My dad worked on the Manhattan project.
He told me that at the time, he was living in an apartment. Seems he became friends with a science fiction buff who lived in the same building. The friend knew that my dad was working on some top secret military project. One day, to my dad’s shock, he announced that he had figured out what the project was. It seems that all discussion of atomic bombs had abruptly disappeared from sci-fi literature, so he concluded that the a-bomb was, in fact, the secret project.
The Japanese came to same conclusions using the same reasoning. They started a nuclear program (One of their leading physicists had been a student of Oppenheimer!) it was roughly a year to 18 months behind ours when the war ended.) There is some evidence try actually tested “something” on a Korean (now North Korean!) island in the China Sea.
Interesting!
Was your Dad at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, or Hanford?
I hope your dad scoffed at the idea. “Pure fiction.”
And then he had the guy arrested! Ha Ha.