On July 4, 1985, Richard Nixon sits in a low-back armchair, his legs crossed on an ottoman, his hands contributing to his account of the past 40 years of atomic diplomacy by drawing circles in the air, playing an absent piano, shooing away a wrong idea, coming together in an arch or making points in precise order: one, two, three, four. It is shortly after 8 a.m. Two mornings back to back he has been discussing the effects of Hiroshima on the world and on the presidency in his office in a federal building in downtown Manhattan. The building's air-conditioning system is off because of the national holiday, but the room is not yet hot. Outside, the streets are empty and lifeless, except for a McDonald's. Nixon wears a blue-gray suit, a white shirt and a red-and-white-striped tie. The chair he occupies is backed into a corner of the office. Wide windows on either side of him offer a view of antiquated wooden water tanks on the rooftops of nearby buildings and a sky that is pale blue and still as a wall.
"Oh yes, I remember vividly. I was in New York City when the Bomb fell. I had returned from the South Pacific and was stationed at the Bureau of Aeronautics, 50 Church Street, doing legal work on military contracts. I remember very clearly that I was going home that night in the subway, and I saw a newspaper with a headline. Something like MASSIVE BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN. I didn't give it much thought because we had heard about the buzz bombs in London and the other new weapons that were used during the war, and I said, well, this is just another one. I just assumed the war would go on.
"So I was surprised when V-J day came a week later. I really hadn't celebrated V-E day very much because I knew how tough the Japanese were, and that the war in the Pacific might take a long time. I was sure that I would be rotated back to duty on one of the islands. What I remember about V-J day is that Mrs. Nixon and I went to Times Square to celebrate, and I got my pocket picked. Never forget that! In those days we didn't have a great deal of money. Sort of put a damper on the day."
The summer of 1945 may have been the last time in his life that Nixon had the luxury of paying casual attention to the Bomb. Nuclear weapons were to color politics from that time on, and Nixon's political career was to extend from Congress in 1947, to the Senate in 1951, to the vice presidency under Dwight Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, to the presidency in 1969 and again in 1973. His view of Hiroshima is that the bombing not only brought nuclear weapons into international diplomacy but that it brought America into the world. What he saw in Hiroshima was the beginning of national stature on a global scale, the onset of American maturity.
"Should the Bomb have been used against Japan? There's no simple answer. [General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants.