Is it true that Japan developed an atom bomb at the end of WWII?
Although there are many deniers—including a prominent person on this site—there is no question that Japan was trying to build its own atomic bombs in WWII. This is not, however, the same thing as saying that “Japan (successfully) developed an atom bomb at the end of WWII”. In order to answer the question of whether Japan in fact succeeded in its own Second World War nuclear quest or not, we must consider the evidence and also the history of how that evidence appeared in public sources in the West. The story of the WWII Japanese atomic bomb project—or actually, “projects”, since there were at least four (4) of them—was first told in Western mass media in a 3 October 1946 story by the late newspaper writer and journalist, David Snell. A quick search on the internet did not yield any proper biographies of Snell, only a since-deleted Wikipedia entry (which was predictably and quickly dismissive of his Japanese a-bomb piece) and a useful if not particularly detailed “infogalactic dot com” article. David Snell (journalist) Atlanta Constitution Headline From 3 October 1946 Story by David Snell Alleging Successful Test of a Japanese Atomic Bomb at the Tail End of WWII So rather than depend on hostile or incomplete sources, here it would be best to quote Snell directly. The following excerpt consists of roughly half of the full text of his article in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. The complete text is available by following the link below the excerpt: When told this story, I was an agent with the Twenty-Fourth Criminal Investigation Department, operating in Korea. I was able to interview Capt. Wakabayashi (a pseudonym given to protect his identity), not as an investigator or as a member of the armed forces, but as a newspaperman. He was advised and understood thoroughly, that he was speaking for publication. He was in Seoul, en route to Japan as a repatriate. The interview took place in a former Shinto temple on a mount overlooking Korea's capital city. The shrine had been converted into an hotel for transient Japanese en route to their homeland. Since V-J Day wisps of information have drifted into the hands of U.S. Army Intelligence of the existence of a gigantic and mystery-shrouded industrial project operated during the closing months of the war in a mountain vastness near the Northern Korean coastal city of Konan. It was near here that Japan's uranium supply was said to exist. This, the most complete account of activities at Konan to reach American ears, is believed to be the first time Japanese silence has been broken on the subject. In a cave in a mountain near Konan, men worked against time, in final assembly of genzai bakuden, Japan's name for the atomic bomb. It was August 10, 1945 (Japanese time), only four days after an atomic bomb flashed in the sky over Hiroshima, and five days before Japan surrendered. To the north, Russian hordes were spilling into Manchuria. Shortly after midnight of that day a convoy of Japanese trucks moved from the mouth of the cave, past watchful sentries. The trucks wound through valleys, past sleeping farm villages. It was August, and frogs in the mud of terraced rice paddies sang in a still night. In the cool predawn Japanese scientists and engineers loaded genzai bakudan aboard a ship in Konan. Off the coast near an inlet in the Sea of Japan more frantic preparations were under way. All that day and night ancient ships, junks and fishing vessels moved into the anchorage. Before dawn on Aug. 12 a robot launch chugged through the ships at anchor and beached itself on the inlet. Its passenger was genzai bakudan. A clock ticked. The observers were 20 miles away. This waiting was difficult and strange to men who had worked relentlessly so long who knew their job had been completed too late. OBSERVORS BLINDED BY FLASH The light in the east where Japan lay grew brighter. The moment the sun peeped over the sea there was a burst of light at the anchorage blinding the observers who wore welders' glasses. The ball of fire was estimated to be 1,000 yards in diameter. A multicolored cloud of vapors boiled toward the heavens then mushroomed in the stratosphere. The churn of water and vapor obscured the vessels directly under the burst. Ships and junks on the fringe burned fiercely at anchor. When the atmosphere cleared slightly the observers could detect several vessels had vanished. Genzai bakudun in that moment had matched the brilliance of the rising sun in the east. Japan had perfected and successfully tested an atomic bomb as cataclysmic as those that withered Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The time was short. The war was roaring to its climax. The advancing Russians would arrive at Konan before the weapon could be mounted in the ready Kamikaze planes to be thrown against any attempted landing by American troops on Japan's shores. It was a difficult decision. But it had to be made. The observers sped across the water, back to Konan. With the advance units of the Russian Army only hours away, the final scene of this gotterdammerung began. The scientists and engineers smashed machines, and destroyed partially completed genzai bakudans. Before Russian columns reached Konan, dynamite sealed the secrets of the cave. But the Russians had come so quickly that the scientists could not escape. This is the story told me by Capt. Wakabayashi. japan developed atom bomb the atlanta constitution - david snell — Link to a transcription of Snell’s complete original newspaper story. Note that the Japanese term “Genzai bakudan” in Snell’s article is probably more correctly rendered “genshi hakai dan”and is literally translated into English as “element bomb”. Subsequent denials, harrumph-harrumphs and how-dare-you-sirs quickly appeared in various newspapers, including (shockingly—not) a New York Times piece in which “an MIT scientist scoffed” at the idea that Japan had been doing its own advanced nuclear weapons work during WWII and might even have successfully tested an atomic bomb. US Occupation entities conducted fairly extensive investigations into whatever Japan was doing with its nuclear weapons R&D, but there was considerable political pressure to brush everything under the rug because the United States had already determined that Japan would be brought into the Western orbit as a Cold War proxy state to thwart Soviet expansion into the Pacific. What digging there was, was done by 1) the Atomic Bomb Mission, attached to the Manhattan Engineer District and thus an Asian version of the highly successful “Alsos” European atomic intelligence gathering effort, and 2) the Scientific Intelligence Survey, headed by the prominent American scientist Dr. Karl T. Compton. Compton had been a member of the “Interim Committee”, the advisory think tank formed by President Truman soon after he took office whose mission was to recommend the best use of the newly perfected American a-bomb. Of the two, the Atomic Bomb Mission was much more persistent and raised many more questions until it was finally ordered to cease and desist in the late 1940s. The Scientific Intelligence Survey quickly reached its own “conclusions” and was plainly acting as an arm of the US State Department, which had already decided as a fait accompli that there was nothing to see here, so move along, move along. There was, however, one notable result of US investigations that was immediately obvious. US Occupation Forces Dismantling One of the Massive Cyclotrons at the Riken Institute North of Tokyo, Japan, on 4 December 1945. https://books.google.com/books?id=BkkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=tokyo+bay+cyclotrons+sunk&source=bl&ots=9JXLOtdJ2X&sig=bcCyvZB0mJBjyS4iGuT9AHS0GQ8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JAxAVJLRK82NyAT_y4KQAQ#v=onepage&q=tokyo%20bay%20cyclotrons%20sunk&f=false — link goes to a Life magazine story about the destruction of the Japanese cyclotrons, including photos of Professor Yoshio Nishina, head of theoretical research for the Japanese Army’s WWII nuclear weapons program. Tokyo, Japan 1917-1950: Rare Images Of Love, Loathing And Life - Flashbak — additional Life magazine photos, including the two immediately above. A total of five (5) cyclotrons had been located in Japan, with two of them at the Riken Institute—the headquarters of Japanese “big science” and the location of the offices of Dr. Yoshio Nishina, head scientist of the Japanese Army’s atomic bomb enterprise, known as “Project Ni”. Cyclotrons are particle accelerators capable of measuring the neutron fission cross section of uranium and other fissionable elements, and they can also be used to create fissile materials themselves, although the output of all but the largest cyclotrons is very small. American Occupation forces arrived at the Riken and other Japanese science institutes in November of 1945. Using axes and dynamite, they quickly disassembled all 5 machines and dumped the wreckage into Tokyo Bay—obviously a rather extreme measure if there was no danger of Japanese science being anywhere close to a nuclear weapon. US Occupation Forces Destroying Professor Bunsaku Arakatsu’s Cockroft-Walton Particle Accelerator on 24 November 1945. This Device, Along With Arakatsu’s Own Massive Cyclotron, Was Located at Kyoto Imperial University, the Primary R&D Center for the Japanese Navy’s Nuclear Weapons and Propulsion Effort, Project F-Go, During WWII. Photo Courtesy of the Website Atomic Heritage Dot Org. Cockcroft–Walton generator - Wikipedia Snell’s account then receded into the background until the Korean War. This time the NYT ran an article that actually supported Snell’s story, “North Korean Plant Held Uranium Works”, in the 26 October 1950 edition, on page 3. This particular article was, naturally, based on testimony of US soldiers fighting on the Korean Peninsula, most notably in the region of Konan (Hamhung), North Korea and at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. M-26 Pershing Tank and US Marines During the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, November - December 1950. American troops were operating in precisely the area in which Snell and his pseudonymous source located the WWII Japanese atomic bomb project (or one of them—more detail on this point later). Tucked away in the Wikipedia entry about the Chosin Reservoir clash is this note: “(The) Chosin Reservoir is a man-made lake located in the northeast of the Korean peninsula. The name Chosin is the Japanese pronunciation of the Korean place name Changjin, and the name stuck due to the outdated Japanese maps used by UN forces. The battle's main focus was around the 78 miles (126 km) long road that connects Hungnam and Chosin Reservoir.” Battle of the Chosin Reservoir | Korean War Battle of Chosin Reservoir - Wikipedia US MARINES at Chosin Reservoir Hungnam was the North Korean coastal city near the site at which the alleged-to-exist Japanese atomic bomb was said to have been tested. Snell’s article states that the bomb was assembled in a cave above Hungnam, then trucked down a road to the coast, where it was detonated at “an inlet in the Sea of Japan”. The Chosin Reservoir was, in fact, part of a colossal hydroelectric plant—built by Japanese zaibatsu colonial industrialists—whose output was two and a half times greater than the Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric installations that had powered the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, TN, where the US built its Little Boy U-235 atomic bomb in WWII. Retreating US forces, which had previously advanced past Hungnam on their way north, were taken off by amphibious transports in the aftermath of the fighting withdrawal by the “Frozen Chosen”. Whatever proof they might have seen of Japan’s WWII nuclear activities in that port city was probably destroyed when the Americans dynamited most of the buildings to prevent their capture by the advancing Chinese. US Navy Attack Personnel Destroyer USS Begor (APD-127) Off the Coast of Hungnam (Konan), Korea, During American Demolition of Port Facilities, December 1950. However, a few photos of the massive, if by that point badly damaged, facilities at Hungnam did surface in the public realm. Most of these were taken by various US personnel, either during their advance to the north or their subsequent retreat to the south. One of them is immediately below: Some of the Ruins of Hungnam, North Korea, Seen Here on 18 November, 1950. The American Journalist David Snell Called The Electrical Power Infrastructure Clearly Visible in This Photo, “The Greatest Concentration of High Voltage Electrical Wiring I Have Ever Seen”. Photograph Courtesy of Dwight Rider and is From His Personal Research Into the Wartime Japanese Nuclear Projects. As it happened, a halfhearted retraction of the 26 October NY Times story was subsequently printed on the back page on 3 November, quoting “Tenth Corps Headquarters” in Korea. Thus US officialdom once again told the world that there was nothing to see here. (Both of these articles and others are cited in Robert Wilcox’s book, Japan’s Secret War, pgs. 212-3). Yet again Snell’s account faded from history. And yet again, it would be resurrected, this time from a Japanese source. Science and Society in Modern Japan, a Book Edited in Part by Eri Yagi. Yagi Studied Under the Yale University Professor of the History of Science, Derek de Solla Price. Amazon.com: Science and Society in Modern Japan (The M.I.T. East Asian science series ; 5) (9780262140225): Shigeru Nakayama, David L. Swain, Eric Yagi: Books Eri Yagi is one of the more prominent names in Japanese science over the past half century. In the early 1960s, she was a student at Yale University under the direction of the eminent physicist, historian of science, and information scientist Derek de Solla Price. Yagi would make a name for herself in the latter years of the 20th century, as her list of subsequent published papers demonstrates. Price was already justifiably famous for his work regarding the discovery and purpose of the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism. Publication List — Eri Yagi’s professional scientific publications Derek John de Solla Price (Official Site) Official Website of the late Yale University professor, Derek de Solla Price Gears from the Greeks. The Antikythera Mechanism: A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B. C. Modern Replica of the Original Ancient Greek Analog Computer, the Antikythera Mechanism In the November 1962 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Price and his then-graduate student Yagi published an open letter detailing the few scraps of information that had come to him (probably at least in part from Yagi herself) about Japan’s attempts to build atomic bombs during WWII. There wasn’t much other than the names of a couple of Japanese scientists, an apparently early code name, Project AEROPOWER, and a few financial records describing certain sums of yen earmarked for nuclear R&D. After telling the world what he had learned to that point in time, Price asked the world scientific community at large to come forward with any additional information. I have never read that anyone did so. Note that the choice of the word “Aeropower” was probably a reflection of the personal interest of General Takeo Yasuda in nuclear physics, Yasuda being the head of the Army Aeronautical Technical Research Institute when the Army first began serious investigation into nuclear weapons in April of 1940 (see the section on Project Ni below). Takeo Yasuda - Wikipedia Cover of the November 1962 Issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Which Yale University Professor Derek de Solla Price and His Japanese Graduate Student Eri Yagi Asked the World Scientific Community for More Information About the WWII Japanese Atomic Bomb Projects Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — Link to Price and Yagi’s November 1962 Open Letter in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It is on page 29. Shortly before his death in 1985, Price passed the story to the American journalist Robert Wilcox, whose subsequent archival research and personal interviews formed the basis of his book, Japan’s Secret War. Book Review: Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb (Robert K. Wilcox): WWII Cover of the 1995 2nd Edition of Japan’s Secret War by Robert K. Wilcox. Wilcox’s book was of course instantly controversial and it continues to be in the present day. In my experience this is almost never because of any disagreement with the factual content, but rather simply because the idea of a WWII Japanese atomic bomb flies in the face of the postwar leftist pseudomorality that unfortunately soon grew up around the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William Pellas's answer to Why is Nazi Germany stereotyped as villainous while Japan’s militarism is presented in American pop culture as repository of ancient chivalrous martial art? It should be noted, too, that most critics of Wilcox accuse him of “claiming that Japan tested its own atomic bomb” or that “Japan had The Bomb, too”. Wrong. It was Snell and his anonymous Japanese source who said that Japan had test-fired its own atomic bomb just after the second American nuclear attack. What Wilcox did was take the earlier information from Snell, Yagi, and Price, and then couple it with the results of his own personal interviews and archival research to see if Snell’s story could be corroborated. Japan’s Secret War is still the best and most complete overview of Japan’s attempted atomic bomb development in WWII. In the first two editions of his book, Wilcox was able to document three of the four known wartime Japanese nuclear projects. These were: 1. Project Ni, the Japanese Army’s nuclear weapons program, led initially by Professor Yoshio Nishina and later by the Army scientist, Lt. Col. Tatsusaburo Suzuki. Nishina and his immediate staff were headquartered at the Riken Institute, just north of Tokyo, the birthplace of Japanese “big science”. Suzuki is the man who personally conducted the 1940 industrial and mineralogical survey that convinced the Japanese Army that building an atomic bomb was feasible. It is likely that he worked on specialized metallurgy for use in thermal diffusion and possibly gaseous diffusion separators from the start of the project until 1943. So far as I have been able to determine to this point, while thermal diffusion, gaseous diffusion, and electromagnetic separation were all studied and considered, only the thermal diffusion separators were actually built. Project Ni was significantly disrupted by severe damage to the Riken Institute as a result of the “Great Tokyo Fire Raid” of 9–10 March, 1945. Note that this mission, and not either of the two atomic bombings, was far and away the deadliest air raid of the entire war. 73 Years Ago Today: The Deadliest Air Raid in History, Operation Meetinghouse. 2. Project F-Go, the Japanese Navy’s nuclear weapons and propulsion effort. The lead scientists here were Professor Bunsaku Arakatsu—formerly the personal student of Einstein himself—and future Nobel laureate, Hideki Yukawa. Arakatsu decided to go with the ultracentrifuge for uranium separation, and at least one large machine was built; according to Wilcox it was destroyed by B-29s at a railroad siding in mainland Japan while en route to Korea. Whether any additional units were built is unknown. F-Go was headquartered at Kyoto Imperial University. The city of Kyoto, in one of history’s supreme ironies, was spared from inclusion on the emerging American nuclear attack list by the US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Stimson never knew that his decision was enabling the Japanese to proceed with their own atomic weapons development. The city saved from the atomic bomb 3. The Joint Imperial Japanese Army-Navy Atomic Bomb Research Program, called in some sources “Project F-NZ”. This was the result of the late-war amalgamation of the previously competing Army and Navy efforts, and was probably organized in the immediate aftermath of the B-29 Great Tokyo Fire Raid (Operation Meetinghouse) in early March, 1945, which destroyed most of the buildings at the Riken Institute, along with Nishina’s thermal diffusion UF-6 uranium separation pilot plant. Japan’s last ditch nuclear weapons effort was located in what is today North Korea and utilized the considerable industrial muscle—particularly the enormously powerful hydroelectric power plants—that had been built up after Korea came under Japanese control following the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War. As far as I have been able to determine, none of the Japanese industrial belt in Korea was ever attacked by Allied forces throughout the entire war until the Red Army overran the region in August - September, 1945. According to the Russian scientist Pavel V. Oleynikov in his paper, “German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project”, SMERSH operatives (Soviet technical intelligence agents) accompanied the ground troops on their advance into Korea, a significant footnote which probably means they were looking for Japanese personnel and equipment that were associated with F-NZ. Similar SMERSH units had already gone through the Soviet occupation zone in Germany, where they captured a number of German physicists as well as stocks of uranium oxide from the wreckage of the Auergesselschaft plant near Berlin. Japanese Nuclear Scientist Yoshio Nishina, Far Left, With Other Prominent Physicists at the Riken Institute, Probably in 1929. Werner Heisenberg is Fourth From Left. The RIKEN Story | RIKEN From the Riken’s present-day website. The fourth epicenter of wartime Japanese atomic bomb development was somewhere in mainland Asia, probably in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, under the auspices of the shadowy Unit 516 of the Kwantung Army. Unit 516 is described in most sources as a chemical weapons specialty group operating under the supervision of the notorious bioweapons lab, Unit 731. However, certain OSS documents from “Project Ramona” indicate that it was also working on atomic bombs. The OSS papers—cited extensively by Wilcox in the recently issued Third Edition of his book—point to a decision by the Kwantung Army to attempt development of nuclear weapons following the decisive defeat of Japanese ground forces by the Soviet Union at Khalkin Gol in the undeclared, 1939 border war in Mongolia. I believe, but have not yet seen documentary proof, that the Kwantung project was likely folded into the crash program in Korea in 1945. The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939 It is claimed in the same OSS files that the Kwantung project also attempted a test detonation or perhaps a “cold test”, somewhere in the Gobi Desert. Very few details of what was going on in this end of the Japanese effort have surfaced to date; Wilcox is again the best and most complete source available in the public realm, as the third edition of Secret War, first published in 2019, contains a section derived from the Ramona documents. I was able to find one corroborating paper at the US National Archives, when I visited in 2012. This was a very brief mention by Nishina of a wartime Japanese scientist of his acquaintance who, according to him, was doing atomic bomb R&D in Japanese-controlled Chinese territory and had gone over to the Chinese communists after the war and was now working on The Bomb for them. If this is so, it means that Japan was anything but a nuclear victim. Rather, she has made her own, sizable contribution to world nuclear weapons proliferation. Both China and Russia (through its capture of Hungnam and the surrounding industrial infrastructure), as well as North Korea, very likely benefited from the fruits of wartime Japanese nuclear weapons research and development. It is clear that Japan’s initial approach to producing a nuclear detonation was broadly similar to what the United States was doing with what ultimately became the U-235 “Little Boy” atomic fission bomb. It is likely that Nishina was the primary impetus in this direction, as the Kuroda Papers (see the notes in the Sources section below this Answer) contain considerable discussion of the use of U-235 as an explosive along with extensive mathematical calculations to that effect. The use and benefits of a polonium neutron initiator or “spark plug”, as well as a neutron reflector or “tamper”, are also mentioned. All three of these were integral parts of the American Little Boy gun-type U-235 atomic fission bomb. Based on what I have seen to this point in time, however, it appears to me that Japan probably did not separate - enrich enough U-235 to enable the production of a bomb along the same lines as the gun-type “Little Boy” device, that is, not within the time frame of the war as it actually played out. Therefore, if one or perhaps two Japanese nuclear devices of some kind really were test-fired, it stands to reason that some other source or sources of fissile material must have been utilized—and also that the Japanese bomb, if in fact it did exist in prototype form, probably at least attempted to employ a more efficient detonation mechanism than the easier to build but also grossly inefficient gun-type. There are two candidates if Japan was able to manufacture or acquire additional “bomb fuel” besides the small (and insufficient) amount of enriched uranium she is believed to have produced during the war. One, Nazi Germany, whose own nuclear weapons projects were along significantly different lines but whose R&D may still have helped the Japanese, and two, a “pile” or production reactor. William Pellas's answer to Were any nuclear bombs tested before Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Regarding nuclear cooperation between Imperial Japan and the Hitler regime, a recent opinion piece by the Japanese journalist Yoichi Shimatsu makes a couple of startling claims. The first is that the real beginning of Japanese interest in nuclear weapons goes all the way back to Heisenberg’s visit to the Riken in 1929. From there, a joint Nazi-Japanese consortium known as “Bund-Eine” (Alliance One) operated a uranium mine located on Mount Uzumine on the outskirts of Sukagawa, southeast Fukushima Prefecture. Possible corroboration is found in the article below, which mentions extensive monazite deposits among the other “rare earth minerals” found in and around Uzumine. Uranium ores are often found in monazite. RARE-ELEMENT MINERALOGY OF THE UZUMINE GRANITIC PEGMATITE, ABUKUMA MOUNTAINS, NORTHEASTERN JAPAN Shimatsu also draws a direct line through history which connects the recently retired Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi. Kishi was the head of Japan’s WWII Munitions Ministry and, according to Shimatsu, was directly involved in financing the Korean nuclear effort. Although I have yet to research Shimatsu’s sources for his article, his information is compelling and, I think, probably true. (NOTE: the link immediately below seems to be vacillating between active and dead, and I have gotten both results when I clicked on it in recent weeks. The article title is as it appears below so it may be reachable with certain web browsers but not others.) Opinion: Hiroshima memories compel us to save the last child It is known that there were dozens of submarine cargo voyages between Germany and Japan during the war, with missions carried out by German, Japanese, and Italian submarines. There were also surface ship blockade runners until mid-1943, as well as ultra-long distance flights by specialized aircraft throughout the war. At least one of these aircraft, and probably more than one, was a repurposed prototype from the cancelled Amerikabomber project that was subsequently operated by one of Germany’s sonderkommando (“Special Command”, ie, special forces) formations. German WW2 Amerika Bombers - Concepts and Projects A Messerschmitt Me-264 Long Range Bomber in Flight. Although Cancelled After a Handful of Prototypes Were Constructed, it is Likely That at Least One of These Aircraft Flew Multiple Sonderkommando Missions Between Finland and Japan During WWII. Whether These Flights Were Connected in Any Way With Axis Nuclear Weapons Projects is Unknown at This Time. Only the submarines are known to have attempted the transport of nuclear weapons material and technology. A number of U-boats and I-boats involved in this “Nuclear Axis” (as the author Philip Henshall termed it) were hunted down and sunk by determined Allied antisubmarine countermeasures. Perhaps it is a coincidence that a fairly large number of the “boats” involved in the underwater cargo missions were destroyed. Or maybe Allied intelligence specifically targeted them because it knew, or had some inkling, that the Axis submarines had something to do with attempts at building nuclear weapons. I will say that enough of these attempted uranium supply missions were killed or compromised for me to suspect strongly that there was, in fact, an Allied atomic bomb interdiction effort—but I cannot say for certain at this time. Regarding a Japanese “pile” or reactor, Japanese science was certainly equal to the task of building one, as demonstrated by the rapid emergence of nuclear power in Japan less than 20 years after the end of WWII despite the enormous destruction in nearly every one of Japan’s major industrial centers during the war. Whether one or more were built during the actual conflict, I don’t know without a deeper and broader examination of declassified documents than I have been able to do to this point. (Note: Just prior to his untimely death, fellow researcher Dwight Rider told me he had documents in his possession which indicate considerable wartime Japanese interest in “Magnox” reactors. Several nuclear power stations that utilized this approach were built in the UK shortly following the end of the war. Magnox is a dual-use technology—that is, reactors of this type are used for both power generation and plutonium production—and have the considerable advantage of being able to run using natural uranium as fuel. Magnox - Wikipedia) As for the targets of an actual Japanese atomic bomb, it has been known since the 1970s that Japan’s military was developing its own nuclear attack list and that it included the US B-29 bases on Tinian Island which were used for the American missions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William Pellas's answer to What if the Japanese were the first to drop a nuclear bomb? And according to a German Catholic priest who claimed to have heard it personally from a Japanese university official in the ruins of Hiroshima, the American west coast city of San Francisco could also have been hit by an atomic bomb had Japan been able to complete them in time. William Pellas's answer to Did the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki wipe out a significant portion of Japanese Christians? None of this is definitive proof that the Japanese actually succeeded, during WWII itself, in producing a practical, functioning atomic bomb or nuclear weapon in some form. But they certainly made a considerable effort to do so. And at minimum, they came much closer to turning the end of the Second World War into an exchange of weapons of mass destruction than most people know or care to admit in the present day. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————— PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES Link goes to the late Quoran Dwight Rider’s book, Tsetusuo Wakabayashi Revealed. In addition to surveying the evidence he has gathered pointing to what he believes is “Wakabayashi’s” real identity, Rider provides considerable background information about Japanese atomic bomb research and development during WWII. http://www.mansell.com/Resources/Rider_Burn_Before_Reading_28May2016.pdf — Rider’s paper on the Japanese nuclear weapons program in WWII and the efforts by some, including US State Department personnel, to sabotage further investigation in the present day. http://www.mansell.com/Resources/Rider_Chongjin_22-Mar-2020.pdf — Link goes to what is probably Rider’s most thorough work on the subject, “The Japanese Wartime Atomic Energy and Weapons Research Program – Seishin (Chongjin), northern Korea. 1938 - 1984″. Japanese Atomic Bomb Project From the website atomicheritage dot org. Factually correct as far as it goes, but dismisses Robert Wilcox’s work (without having the courtesy to mention him by name) as “a conspiracy theory”. New evidence of Japan's effort to build atom bomb at the end of WWII This is a Los Angeles Times piece by Jake Adelstein about the discovery of WWII Japanese Navy Project F-Go ultracentrifuge design blueprints at Kyoto University. Adelstein states incorrectly that two Japanese on board the German submarine U-234 killed themselves “upon being captured”, when in fact they committed suicide after learning that the crew intended to surrender to the United States. The article is otherwise factually correct. What If, in World War II, Japan Got the Atomic Bomb First? Follow-up article by Adelstein dated 6 August 2019, the day that the Third Edition of Japan’s Secret War was released—in Japan, and translated in Japanese. New Details Emerge About Japan's Wartime A-Bomb Program Was Japan building a nuclear bomb? Notebooks uncovered in Kyoto show how far wartime scientists had got — South China Morning Post article about the Project F-Go notebooks. New film pushes Japan to confront a wartime taboo Japan ‘came close’ to wartime A-bomb Article contains personal testimony from Japanese Army scientist Lt. Col. Tatsusaburo Suzuki about Project Ni, the Army’s WWII atomic bomb effort. Suzuki disclosed that Japan’s nuclear program considered electromagnetic isotope separation in the form of a proposed gargantuan cyclotron. Thermal diffusion separators were designed for the Army program, and at least a handful were actually built. These were apparently based on Nishina’s original pilot plant apparatus at the Riken Institute. Ultracentrifuges were designed for the Navy—Wilcox states that at least one was completed—and may possibly have been influenced by German machinery that was built under the direction of Dr. Paul Harteck. The German Physical Chemist Dr. Paul Harteck Was a Pioneer in the Development of Highly Efficient Centrifuge Machinery. Paul Harteck - Wikipedia Atomic plans returned to Japan BBC News website article by Jane Warr about the return of the “Kuroda Papers” (so called after the name of a WWII Japanese nuclear scientist who had them in his possession) to the Riken Institute north of Tokyo. The Papers are a series of notes transcribed directly from three lectures given by Nishina at the Riken on the state of Japanese nuclear weapons research. An English translation of the Papers, along with a detailed commentary on what they contain by Dwight Rider and Eric Hehl, is found here: http://www.mansell.com/Resources/Rider_The_Kuroda_Papers_25-March-2020.pdf The Kuroda Papers Regarding the progress of wartime Japanese nuclear weapons science, a Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper article dated 25 August 2005 and titled “Lost A-Bomb Research Resurfaces in Hiroshima”, states the following: Of the 60 kilograms of uranium 235 used in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum,about 1 kilogram was used for the atomic detonation. The reports (of the Japanese who investigated the Hiroshima atomic attack) thus suggest that the Japanese military had grasped the essential characteristics of the bomb with relative accuracy soon after it was dropped. "In Japan, too, during the war, the army and navy were separately undertaking atomic research," explained Masakatsu Yamazaki, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and an expert on the history of atomic development. "After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, those who were involved in the research speedily began to investigate the bombing. The investigative team determined four days after the bombing that it had been an atomic bomb, because they had a high level of scientific analytical capability as a result of their own atomic research." http://www.energy-net.org/N-LET/... Item #13 in this link goes to a transcription of the full text of the piece in the Asahi Shimbun. Yoshio Nishina Bunsaku Arakatsu Yukawa Hideki | Japanese physicist — comprehensive overview of Yukawa’s sterling career in science, but with no mention whatsoever of his work on Project F-Go as Arakatsu’s head theoretical mathematician. Logs of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Yukawa show clues on wartime nuke research - The Mainichi Japanese Nuclear Scientist and Nobel Laureate Hideki Yukawa Japanese Scientist and College Professor Kazuo “Paul” Kuroda, 1917–2001. During WWII, Kuroda Was One of the Scientists Working on the Atomic Bomb at the Riken Institute for the Japanese Army’s Project Ni. http://physicstoday.scitation.or... Link to a Physics Today news page that includes a brief story about the return of the WWII Project Ni papers that were in Kuroda’s possession to the Riken Institute in 2002. Paul Kazuo Kuroda (1917–2001)Summary of Kuroda’s outstanding career in science both in Japan and in the United States. Note that prior to WWII he was a professor at Tokyo Imperial University. This was one of the centers of Japanese atomic bomb R&D during the war. Questions About Hiroshima Persist – Reconsidering Obama’s “Apology” and Truman's Claim that Hiroshima was a Military Target - A blog written by Dr. Stephen Bryen https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0801/01041.html — “Japan Eyed Bomb, Favored Using It”. This is a brief article in the Christian Science Monitor newspaper from 1995. Most notable is its confirmation of the likely target of a WWII Japanese atomic bomb—the US B-29 base in the Marianas Islands. The Japanese nuclear weapons program • Axis History Forum I found a copy of this extensive discussion thread at the US National Archives when I went to NARA’s College Park, MD location in 2012. William Pellas's answer to People debate the morality of using atomic weapons on WWII Japan. I don't but I do wonder about two bombs. Did we have to drop two?
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