Chuck Robbins, had been critical of a number of Trump initiatives: Berkeley Lovelace Jr., “Cisco’s Chuck Robbins: CEOs on Trump Panels Followed Their Conscience and Now It’s Time to Move On,” CNBC, August 17, 2017.
But when the president did not forget, he grew increasingly angry with Tillerson for slow-rolling him: David E. Sanger, “Trump Seeks Way to Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal,” New York Times, July 27, 2017.
When Trump suggested something crazy, Mattis would compliment the president on his strong instincts: This strategy is attributed to Mattis in Peter Nicholas and Rebecca Ballhaus, “Talking to Trump: A How-To Guide,” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2018.
The White House would often simply refuse to confirm whether the president was playing golf: “Officials often don’t release details about whether Trump is golfing, and with whom, and reporters have a tough time confirming what he’s doing.” Amanda Terkel, “White House Says Secret Rounds of Golf Make Donald Trump a Better President,” Huffington Post, January 2, 2018.
In one case, a white panel truck just happened to appear: Elizabeth Preza, “‘We Can See You, Mister!’: CNN’s Keilar Mocks Truck Driver Who Obscured His Face While Blocking Trump Golfing,” Raw Story, December 27, 2017. The Secret Service and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office both denied placing the truck. See Brett Samuels, “Secret Service Denies Hiding Trump’s Golfing from Media,” The Hill, December 27, 2017.
was parked in a spot reserved for the Palm Beach County sheriff: “CNN Learns Whose Truck Blocked View of Trump,” Anderson Cooper 360, December 30, 2017.
This is what the historian Roberta Wohlstetter called the “background of expectation”: Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962).
Both the Roberts Commission . . . and the 9/11 Commission observed: See Report of the Commission Appointed by the President of the United States to Investigate and Report the Facts Relating to the Attack Made by Japanese Armed Forces upon Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii on December 7, 1941, Senate Document 77-2, 1942; Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2004).
Former president Trump was emphatic that the commission note his score: This quote is adapted from a remark Trump reportedly made in 2007 to reporter David Owen, who wrote: “He was upset that I hadn’t written that he’d shot 71—a very good golf score, one stroke under par. He wanted the number, and the fact that I hadn’t published the number proved that I was just like all the other biased reporters, who, because we’re all part of the anti-Trump media conspiracy, never give him as much credit as he deserves.” Owen, “Lessons from Playing Golf with Trump,” New Yorker, January 14, 2007.
6. A False Dawn Breaks
Kenichi Murakami was the chief of the Tokyo Fire Department: Kenichi Murakami is, in fact, the name of the chief of the Tokyo Fire Department, although the character depicted here is completely fictional.
The traditional ladder-wielding fireman depicted in Kabuki theater or in a woodblock print: The description of Edo firefighters is drawn from William W. Kelly, “Incendiary Actions: Fires and Firefighting in the Shogun’s Capital and the People’s City,” in Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, eds. James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Kaoru Ugawa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
The Olympic Security Command Center (OSCC) was now largely functional and outside of central Tokyo: Tokyo’s Olympic Security Command Center is described in Eva Kassens-Noor and Tatsuya Fukushige, “Tokyo 2020 and Beyond: The Urban Technology Metropolis,” Journal of Urban Technology, published online July 1, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2016.1157949.
Oh Soo-hyun shared a name with a doctor in a Korean soap opera: There really is a South Korean television drama with a doctor named Oh Soo Hyun. The Dr. Oh depicted here, however, is a fictional homage to the real Dr. Terafumi Sasaki, who was profiled in John Hersey’s Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946).
With more than 72,000 hospital beds: The statistics in this section are drawn from Oh Youngho, “Optimal Supply and the Efficient Use of Hospital Bed Resources in Korea,” Working Paper 2015-21, Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs, 2015.
7. Fumble
After reassessing the status of North Korea’s nuclear development: The 2017 reassessment of the size of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is detailed in two news reports from August of that year. “The analysis, completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency, comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.” Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima, and Anna Fifield, “North Korea Now Making Missile-Ready Nuclear Weapons, US Analysts Say,” Washington Post, August 8, 2017.
The low end remained at thirty: “Some US assessments conclude North Korea has produced or can make around 30 to 60 nuclear weapons, said two US officials who weren’t authorized to discuss sensitive intelligence matters and demanded anonymity.” “Estimates of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Are Difficult to Nail Down,” Associated Press, August 18, 2017.
North Korea could be adding as many as twelve nuclear weapons a year to its arsenal: “Sources have told The Diplomat that the DIA assesses North Korea, given its current uranium enrichment activities, is likely capable of generating an additional 12 weapons worth of fissile material a year. The DIA assessment of 60 weapons assumes the use of composite pit core designs for nuclear bombs by North Korea; composite pits combine plutonium-239 and uranium highly enriched in uranium-235, the two fissile material isotopes suitable for nuclear bombs, to more efficiently design bombs.” Ankit Panda, “US Intelligence: North Korea May Already Be Annually Accruing Enough Fissile Material for 12 Nuclear Weapons,” Diplomat, August 9, 2017.
The estimate that increased the number of North Korean nuclear weapons . . . had even been leaked to the Washington Post in the summer of 2017: Warrick, Nakashima, and Fifield, “North Korea Now Making Missile-Ready Nuclear Weapons.”
“It was built of four and a half feet of steel and concrete”: Donald Trump, as quoted in Tom Junod, “Trump,” Esquire, January 29, 2007.
“Kim’s missiles keep crashing”: Jeremy Scahill, Alex Emmons, and Ryan Grim, “Read the Full Transcript of Trump’s Call with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte,” Intercept, May 23, 2017.
Mike Pompeo . . . had figured out . . . how to carefully move the goalposts by referring to North Korea’s ability to build a reliable ICBM: See, for example, Pompeo’s remarks at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies 2017 National Security Summit, held on October 19, 2017.
“We have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97 percent of the time”: Glenn Kessler, “Trump’s Claim That a US Interceptor Can Knock out ICBMs ‘97 Percent of the Time,’” Washington Post, October 13, 2017.
The current plan, OPLAN 5015, was a preemptive attack: Park Byong-su, “S. Korean and US Militaries Draw up a New Operation Plan,” Hankyoreh, August 28, 2015.
“The nuclear weapon’s only good against cities”: Interview with General Charles Horner, commander of the US Ninth Air Force, conducted by Frontline/BBC, c. 1995.
“No one advanced the notion of using nuclear weapons”: George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed: The Collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Unification of Germany, Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 463.
When Mattis was out of government, he worked closely at Stanford with George Shultz: Paul Sonne, “How Mattis Changed His Mind on Nuclear Weapons,” Washington Post, February 5, 2018.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon”: Aaron Mehta, “Mattis: No Such Thing as a ‘Tactical’ Nuclear Weapon, but New Cruise Missile Neede
d,” Defense News, February 6, 2018.
8. A World without North Korea
Kim Jong Un . . . knocked it down: Curtis Melvin, “Kim Il Sung’s Hyangsan Palace Demolished: Building Kim Il Sung Reported to Have Died in Razed, Replaced with Young Trees,” NK News, April 24, 2014.
In 2019, Kim ordered the construction of a magnificent new palace: The construction of the palace is a fiction, but the construction of the airstrip is real. James Pearson, “The Flying Marshal: North Korea Builds Private Runways for Plane-Loving Kim,” Reuters, August 19, 2015.
Admiral Philip Davidson was the commander of US Pacific Command: The depiction of Davidson is based on Gordon Lubold and Nancy A. Youssef, “Likely US Pacific Commander Has Spent Little Time in Asia,” Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2018.
popular with the press and fawning politicians for his blunt remarks: Jane Perlez, “A US Admiral’s Bluntness Rattles China, and Washington,” New York Times, May 6, 2016.
The Chinese government in particular reportedly had sought Harris’s removal: “China Urged US to Fire Pacific Command Chief Harris in Return for Pressure on North Korea,” Kyodo, May 6, 2017.
Although some found Harris undiplomatic, Trump did not: Gerry Mullany and Jacqueline Williams, “Trump’s Pick for US Ambassador to Australia Heads to Seoul Instead,” New York Times, April 24, 2018.
In one case, the phrase caused a minor panic: Dan Lamothe, “‘Fight Tonight’? Explaining Trump’s Retweet That Says US Bombers Are Ready to Strike North Korea,” Washington Post, August 11, 2017.
It turned out that Iraqi units, facing heavy bombardment, had simply deserted their equipment: Perry D. Jamieson, Lucrative Targets: The US Air Force in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations (Washington, DC: US Air Force, Air Force History and Museums Program, 2001), 90–91.
“reduce the US mainland into ashes and darkness”: “KAPPC Spokesman on DPRK Stand toward UNSC ‘Sanctions Resolution,’” KCNA, September 13, 2017.
The phrase came up again and again in interrogations: The quotation and a story about its meaning told by a North Korean defector named Kim Hyun Sik appear in “The Secret History of Kim Jong Il,” Foreign Policy, October 6, 2009.
the United States could not confirm that even a single one of Sad-dam’s Scuds had been destroyed: According to an official postwar assessment, “there is no indisputable proof that Scud mobile launchers—as opposed to high-fidelity decoys, trucks, or other objects with Scud-like signatures—were destroyed by fixed-wing aircraft.” Thomas A. Kearney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey: Summary Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1993), 89–90.
“In the end . . . the best one can say is that some mobile launchers may have been destroyed”: This sentence is from an official post–1991 Gulf War assessment cited earlier also asks: “How effective were such efforts? It is hard to say in a tactical sense; the evidence of how many mobile Scuds and their launchers Coalition air attacks destroyed or damaged remains spotty. It does appear that a number of tanker trucks on the way to Jordan or Basra paid a severe price for having infrared signatures resembling mobile launchers; some Bedouins also may have paid a similar price for having elongated, heated tents in the desert blackness that looked like canvas-draped Scuds. In the end, the best one can say is that some mobile launchers may have been destroyed. Although Iraqi launch rates of modified Scuds—particularly of coordinated salvos—dropped over the course of the campaign, and while mobile Scud operations were subjected to increasing pressures and disruption, most (and possibly all) of the roughly 100 mobile launchers reported destroyed by Coalition aircraft and special operation forces now appear to have been either decoys, other vehicles[, or] objects unfortunate enough to provide Scud-like signatures” (emphasis added). Thomas A. Kearney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey: Operations Effects and Effectiveness, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1993), 189.
“Those guys were like cockroaches”: Tom McIntyre, as quoted in William L. Smallwood, Strike Eagle: Flying the F-15E in the Gulf War (Sterling, VA: Brassey’s, 1997), 138.
“It’s a huge flame and your first reaction is that it’s a SAM”: McIntyre, as quoted in Smallwood, Strike Eagle, 138.
9. Wheels Up
For the invasion of Iraq, the Navy moved more than 56 million square feet of cargo: The statistics and comparison are to be found in D. L. Brewer III, “Operation Iraqi Freedom—Clearing the Hurdles,” SEALIFT, June 2004.
North Korea was targeting Texas because of its excellent business climate: Katie Glueck, “Perry on Why N. Korea Targets Texas,” Politico, April 3, 2013.
We did tests, the foundation is anchored into the coral reef: Donald Trump, as quoted in Tom Junod, “Trump,” Esquire, January 29, 2007.
“There’s no big red button to put that [interceptor] in play”: Colonel Kevin Kick, as quoted in “Inside the Gates: Alaska’s 49th Missile Battalion,” KTVA, January 18, 2018.
The panel proposed replacing the system in Alaska entirely, calling the defense it offered “fragile”: “The ground-based interceptors (GBIs), as part of the GMD system deployed at Fort Greely, Alaska (FGA), and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California (VAFB), evolved to their current configuration through a series of decisions and constraints. They provide an early, but fragile, US homeland defense capability in response primarily to a potential North Korean threat.” Committee on an Assessment of Concepts and Systems for US Boost-Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives, Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense: An Assessment of Concepts and Systems for US Boost-Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2012), 130–131.
mocking the “hobby shop” approach of the people who built it: “MDA’s [Missile Defense Agency] efforts have spawned an almost ‘hobby shop’ approach, with many false starts on poorly analyzed concepts. For example, analysis of successful programs with missiles of comparable complexity—that is, with the comparison costs at a similar point of development maturity and at 2010 dollars—suggests that the current GMD interceptors are approximately 30 to 50 percent more expensive than they should be at this point in the program.” Committee on an Assessment of Concepts and Systems, Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense, 11.
In nearly twenty years of testing, the system had worked only nine out of eighteen times: Sydney Freedberg, “GMD Missile Defense Hits ICBM Target, Finally,” Breaking Defense, May 30, 2017.
“It’s stupid”: David Willman, “Trump Administration Moves to Boost Homeland Missile Defense System Despite Multiple Flaws,” Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2017.
But tests were expensive, costing nearly $300 million each: George Lewis, “How Much Do GMD Tests Cost?” Mostly Missile Defense, December 28, 2012.
One document plainly admitted that the “deterrence value” of the system was “decreased by unsuccessful flights”: US Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency, Final Report of the Missile Defense Agency’s Independent Review Team (IRT), 2005.
“It assumes that the failure modes of the interceptors are independent of one another”: James Acton, as quoted in Kessler, “Trump’s Claim That a US Interceptor Can Knock out ICBMs ‘97 Percent of the Time.’”
“If there’s a foreign object in one unit, it’s sort of whistling past the graveyard”: David Willman, “There’s a Flaw in the Homeland Missile Defense System. The Pentagon Sees No Need to Fix It,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2017.
“give us a limited capability to deal with a relatively small number of incoming ballistic missiles”: The quote is from actual secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld during a December 17, 2002, briefing at the Department of Defense.
“The method used by the Army to assess warhead kills”: This quote is a passage from actual testimony by Steven Hildreth, a researcher at the Congressional Research Service, who independently reviewed the data provided by the Army on the performance of the Patriot missile defense system in the 1991 Gulf War. Congressional Resear
ch Service, “Evaluation of US Army Assessment of Patriot Antitactical Missile Effectiveness in the War against Iraq,” testimony prepared for the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security, April 7, 1992.
“normally a protocol no-no”: Andrew Card, speaking about September 11, 2001, as quoted in Garrett M. Graff, “‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky,’” Politico, September 9, 2016. Many of the following quotations about Air Force One, as cited, are in fact real recollections of real people from September 11, 2001. Notable as source material in this regard is Graff’s excellent oral history of the day, as published by Politico, as well as an account by Mark Tillman, the pilot of Air Force One that day, that appeared in Dennis Wagner, “On 9/11, Air Force One Pilot’s Only Concern Was President Bush’s Safety,” Arizona Republic, September 11, 2011.
“My boss . . . called and told me to depart as soon as the president got on board”: Tillman, as told to Wagner, “On 9/11, Air Force One Pilot’s Only Concern Was President Bush’s Safety.”
“They were drooling all [over] the luggage”: Sonya Ross, speaking about September 11, 2001, as quoted in Graff, “‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.’”
“It was a full-thrust departure . . . up like a rocket”: Tillman, as quoted in Wagner, “On 9/11, Air Force One Pilot’s Only Concern Was President Bush’s Safety.”
“We were climbing so high and so fast”: Ellen Eckert, speaking about September 11, 2001, as quoted in Graff, “‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.’”
10. Black Rain
Their voices can convey what our words cannot: The survivor stories are, in fact, accounts from the Hibukasha-Japanese people who survived the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The translations have been lightly edited in this text. The testimonies presented in this chapter are largely drawn from interviews presented in the television program Hiroshima Witness, produced by the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center and NHK, Japan’s national public broadcaster. These interviews were translated into English by the college students Yumi Kodama, Junko Kato, Junko Kawamoto, Masako Kubota, Chiharu Kimura, and Kumi Komatsu, who were advised by Laurence Wiig, and they are now posted at the Atomic Archive. Condensed versions are also available on the website of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/.
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