August 5, 2025

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to “Amanpour.” Here’s what’s coming up.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We’re not running away. We’re running into the fight.

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GOLODRYGA: Texas Democrats face arrest warrants for their attempts to deny Trump’s redistricting plans. So, what’s their strategy to fight back? I ask former Democratic Congressman Joe Kennedy.

And is El Salvador sliding into autocracy? As Bukele’s presidential term limits are scrapped, I discuss what’s at stake with investigative journalist Carlos Dada. Then —

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): My leg was seriously injured. I couldn’t walk.

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GOLODRYGA: — saving private Andriy. How a Ukrainian soldier narrowly survived a Russian assault. Also, ahead —

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GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, “THE DEVIL REACHED TOWARD THE SKY”: We lie a lot closer to nuclear danger than most people I think realized.

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GOLODRYGA: — as we mark 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Historian Garrett Graff discusses his new book, the Devil Reached Toward the Sky about the making and unleashing of the atomic bomb.

Welcome to the program, everyone. I’m Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.

The battle is on in Texas where Republicans voted to issue civil arrest warrants for Democrats who fled the state to stop plans to redistrict the congressional map. The redrawn boundaries could allow the GOP to pick up five more seats in the 2026 midterms.

Texas Democrats involved say they’re running into the fight to stand up for our democracy. Here’s what Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin had to say about it.

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KEN MARTIN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIR: Donald Trump. Greg Abbott. Ken Paxton, they said they wanted a showdown. And guess what? That’s exactly what they’re getting, a showdown. This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfather, right, which would bring a pencil to a knife fight. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight. We’re going to fight fire with fire, and we’re going to do everything we can right now to stand up against this unconstitutional power grab by the Republicans.

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GOLODRYGA: So, how are Democrats planning to fight back and what will this mean for their midterm campaigns? Well, recent polling suggests a change of approach is needed, with the Wall Street Journal poll showing 63 percent of voters hold negative use of the party.

Former Democratic Congressman Joe Kennedy agrees, he says his party is failing to meet many voters where they’re at. With that in mind, he started Groundwork Project, a nonprofit aimed to rebuild Democratic values in four key red states. He’s also, of course, part of the Kennedy family and grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, and he joins the program from Boston.

Thank you so much, Joe Kennedy, for joining the program. Let’s start in Texas. President Trump today, this morning, saying that he is entitled to those five seats there. In the broader fight for fair elections and voting rights, how consequential is this moment now and what should Democrats be prepared to do to defend that?

FMR. REP. JOE KENNEDY III (D-MA): Well, look, first off, thanks for having me. And second, in a democracy, nobody’s entitled anything, right? That just — I think you misread president — misread the Constitution on that one. I don’t care how much you win a state by in a presidential election, it doesn’t entitle you that. The voices and the votes of any of the constituents across that — those communities.

So, look, the bottom line here that you’re alluding to and I think that we’ve seen, particularly over the course of now two times of a — two rounds of Trump administration are an effort by this president and his enablers to completely tear up the rule book to try to consolidate power and just a blatant power grab.

And while you might think that, hey, well that’s fine, they can do that in deep red Texas. That’s actually not what a democracy is all about. That’s not what our country’s supposed to be all about. Yes, politics does have elements of power to it. Of course, it does. But as you’re also seeing play out across this country, you do that in Texas, California can do the same thing. Illinois can do the same thing. And that —

GOLODRYGA: Should they?

KENNEDY III: — actually doesn’t make a confirmation. I mean, listen, I think the — part of the challenge — you heard Democratic Party chairman talk about is, you know, unilateral disarmament here doesn’t solve a problem. The challenge is that tit for tat doesn’t solve a problem either, right? What you actually need here is a president to — an administration to understand that when you win an election, you are a president of everybody. It doesn’t give you a right to cram your view down the throats of every single American despite the fact that you think you won.

Now, yes, that does mean that presidents can enact an agenda, and yes, it means it gives them the ability to try to build consensus through the legislative chambers in Congress to try to pass bills that they support. Fine. That’s a Democratic process. Trying to change the rules midyear to try to consolidate power because you know you are going to lose. And remember that, this is not — they’re not doing this out of a position of strength in Texas, they’re doing this here because they know they are going to lose a midterm election and they’re trying to hold on for power as long as they possibly can.

So, in their minds, it is worth breaking the rules because the worst thing they can possibly imagine is that Democrats should control the House of Representatives. It’s mind boggling that this is what had as a country.

GOLODRYGA: The president has been quite effective though throughout his political career to say, listen, everyone does it. There’s corruption everywhere. And he even used that example today in defending this decision by Texas in terms of going after these five seats. He said, and he used your state as an example, he said that he won over 40 percent, it was actually 36 percent of the state. And he said that there are no Republican districts. It is 9-0 for Democrats in terms of gerrymandered districts there. So, what do you respond to that argument with?

KENNEDY III: I would say that’s not a result of a gerrymandering in Massachusetts, although you might point out that gerrymandering, the first one came from Massachusetts.

GOLODRYGA: Came from Massachusetts, right.

KENNEDY III: It did. It is one of our famous exports. So, look, that might’ve been the case decades ago. The challenge at the moment is, if he can show me a map that is not gerrymandered to support Republican voices across the state, the fact that you won over — just over 30 percent of a vote across the state as big as Massachusetts, and you think that somehow entitles you once again to a congressional seat, and it’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.

That is very different than trying to chop up the City of Austin, Texas into so many little pieces here that the people of Austin are disenfranchised. This is not what democracy is supposed to be about. Now, that being said, the fact that the president says it, the fact that this president says it, I mean, you might be different. He says a lot of things, plenty of which are just not true and not rooted in reality.

So, the fact remains here that we can get into a tit for tat, Democrat, Republican, about which — how do you consolidate power and how do you protect your own, or you can actually engage in the community building process to make sure that our government reflects the will of people. The former is where we’re at the moment.

What we’re trying to do at Groundwork Project is actually put those people first and engage in a long-term community building support that doesn’t go knock on a door saying, hey, did you vote blue or did you vote red? But cares about your communities and your ability to actually project the future of that community because it’s your home and to try to build up from the ground up, right? That’s what I think we should be doing, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, that’s the point — that’s the community I think all of us would like to live in.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Let me get to the work that you’re doing at Groundwork Project in just a moment because I think it speaks to some of the polling data that we’re seeing now from the Wall Street Journal in terms of how Americans view the Democratic Party as a whole. It’s their lowest favorability in 35 years with only 8 percent of voters seeing the party, quote, “very favorably.” What’s behind this image crisis in your view?

KENNEDY III: Look, I think there’s unfortunately a lot behind it. And to an extent in politics, perception is reality. And so, you know, when I’m — I remember my own time in office and my first campaign, in one of my first events and my first campaign, I got some, which was, when the sky falls on you, I remember one thing, go knock on a door. And if you knock on a hundred doors in a day, people tell you to go off of their porch. People tell you stuff you don’t want to hear. People — you know, it’s not always pleasant.

But when you ask people what’s on their mind and what you can do to try to help, they will give you a direction. And what we’re hearing, the Democratic Party, is hearing — should be hearing very clearly from a broad swath of people across the country is they buy in what we’re selling. And not just on a policy standpoint, but the way in which that message is communicated to those communities across a broad swath of geography. They’re not buying that either.

So, what does that mean? It means you got to reset. It means you go back down to — again, when that sky falls on, start talking to people. Ask them the question of what you can do to try to make their lives better, and then do it. Don’t come with a white paper, come with a willingness to actually solve a problem as defined by a local community. And that’s the type of work, again, we’re trying to do at Groundwork, but it’s — this part ain’t rocket science. This is the base fundamental building blocks of what a democracy is supposed to be and what healthy communities are supposed to have. And that’s what we’re trying to invest in.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, The New York Times traced your travels down to the Mississippi Delta echoing your grandfather’s actually 1967 trip in your family’s legacy fighting poverty. What did you learn about the realities facing rural America, and what can Democrats learn from your travels and your conversations with people?

I was especially struck by some of the conversations that you’ve had along the way in the past few years with voters in Republican states that were willing to talk to you, like West Virginia, for example, about what they say Washington is tuning out.

KENNEDY III: Look I think far be it for me to give, you know, an entire Democratic Party advice on stuff anymore. They don’t necessarily, you know — but it is a perspective, and I think, particularly at this moment, when we see the challenges we are confronting as a country, going out and listening, asking a question, and listening to what our response that how people are perceiving your party, your policies, your platform is instructive.

And so, when you go to West Virginia and talk to an environmental organizer whose family came up through working in coal mines who says, how come a Democratic Party thinks we don’t know how to work? That should be a clarion call to say something we’re doing ain’t landing right. No one in the Democratic Party intends to send that message, but that’s what a young environmental organizer heard. So, if that’s what they’re hearing, geez, we need to change not just the message, the messengers, but you got to do a better job of understanding what we’re saying and how people are receiving it. And if you ask that question, people are willing to tell you, right? When you’re talking about, you know, food and nutrition in the Mississippi Delta, the fact that there’s food deserts, because the poverty is so too — many communities can’t afford to get a wholesaler to deliver fresh groceries because the community then can’t afford to buy them. That’s not just a question of saying, hey, you need to put a grocery store in, that’s a question of saying how do you uplift a community to be able to afford fresh fruits and vegetables? And by the way, the Mississippi Delta, which is one of the most — the richest agricultural areas we have in the nation, it’s just the crops end up getting exported elsewhere.

So, if you start by listening to folks and you start by asking them what it is that they want to see in their communities and what their perception is of how we are trying to help and what we can in fact do, at the moment, it’s a wide disparity between the two. But man, that’s really where you got to start and that’s what we’re trying to do.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. And yet, you represent a party that ha has long touted being a big tent party. And that’s really at a crossroads here now with a split, I would argue, between moderates and progressives. You lost your 2020 Senate bid seat, even with the Kennedy brand against a much older candidate, Ed Markey. And I say that not as an ageist, but there are many in your party that have saying it is somebody like you. There needs to be younger generation Democrats out there speaking to voters, connecting with voters, and yet, that didn’t work for you.

So, now, as we’re seeing the party still grapple with this issue, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way perhaps that you could either relay to them? You have an opportunity and a floor here to talk about the split in the party in terms of the direction that it’s headed in.

KENNEDY III: Look, I think politics at its most basic, it’s about meeting people where they are. And people can do that across a wide variety of ages. Obviously, there’s some folks that are very adept at doing so that are very young. There’s some folks that are very adept at doing so at, you know, more senior in life.

The age doesn’t have to be — there’s not, I don’t think there’s a disqualifying time period or age that necessarily means you shouldn’t be qualified for office. The question is, can you do the job? And I think my perspective on this is when you get to a point where, you know, the powers of incumbency essentially allow somebody to be able to continue in that position where they don’t — aren’t necessarily able to give it everything that they need, everything that your constituents deserve, then we got a problem.

But if you are able to deliver — continue to deliver to do so, then that’s fine. Then go out there and earn your position. And look, I had a different vision as to what this position should be going forward from Senator Markey. I fell short in that race. I support the — obviously respect the decision of Massachusetts voters and we move on. And I think, I would hope that people could view the results of that election by saying, you know, you give it a shot, even if you fall short, it doesn’t mean your life is over. There’s plenty of other ways that you can still find that are meaningful to contribute back to the progress of a nation. Yes, of course, being elected office is one, but there’s plenty of other ways to do so and there’s heroes out there doing it every single day that would love to have your support and enthusiasm as we try to do so.

GOLODRYGA: Let me ask you just on a more personal note to the family dynamics, which I think you’ve handled very gracefully and politically and diplomatically, I would note, with your uncle Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in an interview just early days into this administration, you made clear that while you love and support your uncle as a family member you questioned some of his policies and views.

Now that we’ve seen those policies and views come to fruition, even some that he vowed not to do and concerns about vaccine skepticism, are you more concerned about the direction that he’s taking HHS? What are — what is your take six — eight months in now for this administration?

KENNEDY III: Yes. I think I’ve got great concerns about the direction of this country under a Trump presidency and certainly underneath the leadership that we’ve seen coming from the White House through the HHS and plenty of other cabinet secretaries as well.

I — you know, family is family. We are a very public family. We’ve gone through, you know, triumphs as a family. We’ve had tragedies as a family. No one in my family, and I think Bobby as well, I can’t speak for him, but I think I can on this, nobody enjoys the family dynamics here. His kids are family. I wish them all well. I know Bobby believes deeply in what he’s doing. I’m sure he wouldn’t do it otherwise.

I have a hard time personally reconciling the values that I was brought up in and the work so many members of our family has done to try to, on the one hand, increase access to healthcare for millions and millions of people because it’s a basic right that we all are going to need and we all should have. And the idea that it’s somehow success to take it away from 15 million people, which is what a Trump administration has said — has now done.

You go to the Mississippi Delta in the poorest — part of the poorest state in this nation, which even Medicaid expansion was denied by their State House repeatedly, where people have some of the worst health outcomes in — you know, in America. And somehow, we think that taking healthcare away from those — the few that have it there on Medicaid that that’s a good thing. Went through one of the biggest welfare scandals in the nation in Mississippi because the governor and others were taking TANF funds, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and built a gym for Brett Favre’s daughter to play volleyball.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

KENNEDY III: And we’re now saying that, hey, the thing that we need to do to shape up welfare is to — in Medicaid is to clamp down on people that are going to get some letter and miss it in the mail and they’re going to lose their healthcare. This is insanity. And yet, this is the vision that we’re seeing come forward with this administration.

GOLODRYGA: OK. And it is notable that per that Wall Street Journal reporting, the only area where voters supported Democratic policies more than Republican was in the area of healthcare. There does seem to be a lot of alarm about some of the developments we’re seeing there. Joe Kennedy, thank you for joining us. Please come back. It was great to speak with you.

KENNEDY III: My pleasure. Thanks so much.

GOLODRYGA: Thank you. And stay with CNN. We’ll be right back after the break.

GOLODRYGA: Next to El Salvador where President Nayib Bukele calls himself the world’s coolest dictator, and it seems it’s more than just bravado. Last week, the legislative assembly scrapped presidential term limits and extended presidential terms to six years. Although President Bukele is widely popular for his crackdown on gangs and violent crime, his sweeping arrests and targeting of civil liberties have raised fears of human rights abuses and a rapidly rising autocracy.

In the U.S., President Bukele has — President Trump has embraced President Bukele, working together to deport immigrants to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador, often without any clear evidence of criminality.

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NAYIB BUKELE, EL SALVADORAN PRESIDENT: We know that you have a crime problem, a terrorism problem that you need help with, and we’re a small country, but if we can help, we can do it.

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GOLODRYGA: Well, journalists may also be among Bukele’s targets. Carlos Dada is the founder of the investigative newspaper El Faro, and he joins the program now. Carlos, welcome to the program. So, from people and viewers who are unfamiliar with El Salvador’s president, tell us a little bit more about Nayib Bukele and how he rose to power.

CARLOS DADA, EL SALVADORAN JOURNALIST AND FOUNDER, EL FARO: Hi, Bianna. And thanks for having me. President Bukele was a member of the leftist party, FMLN. Then he got into a fight with the party when he was major of San Salvador, and he decided to run as a third candidate without even a party. And people were so tired of the political establishment that they voted for this person without a political party. That happened in 2019.

Since then, it’s been a power grabbing exercise of Mr. Bukele with the applause of most of the population.

GOLODRYGA: And how has he managed to maintain such soaring approval ratings? We talked about in the introduction there the sharp drop in crime in the country. Now, El Salvador is claiming that its homicides rate are lower than that even in Canada. That is quite an accomplishment in a relatively short period of time. Is that really the basis for his popularity right now?

DADA: That is a big part, but that came after he got into power. I think that the main parts of these are, first, people absolutely tired of the other political parties, which showed a great capacity for corruption. And second, Nayib Bukele’s masterful management of social networks of the new language that youth people want to hear. Next to that is, of course, the reduction on homicides that first was due of an agreement that Mr. Bukele had with the gangs and then due to this repression wave that we’ve been living through for the last four years.

GOLODRYGA: Well, we should note that you are in exile now. You’ve been living in exile for three years. Tell us why you left El Salvador.

DADA: Part of Mr. Bukele’s strategy is to suppress any critical voices. It’s not only journalists, it’s not only El Faro, it’s human rights defenders, it’s environmental activists, it’s any critical voice is his political opposition. This is the first time, Bianna, since the end of our civil war that Amnesty International has declared Salvadorans — some Salvadorans prisoners of conscience.

We do have political prisoners. Torture is back to our prisons. We are entering our fourth year under a state of exception that dramatically limits our civil rights that allows any policeman or soldier to arrest any citizen without a judge’s arrest order. And you have now a country with the highest in incarceration rate in the world, even higher than the United States.

GOLODRYGA: We came to know President Bukele with that famous Oval Office visit and the controversy surrounding sending migrants to CECOT in El Salvador. You just touched on something a moment ago, the reporting that the Bukele government had worked in secret with some gangs. Can you talk more about what you uncovered in your reporting and is that ultimately one of the factors at least that led to your exile?

DADA: Yes. In 2020, when Mr. Bukele really declared his intentions not to stay in power — not only to stay in power indefinitely, but also to use the police and the army to support his political goals. Then he started to target us. We started publishing his deals with the gangs, but also his big corruption scandals.

What we documented, gang leaders entering and leaving the prisons. We documented how Mr. Bukele had freed the most dangerous leaders of MS-13, that, by the way, were wanted for extradition, required for extradition by the United States, and Mr. Bukelesimply freed them in secret. We documented all this.

They are now in New York. They were recaptured in Mexico as free persons there, undocumented, but free. They’re now in New York. And apparently, the deal that Mr. Bukele caught with President Trump, part of the deal was to send some of these gang leaders back to El Salvador so they can’t testify in a New York court the details of their — the agreement they had with Mr. Bukele.

GOLODRYGA: What do you make of the timing then of lawmakers choosing last week to abolish presidential term limits and the fact that it was met with — you know, without the outrage that many would’ve expected in a Democratic country, a number of voters either shrugged their shoulders or said that they were fine with that because if it was a tradeoff between being able to walk the streets at night and not have their stores robbed, this wasn’t a top priority for them?

DADA: But there were — you touch a very interesting point. There were no protests, but there were also not any big celebrations. These constitutional reforms were passed without any discussion, not only without any public discussion, but without any congressional discussion. It is a blatant violation of our constitution. Just one more, Mr. Bukele is in power unconstitutionally already, but he controls all the institutions of the state, which means, Bianna, that when there is — I mean, constitutions are basically there to put limits to power.

If a person like President Bukele is able to violate seven constitutional articles and now even more, it’s mounting — the amount is just adding up, and he suffers no consequences for it. Institutional consequences, that technically is a dictatorship.

GOLODRYGA: And we talk about the steep drop in crime in the country, that’s no small feat for sure, but we’ve also seen a slowing economy. And some political analysts have been viewing that as perhaps, going back to my question about timing, why they would make this change right now. Because in theory, with this change, he could be in office, I believe, for a total of 14 years. What is the state of the economy there right now? I know growth last year slipped one full percentage point.

DADA: It it’s a very good point, but more than that, he just — the new legislation approved on Friday shortens this presidential term. So, the next presidential term will start together with the congressional terms. This is only speculation, but the only explanation I can find for this timing is that he is fearing that his Congress domination may be in peril. And so, he wants also to campaign for Congress.

GOLODRYGA: He also as —

DADA: But it’s true what you said, the economy is receding. We have big economic problems that are being macerated because there is very few alternative versions of the official narrative in El Salvador, Bianna. People are afraid to speak up.

GOLODRYGA: What would happen to you if you came home now?

DADA: Well, that — you should have to ask them. But I can tell you something, during the last two months, more than a hundred human rights defenders and journalists have had to leave the country, including most of the members of my organization, El Faro, because we received confirmation that there were seven arrest orders awaiting to be put in place by the authorities.

And then, when most of them left the country, some of them thought it was time to come back. And we received credible information, confirmed information that there was a police operation waiting for them at the airport and they were going to be — according to the information we received, the authorities were planning to put drugs into the baggages and accuse them of drug trafficking. So, no one could say that the Bukele regime was going against freedom of the press.

So, this is the case with a lot of — not only journals, but human rights defenders. As you know, prominent human rights defenders have already been imprisoned and their world — there’s world campaigns to freedom. Among them, Ruth Eleonora Lopez and then Rica Nayes (ph) human rights lawyers.

GOLODRYGA: Right. But at the same time, looking at how he’s been propelled, how the country has been propelled to the global stage with an audience, with the president of the United States, who has described him as fantastic clearly seems to have emboldened him. And at least with this administration, the United States, turning a shoulder, perhaps looking the other way at some of the backsliding of democracy, as you’re noting, in the country going on right now.

Carlos Doda, thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it.

DADA: Thank you very much, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Well, we turn now to Russia’s grinding summer offensive in Ukraine. President Trump’s deadline for Moscow to make a peace deal expires in just three days’ time, but there’s no sign of Putin relenting on the front lines. Ukrainians too are refusing to give up. Nick Paton Walsh brings us this story of one injured Ukrainian soldier who defied the odds under threat of drones and landmines.

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NICK PATON WALSH, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR (voice-over): This Russian assault, brutal, even throwing land mines into the bunkers, had left all three of his fellow soldiers’ dead in the trench next to him.

And Andriy, with his leg wounded, unable to run, thought like so many Ukrainian soldiers in tiny isolated positions pinned down by Russian drones that he was done.

ANDRIY, RUBIZ BRIDGADE (through translator): I didn’t think I would get out of there because I couldn’t move. My leg was seriously injured. I couldn’t walk.

WALSH (voice-over): But back at his command bunker watching on drones, they had an idea. Maybe Andriy had the strength to cycle out. So, they attached an electric bicycle to a drone like this, moving it slowly, perilously in pieces to the front. It was dropped to Andriy whole, and then remarkably, he cycled out.

ANDRIY (through translator): I thought, do or die. Either I make it or I don’t. I was just riding in one direction. Whatever happens, happens. If I make it, good. If I don’t, so be it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Come on, “Tankist.” Speed up, speed up. As fast as you can. As fast as you can.

WALSH (voice-over): The Ukrainians who try to ensure the skies were free of Russian drones, but that wasn’t enough. Andriy hit a landmine. The drone operator’s heart sank, had it all come to nothing. But then this tiny figure emerged limping out of the smoke, somehow alive, walking on his bandaged leg visible.

ANDRIY (through translator): It grazed my forehead a bit. The wheel and fork were torn apart, but I was fine. I just fell on my side. That’s all.

WALSH (voice-over): Greeted by a Ukrainian and helped into another bunker where he had to wait two more days for rescue. Necessity is the mother of invention in Ukraine, but nothing can beat luck.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Kyiv, Ukraine.

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GOLODRYGA: Our thanks to Nick Paton Walsh for that report. We’ll be right back after the short break.

GOLODRYGA: Well, this week marks 80 years since U.S. atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, devastating two of Japan’s major cities and killing an estimated 200,000 people. While this brought an end to the Second World War, the tragic legacy of the bombings still lingers today.

Now, historian Garrett Graff takes us back to that pivotal moment in his new book, “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky.” It gathers hundreds of accounts of those involved in the bombings from the crews of the B-29 bombers to the decision makers. He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the scientific, political, deeply personal impact of how the bombs came to be.

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Bianna. And Garrett Graff, welcome to the show.

GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, “THE DEVIL REACHED TOWARD THE SKY”: Thanks for having me, Walter.

ISAACSON: This is your third oral history book. You did one on D-Day, you did one on 9/11. Why the format of an oral history, especially when you’re not really interviewing most of the people, it’s gathering their interviews from the past.

GRAFF: Exactly. This book is coming, of course, at the 80th anniversary this month of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and the end of World War II. And I think this 80th anniversary feels so poignant to a lot of people because it marks the unofficial passing of the last of that greatest generation.

And so, for me, what I wanted to do with this project and with my D-Day book last year was this is a moment when we have effectively every first-person memory of World War II that we’re ever going to have. And so, as these events slip from living memory into history I wanted to try to take readers back to these apocal events in the shoes of the people who lived them firsthand.

I love narrative history, but there’s often a sense in narrative history that events are sort of neater, cleaner, and more preordained than they actually felt to any of the participants at the time. So, I think there’s a unique power in oral history of sort of going back in the words of the people who lived them to a moment when the outcome of these events was uncertain to them.

So, you know, you’re going back and sort of hearing from the physicists at moments when like they didn’t know whether Adolf Hitler would get the bomb first. They didn’t know that the U.S. would — and the allies would even win World War II. They didn’t know whether the atom bomb would work at all.

ISAACSON: What did you discover that was slightly different by doing it based on them talking at the time?

GRAFF: Yes. I think one of the things that you really come through when you look at the sort of diversity of voices in a project like this is I think we oversimplify the story of the Manhattan Project so often to J. Robert Oppenheimer and his band of merry physicists on a mesa in Los Alamos.

And what you really see in this full scope and scale of the Manhattan Project is how much of this was about America’s industrial might, the secret cities that we built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington where we refined uranium and plutonium, you know, in factories and facilities and cities that had been carved out of, you know, orchards and, you know, mountain valleys that by the end of the war housed and employed a hundred thousand people a piece.

You know, the bus system in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in August, 1945 when the atomic bomb was dropped was one of the 10 largest public transit systems in the United States. And no one knew it existed at all, and the city didn’t appear on any public map anywhere in the United States.

ISAACSON: You know, just hearing that and reading it in your book it makes me think, could we ever do that anymore? I mean, we can’t build a rail system in California after 20 years.

GRAFF: Yes. And I think that there is a lot to be said about the — you know, what this era meant in terms of sort of news consumption and, you know, the ability of these mountain communities and desert communities in Eastern Washington to keep secrets back then that could never hold in the age of the internet.

But I do think that there is — you know, there’s some very important modern relevances of looking back at this project today. First, the Manhattan Project rewrites the way that government thinks about science and technology as a core national strength. You know, there’s this deep irony in the first couple of years of the book where you have this group of mostly Jewish refugee scientists fleeing Europe, showing up on the shores of the United States in the late 1930s and sort of pleading with the U.S. government to launch an atomic bomb effort and the military wanting nothing to do with it.

And they sort of say, you know, basically like, science has no place in the military. You know, the military is all about, you know, war fighting and logistics and morale and, you know, we don’t need a weapon like this. And then of course, the military gets pretty excited about the atomic bomb a few months later after Pearl Harbor.

ISAACSON: A lot of the people who changes that, and you got him in the book as Vannevar Bush, who compared this to building the pyramids. And he’s the one who puts together that government private academic consortium that does so much. Tell me about his role.

GRAFF: Yes, this is, of course, where America’s sort of begins to knit together government and science and technology. And you know, there’s a quote in the introduction of the book where, you know, the story that we tell of World War II is about where the battles are fought. You know, Baston, D-Day, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa. But —

ISAACSON: Yes. Omaha Beach.

GRAFF: Exactly. But where the war is really won is in laboratories at MIT where radar and the proximity fuse are developed. It’s one in the laboratories at Los Alamos and in the, you know, code breaking rooms of Bletchley Park in the U.K. with the German enigma. And that, you know, as much as we think of World War II as a story of the servicemen in Europe and the Pacific, it really is a war that is as much a story of scientists and mathematicians.

ISAACSON: But it’s not just a scientist in your book, what really struck me was like the Ford Motor Plant and Willow Run, and our ability, which I feel we’ve lost a little bit now, to do manufacturing at scale quickly.

GRAFF: Yes. And that’s really where the, you know, magic of the Manhattan Project comes in. I mean, it’s — the — there’s a reason that the Manhattan Project today remains, you know, a code word for daring and audacity. And part of that is in these early months you have physicists at the University of Chicago beginning to map out on pieces of paper. I mean, remember, this is an era, they’re all working with slide rulers, you know, there are not computers that are aiding this engineering for most of the war.

And with their slide rulers and butcher paper, they are starting to map out how to build and refine plutonium in orders of kilograms at a time when plutonium has never actually been even seen by the naked human eye. And it literally exists in the United States only in microscopic amounts.

ISAACSON: You talk about those people who convinced the military and for that matter, President Roosevelt to do the bomb. A lot of them are Jewish refugees. Tell me about the role of refugees and whether that has some relevance today too when we’re not allowing in as many foreign scientists.

GRAFF: Yes. Again, I think, unfortunately, this — too many places feels like a history book that should be filed under current events in the bookstore. Because, again, this atomic bomb project would have never gotten off the ground without the leadership and the imagination of the Jewish refugee scientists who flee fascist Europe, come to the United States in the 1930s and ’40s.

And in that sense, one of the things that really stands out for me in the book is when we talk about the atomic bomb and the 80th anniversary this month, we immediately leap to thinking about Japan and Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the war in the Pacific. But the atomic bomb is entirely rooted in fascist Europe and the rise of Hitler’s third Reich, and it is, in fact, the motivating factor for these scientists is they know the German scientists left behind, like Werner Heisenberg, who they fear are at work themselves on an atomic bomb.

And so, their motivation day in and day out for most of the three years of the Manhattan Project is to build the atomic bomb before Hitler does.

ISAACSON: When you talk about people not really knowing all the steps in the process that they were contributing to, that goes all the way up to Harry Truman, who I don’t think knew about the making of the bomb until Franklin Roosevelt dies and Truman suddenly becomes president. Tell me how that secrecy worked.

GRAFF: Yes. And this is, to me, one of the most amazing scenes in the book is Franklin Roosevelt dies in spring 1945. Harry Truman is sworn in. And Secretary of War Henry Stimson sort of stays after the first cabinet meeting with Truman and pulls Truman aside and says, there’s really something I should come talk to you about. And then, sort of shows up with this briefing, you know, where he brings Harry Truman into the fold for the first time about the existence of the Manhattan Project the idea of an atomic bomb and the fact that, at that point, they are mere weeks away from having the first working nuclear device in the world.

ISAACSON: And there’s a decision made to drop the bomb, but it’s not actually a clear decision. It’s not like they have a very formal process and Truman makes a decision, it seems almost as if just instinctual that he does it. How is that decision made and did he have any regrets?

GRAFF: Yes. I spent a lot of time in the book talking about what you might call the permission structure for the atomic bomb in the spring and summer of 1945. Because, you know, we look back on that event as so singularly transformative. You know, the only time we ever used these weapons in combat in human history.

But at the time, we were involved in this incredibly brutal and deadly war with Japan. In that spring of 1945, Curtis LeMay is leading bombing missions against Japan, firebombing Tokyo in operation meeting house that spring that kills a hundred thousand Japanese in a single night, the deadliest night of conflict in human history. And then goes on to bomb a total of 66 Japanese cities. It — you know, single mission raids that are, you know, destroying 30, 40, 50, 60, even 70 percent of these cities in single nights.

ISAACSON: So, in retrospect, were we right to drop the first bomb in Hiroshima?

GRAFF: It’s a really complicated question. I don’t think we will ever satisfy it one way or another. You know, I think all of the following are true. The dropping of the bomb certainly saves American lives. It probably saves Japanese lives. I mean, again, one of the things people lose sight of is Japan is in the midst of a naval blockade with widespread famine, and there are 200,000 Japanese civilians dying every month of starvation by the summer and fall of 1945.

And at the same time, I think it is hard to look back and think that these are weapons we could ever use again. I mean, I think that there is —

ISAACSON: But we used them again in Nagasaki a few days later. Was that justified?

GRAFF: Yes. I mean, in future conflicts that — I think it is right that sort of the central defining organizing principle of geopolitics after the war becomes never using these weapons again.

ISAACSON: Are you worried about that?

GRAFF: I’m very worried about it at this moment and I think part of the — this moment in geopolitics is we lie a lot closer to nuclear danger than most people I think realize. We’ve already seen this year, you know, conflict between India and Pakistan, which are the two largest nuclear arsenals to ever come into open conflict. We’ve, of course seen the U.S. and Israeli raids over Iran’s nuclear problem. And we have seen, you know, spreading conversations about nuclear proliferation in Europe and Asia as the U.S. appears to pull back from some of its geopolitical alliances.

ISAACSON: You went through hundreds of accounts of the Japanese survivors of the bomb. Tell me what you learned from that and what that was about.

GRAFF: Yes. The final chapters of this book, you know, I go back and forth between the triumph of the American, you know, Manhattan Project workers and the bomber crews that delivered these bombs and then the tragedy on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The accounts from those cities are as searing as any memories I have ever come across in my historical research.

And I think, again, one of the things I really wanted to do with this project is over the next few years we will see the passing of the last survivors of those bombs, and it’s important to me to carry their stories forward as a reminder about why these weapons are not like any other weapon in the human arsenal, and why we need to do everything that we can in our time to carry forward their dream, that they are the last survivors of a nuclear weapon.

ISAACSON: Garret Graff, thank you so much for joining us.

GRAFF: Walter, always a pleasure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA: Now, back in 2020, on the 75th anniversary of the bombings, Christiane spoke to one of the few remaining Hiroshima survivors, Setsuko Thurlow, after experiencing firsthand the devastating effects of nuclear war. She has dedicated the rest of her life campaigning for disarmament, efforts that led to her accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons.

Here she takes us back to August of 1945 and shares the agonizing memories which still haunt but motivate her today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: You were just a 13- year-old girl when that bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. What were you doing at the time and what do you remember?

SETSUKO THURLOW, HIROSHIMA ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVOR: I remember everything vividly. What was I doing? I was a 13-year grade eight student in junior high school, and Japan was losing badly. They had to recruit us, the young children to do the work for the army. We were in the huge wooden building on the second floor one mile away from the ground zero.

And then, at 8:00 we started the morning assembly. And when the Major (INAUDIBLE) would speaking to us, giving us the chair pep talk. Then suddenly, I saw the bluish white flash, and I still have the sensation of floating up in the air. And when I regained the consciousness, I found myself in the total darkness and total silence. And I tried to move my body, but I couldn’t. So, I knew I was facing death.

Then I started hearing faint voices of my girlfriends around. And they were asking for help from their mothers, from their God. And then, somebody, a strong male voice said that, don’t give up. Don’t give up. Keep pushing, keep kicking. I’m trying to free you. So, with this man in the dark, I was rescued. I was come — I was able to come out of the building. But most of the 30 girls were burned to death alive.

AMANPOUR: You have used your memory and that experience to spend a whole lifetime of activism against nuclear proliferation and warning about the dangers that only really you and your fellow survivors can talk about, the danger of nuclear war. Where — what do you think now about the state of security in that regard around the world?

THURLOW: We have been kept as hostage for all these years. We — each one of us human being deserves better than this. I feel very disturbed. And as Mr. Obama said before he left the workout, I think, United States is the only nation which has actually used it. So, therefore, United States has special moral responsibility to lead the work toward nuclear discernment. Yes, I think that’s the word — no for the word without nuclear weapon, that was his favorite expression. That was good.

So, I am begging American people, we just cannot continue to live in this condition. And I have the image of massive grotesque death. This stays with me. And as Christiane said, yes, those images have been guiding me and not to give up my struggle because I believe in the decent life and human rights of each and every individual on this planet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA: Such a powerful conversation. And be sure to tune in tomorrow for Christiane’s conversation with legendary film director James Cameron and former energy secretary Ernest Moniz, about 80 years of nuclear threat and why Cameron feels compelled to tell the story of Hiroshima on screen.

That conversation on the show tomorrow night.

And finally —

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Breaking news. Breaking news. Breaking news. Let’s go.

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GOLODRYGA: This is Paris’ last newspaper hawker inaction, selling dailies in the French Capitol for over five decades. At 73 years old, Ali Akbar is known as a local institution, and now he’s set to receive one of France’s most prestigious honors from President Macron for his distinguished service, serving papers for so many years. Amazing.

Well, that is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thanks so much for watching, and goodbye from New York.

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