Name: How the US Tricked Japan Into Thinking It Had a Hundred Nuclear Bombs When It Had Only 2
Uploaded: 2026-08-13T03:31:15.000Z
Description: In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with James Scott, Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian of the Pacific War, and author of “Empire of Ashes,” to examine the final months of World War II, the pressures facing new President Harry Truman, Emperor Hirohito’s role in Japan’s surrender, and what that decision means 81 years later.

Steve is an investigative reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Steve Ispas

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“Bay Area Innovators” tackles the compelling, life-changing, fearless, and compassionate stories from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, providing a platform for discussion and discovery. We bring to our program the legends, the innovators, and the hardworking people who are shaping the future of the Bay Area in a positive way by finding solutions and improving people’s lives.

Steve Ispas is an investigative journalist with The Epoch Times and the host of Epoch TV’s “Bay Area Innovators” program. Steve grew up in Eastern Europe, and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 35 years. He worked in the tech industry for 15 years at LSI Logic and Rambus, and has been with The Epoch Times in various positions since 2003. His recent coverage includes an in-depth exclusive investigation of the secret Chinese biolab discovered in Reedley, Calif., in 2022.

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Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the atomic bomb decision that ended World War II remain among the most debated choices in modern history. Was dropping the atomic bombs in August 1945 necessary, or a moral line the world should never have crossed?

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with James Scott, Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian of the Pacific War, and author of “Empire of Ashes,” to examine the final months of World War II, the pressures facing new President Harry Truman, Emperor Hirohito’s role in Japan’s surrender, and what that decision means 81 years later.

It opens with a question many people get wrong. How many assembled atomic bombs did the United States actually have at the time? Two. Japan’s militarists suspected the United States had even fewer, arguing after Hiroshima that America could not possibly have more than one, so the regime was intact, and Japan could keep fighting. Scott explains why dropping the second bomb 75 hours later collapsed that reasoning, convincing Japan the Americans might have a hundred and might never need to invade at all.

The episode also covers Truman learning about the Manhattan Project in a single one-hour briefing, invasion projections running into millions of casualties, and why the Pacific islands that were fought over eight decades ago are being rebuilt today as tensions with China rise.

<em>Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD.</em>

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