favored heavy cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Therefore Wallace was replaced at the 1944 convention with Harry S. Truman against Roosevelt's wishes, which of course resulted in the antagonistic and confrontational policies that led to the Cold War and arguably the dropping of the bomb. Harry get over here. Okay. Now, uh, staff member pick up my leg. Harry bent over. Pick up my leg and kick him in the butt. I appreciate it, Mr. President. Yeah. Now, incredibly, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, they only met once prior to FDR's death.

And it was for like, who are you? It was for like 45 minutes. It was all quick lunch. Yeah, they could see high. I knew all he was sitting down. Yeah. Well, naturally when he was sitting down, well, partly this was due to the fact that FDR died only 82 days into his fourth term. Basically, FDR was like, I'll get around to it eventually. All right. Let's meet with him. And he also, he didn't have to campaign at all. We were trying to end the war.

Yeah. And he's like, I'll, we'll get to Truman when we get to Truman. I mean, well, Truman is just out there peeping through all the paintings. He's like, when's he going to die? What am I, President? And telling me when FDR died and Truman contacted Eleanor Roosevelt to ask if there was anything he could do for her, Eleanor basically said, what do you mean is there anything you can do? You're the one who's fuck. Yeah, man. You just got placed with a very complicated series.

A decision that you're going to have to figure out and make that might affect history. Yeah. Well, one nice thing about complicated decisions is boom, go big. Boom, go big. It's not easy. You think about it? You don't want to like about complicated decisions. Sometimes you just make them simple. You're going like, I don't want to. I like that one. Like, you're going to surprise him about like so many huge decisions come down to some very important person going, I like that one. And that's it.

That's why he wants to do it. Well, that's also why it was so incredibly complicated because the decision to put Truman on the ticket was made at the Democratic Party convention. And after you're new, like, we almost have the bomb, whoever is president next is going to have the bomb. But he can't tell anybody. Can't tell anybody. He can't say that the person that comes up next is going to have any incredible fucking responsibility. So he basically is on day off.

Hey, just so you know your president. Yeah, I know all this. Absolutely. He just died. Bubba, it's really, really intense. There's this thing called the atomic bomb. We're lit. We're about to have it paused on this. We're going to come right back to you. Harry has to be sure to be like, what? What? Tell him over several days. Well, that's a thing. Like Truman, like Truman had seen the edges of the Manhattan Project because he was chair of the committee on military affairs.

He had seen that there was this project that a lot of money was getting spent on. He's like, what's that thing? And they're like, yeah, don't worry about it. And when you know, basically, you don't need to know. And when he became vice president, he was told like, hey, there's this thing called the Manhattan Project. You'll find out about it one day. We did a great bit about how it was the Queens project. I feel like we're like a zappel. Because he was president. They're all like incredible.

That's the best bit I've ever heard. Make it a shirt. That's incredible. That's fun, though, when the conventions before they were all a ruse. When they would actually promote somebody new, like that must have been like stunning. Yeah, it must have been fun. It must have been like, Delaware goes for Truman. And then people are like, whoa, yeah, when they were trying to like, like actually run the country. Yeah, it's fun.

But just after FDR died, same day in fact, Truman was given the full scope of just what had been going on in the deserts of New Mexico for the last few years. He's literally just getting done bouncing in the president's chair. Just, yeah, yeah. Definitely, really faithfully on the same day that FDR died, auto-fresh, and given Oppenheimer, a report on the success of the Dragon Experiment. So not only was Truman told of the Manhattan Project, he was told that Holy F**k, this thing actually works.

So if you want a destroyed entire city with one bomb, you can. This is the best day of my life. That's horrible. You can actually have released journal entries from Harry S. Truman but him writing after finding out about the Manhattan Project, and you can feel the terror that he has. Oh yeah, it's a lot of response. Holding this response. So, he's like, you can feel the terror. I wish I wouldn't have said yes to this. This is horrible. Yeah, right.

Now, after it became clear that the bomb was and inevitability, the scientists at Los Alamos Neils bar chief among them tried convincing the US officials that we needed to share what we knew about nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union, so as to prevent a nuclear arms race in an eventual nuclear holocaust. And the boy. Wow, and that just told wow. They all jumped on that. Yeah. But the thing is, had Henry Wallace been president, oh yeah, it's somewhat likely that this might have happened.

Yeah, all of history would be very different. Yeah, but as it was, Bohr was waved off and told the comeback later, while he and the rest of the scientists moved on to further calculations concerning how to maximize the destruction of the bomb. And I've got to my head stocking a state case. I just thought we'd take my advice. We have to say. Yeah, all right. If you just got some butter, I'm putting it on the monitor. I was going to see that. I'm very firmly jammed. You know, you are.

Now, basically, at a time bomb doesn't work like a conventional bomb, and then it doesn't go boom when it hits the ground. Because up to this point, bombs are fairly in exact science. Yeah, like you really just blew shit up. Yeah, you just drop it, it goes. And that's it. You know, you're ear burst, which is a very controversial starburst flavor. Oh, I don't like it. Land burst, so much a burst. When instead of all that, the bomb had to be detonated manually.

But if you detonate the bomb too soon after dropping it, it wasted energy burning up oxygen in the sky. It's also going to blow up the plane. But you detonated too low and you only create a radioactive crater in the ground. And that just really, I mean, that just makes it dying like five years after a whole bunch of cancer. And you're wasting it.

You want it for maximum wow factor was to explode it at just the right height where the energy expended has a chance to travel as far out as possible and to send the resulting shock wave as far out as possible. This both vaporizes anything organic in the immediate blast. Then it destroys anything in the shock wave radius. And again, oh yeah, and remember saying you're saying that in a scientist cadence of how exciting this would be. And I mean, it is crazy.

Because Jay Robert Oppenheimer for all of his obviously his belief in human rights movements and all of the stuff that he worked on. There was this fascination. There was a giddiness. There was a giddiness of like, we wanted to not only work, but we wanted to work in its best. It's the people that are creating AI right now. Yes. They're all like, this is going to be really bad. Let's get back to work. Let's get back to work. Oh, we're not done yet. Now an FDR died. Germany was all but beat.

So we knew we wouldn't be using the bomb on European soil. And besides that to put it in as blunt as terms as possible, the idea of dropping the bomb on white people made everyone a little less gung ho about using it. Oh, yeah, there was definitely that was a part of the fact. Yeah, for sure.

So when it came to where it would be dropped, America switched focus to the enemy that we'd spent four years dehumanizing completely the Japanese and research began to decide which city or cities might be the best target. Well, this shit at you bugs, buddy. But you also have an outside of the president's purview. These things were already set in motion. The Manhattan Project was just rolling. Yeah. No one gave a fuck. No one tried to stop anything.

And so while he was like, Truman started the philosophizing of what are we going to do with the bomb after? And now, blah, blah, blah, they're already choosing targets. And in the most like brutal way possible. Yeah. Now in order for the bomb to have maximum psychological effect, general groves wanted a city that was mostly military in nature, but had not already been bombed a shit. So as to show the full destructive potential of an atomic bomb. They wanted that show, dude. That's nice.

Eventually, it came down to the ancient imperial city of Kyoto, or the mostly industrial city of Hiroshima. Kyoto was fortunately spared at the insistence of Secretary of War in Ristimpson. I like the vacation there during the summertime. Have you been there in the summer? It's actually a lot like that. He said it's a beautiful city. It's full of history. It would be a crime against humanity to destroy Kyoto. See? Art does save lives. And I've been to Kyoto, and I'm very... Every... No shit.

That's right after Australia last time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Kyoto, it's an incredible city. I've never seen anything like it. You know? It is scared of you when you came. You're up. It's been some time. Okay, good. No, not at all. The people of Kyoto were actually wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to go. I heard I'm too big. No, they'll be like, ride the dragon. Oh, see that the old look at him becomes the mountain. To be held captive and be forced to perform.

So the Secretary of War, he nixed his Kyoto. Okay. Horoshima, on the other hand, was historically a military city. And in 1945, the Second General Army was stationed in Hiroshima for the defense of Western Japan. When it came to civilians, though, Hiroshima was also a center of education, second only to Tokyo. I mean, Americans are like, give some fuck. We don't know what we're all on that up. It's a lot of students. Oh, nevertheless, Hiroshima became target number one.

But right around that time, just weeks after FDR died, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Swish, swish, quotation marks. I've seen some pictures of a man that looks just like him in Argentina. And with that, the Western theater of the war came to a close. It's over. It's over. Yeah. Nazis, you ain't so good anymore. But anymore, that's good. We know ever. Oh, my God. Absolutely. No, I wouldn't not. It's all the glenios. You know what? Let's move on. It's a numbers game. It is a numbers game.

Also, they, I wish that they would have a little plaque for his burial. It's just underneath the goddamn. Yeah, it's underneath that. I take a lot. No, there's a, there is a now they finally put a plaque there. It's not a plaque. It's more of an info card. Yes. I saw it on a Berlin. They were trying to promote the site of his dead body was, but then eventually so many people just go, they just put up a sign. Yeah, it's just a little info and it shows you a diagram of the bunker.

But it's like low income housing, which is going to be extremely depressing as you just drive past me and like this side of Hitler's suicide. Like each day you come back with milk. You guys were the ones in Dallas stopping traffic pretending you were getting shot in the head like JFK. That's kind of fun. Oh, but right adjacent to the Hitler suicide spot is a beautiful Holocaust memorial. It is absolutely gorgeous. Oh, yeah, I walked that. Yeah, I walked through that.

But even though the Germans had been the impetus for the Manhattan Project, their defeat hastened the speed of the bomb's construction even more, the motivation for this was both entirely understandable and extremely human. See the American people were quite simply done with war while it was super cool that Hitler was dead. You're wrong. That's fucking off. I'm just done with this season of war. I'm done with the show. Can we get a new wrap this up?

Yeah. The American people were being told over and over and over again that it was going to take no less than a million lives over the course of a few years to fully defeat Japan because of the tenacity displayed in places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. So we're already selling this to the people. We're selling it very, very hard to be American. I really hope the season's final episode just has a big conclusion and we can just end it just an explosive ending. Yeah, like a Michael Bay like ending.

Well, I mean, and they're selling it at both ends. You know, they're selling it in a way where like they spent four years turning the Japanese into monsters. Yes. Like absolute fucking demons. These, but they're also trying to hit it from a humanitarian angle of like, well, if we bomb Japan, then we're actually going to be saving lives. Oh, yeah, what was the thing? It's like they're wanting Japanese lives. They said, do you want us to kill Japanese people or do you want American people to die?

That is kind of the crux that they put against them. Yeah, and it was also, do you want us to kill a million Japanese people in bombing or do you want us to kill five million Japanese people in hand-to-hand combat? Right. You know, let's just get it done. That's the strategy there. I say we just get them fat. Yeah, yeah, we should have said corn meal. Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, sugar is up to days. Let's talk about that. I can be close to the real room. The real room. The real room.

The hidden sugars in our food. They are killing us and there's no reason why we should eat different chocolate than they do in Europe. No, I took it away all over our candy sucks. No, I know. They're upset with their sugar. The European stuff is incredible. But there was also. They suck fucking grassly. You're still not dead. But there was also another human reason to finish work on the bomb, although this one was far less emotional. The secretary of state put it simply.

We spent $2 billion on this goddamn bomb and Congress is going to want to see a big god damn boom. Oh, yeah, this is like when you show up to Disney World and it's raining and you got tickets and you're like, we're going in. Yeah, $1,500. We're going to fucking fight. Okay, we're going to smile. It's your own shit up. Your ice cream is wet. How did you eat that ice cream? Well, to that point, Robert Oppenheimer himself had interestingly come to the belief that the atomic bomb was in his words.

Shit. That's he said. That was an exact call. The atomic bomb is shit because it had no military use beyond creating a very big bang that killed a lot of people all at once. Oh, yeah. Before you talk about your talk about years like how this this shithead who wrote the book that saying that the hero's your bombing sitting happened. That's how we use that to was another reason why the bombings didn't happen.

The man had devoted years of his life and his entire professional reputation to the project. How can he say it was shit? How can he doubt his military value? Have you thought super repulsed were shit? Why is that on the project in the first place? Are we really believe it was a super rapid thing to never be used?

Actually a brain of his stature would grasp that even have never used such an object would be a huge military value in the largest to change the sense of intimidation, deterrent, et cetera. It would never use so much better, but we have it directly from arguably the greatest military mind of all time. That was shit. All right. In that book written by Casey Anthony. Casey Anthony. I'm happy she's getting into history. Oh, yeah. It is nice. It is nice. Man, she's looking thick these days.

You know, she's out there. There's some pictures of her on Mother's Day. I'm not saying like that. That's true. It pictures of her on Mother's Day. Oh, yeah. There was a picture of her on the day she could take off. Technically she looks great. Wow. I thought that yeah. What's looking good on her? Well really the only father. No one's ever asked that. Who's the father? Who the fuck is Kaley and whose father? You don't have to get into that at some point.

I feel like that wasn't ever asked that question once. It was answered. It's not the DJ. And one way I'm sorry. I'm going back. It was kind of sort of answered. I don't think anyone took a responsibility for it. Yeah, for like, yeah. And that's really the whole story isn't it? Much like the Tom and Fom. Thank you, Henry. We're back in it. I'm your friend. But really the only purpose that Robert Oppenheimer saw for the atomic bomb was to put the Russians on notice.

But even though it was all but decided that America was going to use the bomb on the Japanese, the biggest debate was whether or not we were going to warn the Japanese before we used it. Just to be polite. Well, just because it was weird. He really were like, hey, just say, you know, we need come in there because they also to that point. And they also kind of did know this is part of the performance. They call it a war theater for reasons.

And they're like, this is going to be a big message to them to the world. Well, most of the Manhattan Project scientists and even some in government thought it was only fair and mostly most of all humane to warn the Japanese that we were in possession of a weapon of incredible power that we would definitely use if they didn't surrender. But from a military perspective, it was decided that the Japanese would not be informed of a kill shot bomb.

Because if we made a big stink about this new weapon and it ended up being a dud, it would weaken our military position worldwide. What was about our rap? Yes, indeed. But what was most important here was that it was known that the Soviets were also working on an atomic weapon. It was estimated, however, that they were at least seven years behind America, possibly as many as 10.

So dropping the bomb would show the Soviets that while their dick was ragging and raw from years of warfare against the Germans, our dick was rock hard. Yeah, just disturbingly vain. Wow. And massive. Well, it's literally speaking. I mean, I do have that survey. Our penises are 5.4 inches on average, which is 60 out of the 90 nations that they study. This is Mill's hair. This is a, this is about mental penises. I mean, there's a reason all missiles look like big dicks.

Yeah, I think it's a good bit. That's how they fly. That's exactly the year. Yeah, that's just the best way to fly. If they, if they were to fly best is vaginas, they would be shaped like vaginas. That would be cool. We call this one the Brett Farve. That's what slightly to the left. What do you think Hillary Clinton would have done? She was president. Yeah, she would have killed people with all vagina bombs. So that's only fair. That's women can kill too.

Yeah, we put the, we put the uranium in this upper area. I don't know what this is. This upper area under the, this is good. The little bump of uranium. It's an episode of South Park, actually. Wow. Put a bomb in her pussy. Nice. Well, as such, by June 1st, even before the first atomic bomb test was completed, Truman decided that the atomic bomb would be dropped on Japan. And he would soon take steps to ensure that the Japanese would quote unquote, make him do it.

He got, he's finished his piece and then he was like, let me out of this high chair. I have a decision to make. Let me out of this case. Let me out of here. And when it came to testing the world's first atomic bomb, most accounts make it seem like Trinity was tested right outside of Los Alamos. But the actual site was 240 miles away in New Mexico's Hornada del Muerto Valley. Yeah. This passage. Yeah. That's cool. Now initially, Oppenheimer set the test for July 4th, 1945. He loves a moment.

He does. Didn't end up happening that. But when Oppenheimer's brother Frank showed up to help in May, he found hundreds of people furiously setting up an intricate testing site to detonate the bomb all while the plutonium was en route from Hanford site in Washington state. Now perhaps to add some levity to a deadly serious endeavor, senior scientists placed bets on how powerful the atomic blast was going to be because truthfully none of them had a firm idea of how big the boom was going to be.

Yeah, they did not know. They really did. They tested other versions of it of like a bomb. They tried to build huge, huge bombs. And you're kind of see like, what's the biggest explosion we can make and they did that. And they're like, okay, so what if that's like a thousand times like that? Then they try to like conjecture because it's also invited. They invented a whole field of explosive radius tests and all this kind of shit.

Like when you got a really great bit and you're like, this is going to crush, but then you do it and it doesn't work. Yeah, people just don't know. Yeah, you just don't know. Or you do it and it does very, very well. And next thing, you know, you're Larry, the cable guy. And now you're forced to be this guy who says, get her done all the time. It's really true. He was a vegan when he started that character. He never converted to Larry, the streamer guy. No, no, he never did. Interesting.

He never did, but he was a vegan before he created that character. Oh, I know. That character. It's a big, he's a bunch of meat. It's K-Fay, baby. Wow. One scientist picked the equivalent of 45,000 tons of TNT. Another picked 8,000. Robert Oppenheimer, he went prices right style. He said 300. He didn't get in, say one. One, one, one. One technician went even further saying that Trinity was going to be a dud. Fuck you, joke out of work. Oh, wow. It's been like, I don't need this shit right now.

I'm in Hant2C. I'm already railed, man. I've been crying over my communist girlfriend, Jesus. That's so absurd. Well, technically that is the prices right. He went and done. Oh, the low one. He's going low. But you can't bet. You can't bet zero, though. You can't bet zero. You got to bet at least one. I would say one would be equivalent to a dud. Oh, yeah. No. No, one would be equivalent to a ton of TNT. That's still quite a large explosion. Yeah, but not by, but not enough.

It's not the cover of Time Eggers. No. But when it came to play some bets and Rico Fermi was apparently in a playful mood that day. I think you're going. In full ear shot of guards and military personnel who barely knew what was going on, he started saying that he wanted a bet on whether or not the atmosphere itself was going to be ignited by the boss. Hey, come on. And if it did, would it just destroy New Mexico or the entire planet? I think about it. I don't know. I'm not.

Is the moon are going to be when it gets a shine? It gets on a show. Or what is it like to be a pizza pie? I really wish he didn't dress like Pinocchio during that. Now, this little anecdote has been twisted over the years to mean that the Manhattan Project scientists didn't know whether or not the Trinity test was going to light the entire world on fire. But that's not true. The calculations have been done long before the Trinity test.

The show that this Doomsday scenario was effectively impossible. But the fact that they even had to do the calculations in the first place is indeed incredibly frightening. It's going to fun to think about it. It's going to fun to think about it. Now, when it came to who was most frightened by the success of the test, none of the site was more nervous than test leader Ken Bainbridge.

He knew that if the bomb didn't go off or worse, if it hang fired, it would be his responsibility to drive out to the bomb by himself to see what had gone wrong. I elect Ken. I don't know if you guys are coming with me. Let's end up. Let's end up. That's a good guy. Let's go to go. Oh, God. Sorry, Ken. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, was nervous as well because after all, this whole thing had been his baby.

In the weeks leading up to the test, he'd been reading verses from a Hindu scripture called the Bhagavad Gita, which Oppenheimer had been using since college as a sort of calm down text. I've never been able to say that word. Bhagavad Gita. Bhagavad Gita. It's a very important book. But once the kinks were worked out with the bomb and it seemed as if all was well, Oppenheimer's demeanor changed.

There was a small delay because of weather, but when General Groves asked Oppenheimer if the weather was going to hold out for the Trinity test, Oppenheimer said, quote, the weather is whimsical. No, it's not whimsical. The weather is fucking brutal. It's like rap whimsical. No, it's not the dust storms that happen in Texas whimsical. I had a little creature told me to go and kiss my girlfriend. It's time. It's time. It's time. It knows you're going to be a movie about you. Really?

I hope it's a musical. And so at dawn on July 16, 1945, all the top scientists of the Manhattan Project plus a select group of 10 guests. Oh, very select guest list. The jungle. I'm just here for the shrimp. They huddled in trenches. There were anywhere between five and 20 miles from ground zero. The Trinity bomb, still known as the gadget, was sitting atop a tower to maximize the blast radius. Then at 5.25 a.m., the countdown started.

All present were told to lie down on the desert sand and turn their faces away while bearing their heads and their arms. Head down, ass up. That can't wait. I like to take that. Some complied, but most didn't. Some just put on sunscreen. Do they not want to have they not read the parable of Sodom and Gremon? Richard Feynman just sat behind a fucking windshield. That is funny. Yeah. He's right. He's right. So at 5. This is one guy going to light a cigarette on it. Yeah. It's going to be fun.

He's just a flaming skeleton. Like, like, calculations were off. And the cigarette didn't light. Finally though at 5.30 a.m. exactly the first atomic bomb in history ignited. Yes. How do we? How am I supposed to feel? I was again here just for the shrimp. A physicist present said that he saw an enormous flash of light. The brightest that he or anyone in history had ever seen. He said that it was a vision that was seen with more than the eye.

It seemed to last forever to the point where you wished it would stop. And you know how long that flash lasted two seconds. This burned into his brain. It was pure. It's pure energy. Yeah. But it was soon followed by an enormous ball of fire that rolled as it grew up into the air in menacing yellow scarlet and green flashes. The physicist said that he found as if a new thing had been born. A new control which man had a client over nature. Meanwhile, one guy's like, where's that? Where are the?

Are these? Are these still fresh? Nature still wins. Nature in general over anything that humans can create. And in it radiation is kind of natural. Like I was reading about like with a building of polonium and stuff like all this stuff. We're like, pull this stuff out. Like technically that poison. We just kind of released it. And the nature's like, thank you. I'm going to add this to the arsenal when we have our next tornadoes that roll through Kansas.

Yes. Break Oppenheimer described the cloud as brilliant purple. That was of course because it was glowing with radiation. And the thunder from the blast seemed to eternally echo through the canyon where the bomb was detonated. Now the legend is that upon the detonation of the bomb Robert Oppenheimer cinematically uttered a chilling line from the Bhagavad Gita. But that's not exactly what happened.

Oppenheimer later recalled that when the blast passed, he and the others solemnly walked out of their shelter into a changed world. Some people laughed. Some people cried. But most were silent. As for Oppenheimer himself, he said he remembered a line from the Bhagavad Gita in which the Hindu God Vishnu is trying to persuade a prince that he should do his duty.

To make the argument Vishnu takes on their multi armed form and utters the line that has become so famous in the decade since now I am become death. The destroyer of world. It's fucking cool. It's the darkest. It's fucking most tens of nerds ever been. It is cool. But he just thought that. He's got that. Yeah. I can't wait to be in hospice and do the thing in my mind thinking I'm going to say, I do those drapes go. I do. Many you die. But I know my last words just going to be like, oh, fuck.

Yeah. I'm fucking shitty. No, but you need to be able to change your drapes. It's your room. You pay a lot of money for that room. But please, when the nurse comes in, put your pants on. We've got a lot of complaints Henry. Call me David Kappa. Well, it's Oppenheimer put it, all those present at the Trinity test thought something like the I am become death in one way or another. It sounds like it sounds like it did. So yeah, heavy situation. Right.

As far as what he actually said from what Oppenheimer's brother remembered, Oppenheimer's first words where he just said it worked. It works. That's it. That's good. However, well, Oppenheimer painted himself as a solemn individual contemplating his place in human history. A physicist named Isidore Rabbi remembered that when Oppenheimer returned to the lost alamos lab, he was strutting around like it was the end of high. Yeah. Somebody is the big swing and dick in this fucking room.

Yep. Start this math. Then I went boom. And who did it? Old Opie. And he'd take swing and fucking dog. So all y'all go fuck yourself. I'm going to go read some marks. I mean, he did. As far as who won the bet though, the blast was actually four times larger than what they thought it would be. Oh, so whoever bet the highest actually also bet the lowest part. They won. That's right. Trinity turned the desert sand into a light green reflective glass that they ended up calling Trinitite.

If you look up a picture of Trinitite, it looks like if scabs were made of boogers. It's cool. Look. If scabs, right, Marcus, you're gross. It's what it looks like. Scabs were made of boogers. Scabs are made out of boogers. It's gross. As far as the damage done goes, Trinity eviscerated Jackrabbits 800 yards away. Tour the doors loose from a farmhouse three miles away, cause temporary blindness nine miles away, and it caused severe damage to eyeballs five miles away.

At a thousand yards, pine boards set up to test destructive power were completely charred. In it, even 1500 yards exposed surfaces heated almost instantly to 750 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, the scientists knew exactly what dropping an atomic bomb in the middle of a city was going to do immediately. It's going to lead to a victory.

As far as how much they knew or how much they allowed themselves to know about what would happen a week, a month, a year, or a decade later, that's a little harder to suss out. But as Robert Albert Heiber says, it was not his job. That was not his job. His job was to make the bomb. Right over the bomb. But nevertheless, once the Trinity test was a success, a 15 foot crate containing most of the little boy bomb assembly was loaded onto the ill-fated USS Indianapolis on its way to Tinian Island.

Oh my god. Oh my god. It's like a fucking cameo from another series. It's like what Steve Urkel was on step by step. Oh, I don't remember that. Yeah. For new listeners, you can find the full story of that harrowing tale in our archives as to what happened to the USS Indianapolis after they dropped a little bomb off at the island of Tinian. They fucking brought the blue, they brought the fucking uranium in a lead bucket. Yep. I guess. Okay, that's where it goes.

Now, on the same day at the Trinity test, Harry Truman was present at another fateful event. We, Churchill and Stalin were attending the Potsdam conference to decide what was to be done with Germany now that the war in Europe was over. Do we tickle? Should we just tickle her feet? I was thinking of that. Yeah, I just wanted to take pictures of all their feet, obviously, for some reason. Yeah, of course. And then I want to see, I mean, honestly, I want to see him pull toffee.

But the idea, why don't we just give them bunches and bunches of money so they can kind of rebuild? Yeah, I think we're going to have perfect. Yeah. It was called the Marshall Plank. What a way to punish somebody who's trying to take over the world. Well, actually, if you want to know more about all that, our next series in No Dogs and Space is going to go way into what happened to Germany after the war and the Marshall plan and all that shit and how it would have essentially created electronic.

We're just going to eventually completely cover every decade. Yeah. We're just going to eventually grow the network as a whole. By the time we're done with this shit, we will have covered the entirety of human history at the very least. At least we're all of covered the entirety of the 20th century. But for the purposes of this story, Potsdom was also a meeting to decide how the allies were going to finish off Japan. Now by this point in the war, Japan was standing alone.

Italy had long since been finished off and Hitler's corpse was either ashes in a ditch or secreted away to some Soviet meatlock. Certainly not the new other way. Argentina. But either way, Japan had no allies. And to put it simply everyone around them, they were pretty pissed off. Yeah. Yeah. China was a little miffed about the whole rape of Nanking thing and everything that went along with it. Korea hadn't been too happy about all that enslavement business.

Hey, that's some of the worst businesses you can get involved in outside of the restaurant business. Extremely volatile. Oftentimes they go hand in hand. Russia was ready to invade along with America. And since Japan had been the aggressors in this war, they had no moral standing internationally. No one was helping out Japan. That's not to mention the fact that Japan's Navy and Air Force was relatively nonexistent.

And even if they did have ships and planes, they didn't have any oil or gas to put in the ships and planes. You're going to want that. And that's also not to mention the fact that the actual people of Japan were rapidly starving to that. Now this may sound like an extremely insensitive thing to say, but are you pointed to me? They're perfect for an atomic bomb because they can't defend themselves. So it's like, it is this, it's like that is the most brutal fucked up way you can look at it.

We're like, not only do we get to flex the world, what we can do and what we've created, but also they can't fuck it up on our way to go do it. They're sitting there waiting for it. And you've been playing a lot of Civ 6. Oh, yeah. When you finally get to the atomic era and Civ 6 and you really do, because then what that's what I say, I save it. I always kind of built the, I've destroyed a bunch of other countries around me.

Sure. I know that there's a smaller country that I need to go wipe out of my way to a domination victory. And by that point, I'm wigs ahead of them, like it kind of, of course. And then you really be like, and I feel myself, I remember getting a little snack and I pour my, pour my drink. I like, like, I put the atomic weapon on the plane. I fly it over. It's really fun. It's really fun. Absolutely. Yeah, really fun.

What I like to do is play Civ 6 as the Japanese and then have them drop the atomic bomb. Oh, yeah. It's much better to do it. It's fun to change things. Yeah, it is. It's the racist policy. Oh, yeah. It's very, it's all good. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. Yeah. So we're the worst crimes you've even got.

Yeah. Additionally, contrary to popular belief, Secretary of War Henry Stimson knew that Japan was not a country of mad fanatics willing to fight to the last man, woman and child. He openly said that they were an extremely intelligent people who's transitioned from an isolated country to a world power in just a few decades had been astonishing, even if that transition had been at times horrifically bloody and brutal.

Therefore, Stimson concluded that when it came to surrender terms, America should first warn Japan that a horrific bomb attack worse than even the fire bombing of Tokyo was in the cards if they chose not to surrender. But if they did surrender, Stimson suggested very strongly they should be given the option of keeping a constitutional monarchy much like England. Now this was going to be an issue, especially with Harriet. Yes. Now, this was the basic equivalent of an unconditional surrender.

Because at the end of the day, who really gives a shit if the Emperor is quote unquote in charge? Does it really fucking matter if Queen Elizabeth is in charge or if King Charles is in charge? Nothing changed. No, the only person I won is the Charles in charge. Yeah. But that's got bail controversial figure controversial figures. Problematic man. I know. Problematic man. I haven't thought about him in a long time. But in the end, it's really all symbolic. And that went double for the Japanese.

Therefore, it shouldn't have been a problem to keep a constitutional monarchy. It shouldn't have mattered. And the Soviet Union was ready to mediate a deal between the Japanese and the Americans. You know things are bad with the Soviets are like, let's calm down, guys. They got the right. Let's go. Yeah. And there were people within the Japanese government that were absolutely ready to go. The Emperor was ready to go.

But as I said earlier, Truman and the rest of his future cold warriors wanted to force Japan's hand. And they knew just how to do it. They played harshly on the Japanese concept of honor by demanding a completely unconditional surrender, basically telling the Japanese to sniff our butts and like it. Sometimes you do, but most of the times you don't. And you get these guys because he really runically enough. I think that's the number one game show in Japan right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have a funny relationship with butts. They really did. Yeah. And they love sniffing. They really do. There's a lot of Japanese game shows clips that I've seen that a lot to do with smells. A lot of smells. Yeah. They wouldn't have those shows without us. Yeah. Thankfully, that's a one good thing about the atomic bomb.

But he said that these, maybe I might be wrong, but if you like Truman was trying to say, part of this unconditional surrender is that your people have to vote for a new leadership. But basically we're getting rid of the imperial freedom. Freedom, democracy. Yes, which is again, the beginnings of this idea of we're going to go and just replace your government as something even if it hurt you, as long as it's pro us, that's kind of what we get to do because we made the atomic bomb.

Well, at the very base level of it, like what they did, the Japanese could not stand what they couldn't say yes to was an unconditional surrender. They needed something. They needed something. They needed like something. They needed a shred of something to retain like a shred of honor, a little bit of dignity that they need and Truman knew that he wanted a post. Yeah. But if like we give an unconditional surrender, they're going to say no. No matter what. They wanted to drop the bomb.

They wanted to drop the bomb. They wanted to drop the bomb and they knew this is how they do it. That's this is how they could do. Yeah, that's what you said. They made him make him do it. Yeah. And the declaration said the alternative to surrender was prompt and utter destruction, but they did not say what prompt and utter destruction meant. Yeah. Is that like figuratively like you're going to read me to filth? Like are you going to get one storm back podcast? Who drops that?

That's horrible to do that. Now the Japanese rejected the terms of complete unconditional surrender just like everyone knew they would. And the American government therefore pretended like they didn't have any other choice but to drop the bomb. You've tied my hands. Yeah. It's like when you sign up for fucking EA, man. You know what I mean? I'm serious. I'm a serious exam. But they've been calling me the fucking call. And have they really call me so much like call. Oh, the time. It's weird.

As the Americans put it, they were actually saving Japanese lives because the military were training every able bodied person on the mainland to fight with sharpened bamboo sticks to the death if an American land invasion came. And this is where we inspired them to do a Toyota. But it is that we just say to me, you to expand the prices right before, but then you caught them right before you're saving. Very good.

And the thing is they were training the people to do this, but it was more propaganda. It was more morale. There are videos. You know, a bunch of women and children with these sharpened bamboo sticks going through the moat. It's comical. Yeah. It's shot in Los Angeles. It's very real. But given the US artillery, they were defending themselves. It was not. It was not comparable.

I mean, I'm willing to bet that while some would have, but let's also not like pretend like the Japanese are the good guys here. No, no, they don't fuck them shit. Everybody. The Japanese did some really fucking. It's world war too. It's world war too. No one did out clean. Yeah. No one.

But at the end of the day, I'm willing to bet that while some of these people on the Japanese mainland would have fought to the death, it probably would have been closer to what the Germans got when they called up the Vokster, the people's militia. A few people are going to show up, but not a lot. No, it's me. Old people and children. Yeah. And it's like, it's not. It's, it's actually really fucked up for then our soldiers to go and shoot all of these like people.

Like, these are none of them are trying to look. You'll find a wife and a family. Well, it's certainly not enough to justify the horror show that was to come. No. Through propaganda and self-justification, America gave the go ahead to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Now the Air Force knew that the Manhattan Project wasn't going to be a secret after the bomb was dropped.

So, yeah. So General Groves actually invited photographers and journalists to the island of Tinian to record the takeoff for prosperity. The guys boarding the Inola Gay felt like celebrities. Flash bulbs are going up. They're saluting. They're smiling. They say it's like this thing of like, aren't we all happy what we've all figured out? Like, this bomb, because we all knew everything was going to be different this second. Of course.

And so after making their way through a crowd of reporters and photographers, the bomb crew boarded the Inola Gay, which had been named after the pilot's mother. Her name was Inola Gay. I would thank you for clarifying her name was Inola Gay. And he was the bar she went. There you go. Along with the crew, though, were three scientists who had the task of assembling the last bits of the bomb on the way to Hiroshima, because they didn't want to assemble the thing on the island.

Yeah, that makes sense because it's a big explode. Oh, yeah. Now the only people on board who knew they were dropping an atomic bomb with the pilot and the three technicians. In fact, one of the technicians had a handgun in case of capture. So he and the others could check themselves out to keep the Manhattan Project secrets out of enemy hands. I fly with it gone every single time, just to guess. He does. And they're like, I think we're surprised. They'll thank you.

They're like, thank you for doing this. Yeah. See, I would have there with my fingers crossed. I'm like, yeah, sure. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah. And so at 3 a.m., two of the nuclear technicians radio tinion tower and said, judge going to work. That signal that the assembly of the bomb was underway in the Bomb Bay, thousands of feet above the Pacific Ocean. It took 11 steps to assemble the bomb, but as one technician put it, only a suicidal maniac would have made the assembly dangerous.

That being said, that same technician was indeed handling explosive gunpowder right next to a nuclear weapon. Well, if you can survive, remember this bomb is brand new. Yeah. So they are just assembling it all together for the very first time on its way to go drop it. And if you can get through that with your partner, maybe you guys have a chance. And just even on a chip. Natalie and I were talking, we went through the, and we were like, you know, like, what do we come together?

I can't keep it for you. We did was that we just put together this sample atomic bomb in our home. Yeah. And it's really, honestly, it's incredible the bonding rough patch over rough patch. Oh, and our neighbors are afraid. That's great. And it's when we've just been fucking right in their front lawns and you showed them because I was like, you could stick my butt. You can like it. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Well, by 6 a.m. be a no legate flew over E.O. GM and was joined from bad airfield by two more aircraft who are working as observation and instrument readers. That's mean they're calculations. An hour and a half later, little boy was armed. Tibits climbed to bomb altitude and leveled off at 32,700 feet, going only by sight because none of them were allowed to bring maps. Once at bombing height, the technician told Tibits that the bomb was in order.

And five minutes later, Hiroshima came into sight. At 9.50 a.m., the bomb bay doors opened and little boy dropped. And as Tibits bolted the enolage upward, he had one thought. Now it is in the lap of the gods. And that's where we'll pick back up. I'm not serious on the Manhattan project. Wow. Well, you know, God, if he was out there, could have like grabbed it. That's a bunch of cargo. Oh, right. You get really man. Whoa, it is just a fucking. I can't believe we're here next week.

We can get to the day of Hiroshima, Nagasaki. What kind of happened afterwards? And we're going to put this. We're putting this. We're shipping out. Yeah. This is the end of the Manhattan project next week. I can't believe how far we come. Maybe, maybe the end. Oh, God. All right. What's this dude? Let's just, we're just going to, we're just going to have to see. Because I got, he wants to get into shovels. I've just been reading so much.

Because now after the bomb, then they're going to have to shovel. But that's a thing. Now you can move on from the bomb itself. Oppenheimer's done, man. He's out of the picture. His, his story's over with. Now you can get to the sloth. I know. No, you can, I think we can just end it after that. Slothing magazine. It's so hard to find. Yeah. Now you can take pictures of those sloths without their consent.

Now you can get to the big dripping black dog that the kids thought was a dog, but it was really their mom. I know. Now you can get, now you can get to the people melting as they were falling into the river. Now you can get into the goopy, goopy, goopy river. Finally, for my, when pool reading, you can get into what is quite possibly the most horrific week that mankind has ever witnessed. It's going to get f**king rough. Hey, man, were you there when James Gordon got his show?

That was almost as bad. Now we'll talk about a bomb. It's talking about a fat boy. Guys, was it a long boy? Check me out. It's fat kid. It's fat man and little boy. It's another one who has the same little little little boy legs. Fat man top. Imagine that's the thing with your little over where you cannot be rude to wait stuff. You really can't be rude. You really cannot be. Especially not about ex-kitty, but a spanish. I want to make a little bit of an announcement.

I am going to be doing a live show. I believe I'm allowed to announce this. I'm doing it anyway because they have it, but it's coming up. I'm going to be doing some improv shit. Come check it out. Go just ask them where the f**king tickets are. I'm going to put up a link on my socials very soon. I'm very excited to do those shows. I know Kisels going out and he's going to go and show you your tickets now. You're going to go do this. You sell a f**king tickets. You sell a f**king tickets.

July 9th in San Diego, July 16th in San Francisco, July 23rd in Las Vegas for my birthday weekend, which I don't usually celebrate. Perhaps they will then. You're in Vegas. July 30th, Ontario, California. Can't wait to do some bullshit. Come on out. And then we're going to be doing some, we are in Henry and I are going to be going to do something as well. We'll tell you about in the future. We got to get that. Go over here. Guys, wow. It worked. Now thank you. Good job, Marcus. Same for all.

Yeah. All right everyone. Thank you all so much for listening to Hail Yourself. Hellsake us. Aggy. Morghous Dalatians. Hell me. Never drop another bomb. No need to drop another bomb. No. Drop a bomb. No, man. Instead of dropping bombs, we need to drop sandwiches. We need to drop love. We need to drop hugs. Oh, drop hugs. I like that. I like that. All for Charles coming through. That's the hardest. It's always just a job. They were going to bomb me over the stick. We've come to hug.

Yeah. It just popped me. Drop some turds. Stay regular. Yeah. Take a shit and step. That's a good call. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to LastPodcastNetwork.com.