Japan Was 'Days Away From Test' of A-bomb (Brit Article)

The U.K. Independent ^ | 5 August 2002 | David McNeill

[AmericanInTokyo]

Japan Was 'Days Away From Test' of A-bomb

By David McNeill in Tokyo

05 August 2002

Japan's secret plans to build its own atom bomb have resurfaced with the uncovering of a dossier smuggled out of the country at the end of the Second World War.

The papers, containing crude diagrams for a small nuclear weapon, were part of a six-year effort by military scientists to make the country the world's first nuclear power.

According to yesterday's Asahi newspaper, the American widow of a Japanese researcher, who fled to the US with the document in 1945, has returned it to the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, where he worked during the war. The researcher, Kazuo Kuroda, who later became a professor at the University of Arkansas, kept the document secret for half a century until his death in America in April last year.

The liberal-left Asahi, which seems to be the only Japanese media organisation to have picked up the story, says the military ordered the destruction of the plans the day before Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. Scientists at the institute, however, thought this was "a waste" and decided to save at least part of the plans by giving them to Mr Kuroda.

Although suppressed in postwar Japanese education, the race by imperial scientists to develop the bomb has long been the stuff of wartime legend. Scientists at secret bases in Korea worked furiously to make a viable weapon before abandoning the facilities to the advancing Red Army.

Several historians have claimed Japan was days away from testing an atomic weapon in Nagoya when Hiroshima was obliterated by one American bomb on 6 August 1945.

The discovery of the dossier comes as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was bombed on 9 August, are preparing to commemorate the deaths of more than 250,000 nuclear victims.

[6ppc]

Already posted here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/727608/posts

[AmericanInTokyo]

Yikes. I guess they can/should pull it.

Bye

[KC_Conspirator]

While I find this article interesting and the possibility that Japan was closer to the A-bomb than we thought, I think that the claims are rather dubious.

Regardless, I fully expect that any serious dicussion of this issue will be swept under the rug by leftist academics who propagate historical revisionism that Japan was some sort of innocent victim of rascist America. I remember some years ago that some liberal professor tried to push the notion that America did not need to drop the bomb on Japan. His presentation was filled with half truths, lies, and the omission of facts that were obviously designed to fool the average college student.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I don't think there's much to this. Japan was technologically backward and had running low on war materiel and was rationing food by the end of 1944. They still had more than one million men at arms and plenty of will to continue the war.

[AmericanInTokyo]

They could well have been upon the way, and all it says is 'days away from testing'. Chances are the testing would have been very initial and hence light years away from Los Alamos, and on the other hand, Japan would really have no delivery capability to our major population centers (one of their aircraft might make it as far out from Japan as 30 minutes, with 18 hours to go, before it would have been swatted down light a gnat into the drink.)

Still I would like to read the docs.

[rightwing2]

Japan committed barbarous acts against Chinese and US military and civilian personnel including the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March as well as biological weapon experiments on our brave US fighting soldiers. These constituted war crimes. The US, on the other hand, took the moral high ground in not engaging in the terroristic British practice of area bombing which resulted in the wholesale incineration of German cities along with all of their innocent civilian inhabitants. However, in regards to Japan, the US engaged in a murderous bombing campaign which resulted in the deaths of over a million innocent Japanese civilians through firebombing and atomic bombing aerial bombardment campaigns. These constituted war crimes by the Brits and the US.

Were our war crimes, consisting of the slaughter of 1 million innocent Jap civilians, justified because the Japs killed thousands or even tens of thousands of US POWs? Of course not. You cannot fight evil with evil. World War Two was a just war for the US, but it was not entirely justly fought on our part. Who is to blame for the perpetration of these US war crimes? Not the brave 11 million veterans who risked their lives for their country. FDR and especially Truman and a few generals and cabinet members are to blame for the commission of these war crimes against Japan.

[rightwing2]

As I stated on the other thread, this article is nothing but brazen propaganda to support the murderous atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japs were technologically inferior to the US across the board. They did not even possess radar when my grandfather's battleship USS West Virginia, sunk one of theirs during the Battle Of Leyte Gulf. They were not even remotely close to exploding the atomic bomb. This is the same kind of war propaganda we hear from those who argue that Saddam is "on the verge of developing the atomic bomb" despite the fact that a much more authoritative recent CIA report said he was 10-15 years away from doing so. President Buch cannot justify a war with Iraq on this basis either.

[AmericanInTokyo]

He (Paul Kazuo Kuroda) was associated with Enrico Fermi, and further he studied under Prof. Kimura who discovered the symmetric mode of fission and Uranium 237, etc. etc.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Who ever said "tests" is equivalent with "being able to explode an atomic weapon"? People read too much into the comments about the article.

Why don't you ask RIKEN? Theyre up there in Saitama. Anyways, I'd join you in reading these docs and going over specifically at what level they had maintained into the sixth year of such research at RIKEN.

[Ramius]

If that is true, then why didn't they surrender after the first bomb?

[AmericanInTokyo]

The fact is, they were developing along two tracks. By both the Navy and the Army. Gen. Suzuki as much as started the project for the Army in 1941 before Pearl Harbor. Japan built cyclotrons (that the SCAP forces later dumped into the Pacific Ocean) that were used to separate materials/they were working on Uranium isotopes. Again, because the US Army Air Corp had bombed the crap out of Japan, they moved those facilities to Korea. The one I know of was at Hungnam, now North Korea. They had to abandon it due to the Soviet advance there. Their only delivery system at that time was probably high atmosphere balloon and paper bombs, similiar to what they did to the West coast. They did in fact infect large population sectors in China with biological weapons through this crude delivery mechanism. No way were they at an Los Alamos level in 1945, but they were in fact testing and working toward that end. I don't think we can dispute that they were 'days away from testing'. But their efforts would have been worthless due to the advance of US troops and bombing in the summer of 1945.

[pawdoggie]

You seem to be one weird dude. On the one hand you spout revisionist history about US "war crimes" like a lefty university professor. On the other hand, you throw the definitely un-PC term "Jap" around like some Aryan Nations type. You sound like someone with a Pat Buchanan bumper sticker on his pickup.

[MistrX]

Brazen propaganda is not needed to support the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. If we had fought the Japs on their homeland using conventional means, our ultimate victory would have taken much time and as many as 1 million U S casualties. This was a fight to the death. Better their deaths than ours. Truman did the right thing.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Horse crap.

The Japanese in charge of the homeland food supply has admitted that the bombing saved millions of Japanese who would have starved had the war continued even a few weeks longer. Those deaths averted and the millions who would have died during invasion fully justify the use of the bombs.

[pt17]

murderous atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Does this imply you would have preferred an invasion resulting in the deaths of additional hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and millions more Japanese? You're statement makes me think you're the murderous one.

[AmericanInTokyo]

historians have poured over that one for years. it appears to be a variety of factors. the one I am most comfortable with is simple Japanese lack of quick decision when faced with a crisis, no 'thinking on your feet' as it were. the groupthink/concensus thing ("nemawashi"), combined with poor internal communications and rivalries, shows that three days was (as it usually is) just about enough for japanese in a group to even begin to start to agree on just about anything, even minor policy or action. this is the culturally-fettered crisis management, in my book. well, by then, (August 9th), the short track minded, tired, anxious, and remorseful Americans had had enough and decided to send another message, to Nagasaki this time. three days is the limit of American patience; four or five days is the timeline for japanese groups to start to get any crisis resolved.

[Mark Bahner]

"As I stated on the other thread, this article is nothing but brazen propaganda to support the murderous atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Well, it's persuaded me! I've long been ambivalent about the atomic bombings. But just the fact that Japan was *working* on atomic weapons, regardless of how far away they were from deploying them, pretty much establishes in my mind, that the U.S. did nothing exceptionally evil by dropping our bombs.

We know the Nazis were developing an atomic bombs, and would have dropped them on us (after dropping them on the UK). And now we know that the Japanese were working on the same thing...and thus can make no special claim for moral superiority.

The entire lesson of WWII is that, in future wars, we need to focus much more on killing government leaders. Wars will be perfected when ONLY government leaders die (no civilians...and even no troops). This is especially true for unelected leaders. (And no war has ever been fought between two legitimate democracies.)

[rightwing2]

Because we didn't give them sufficient time to let the horrific deaths and inhuman injuries inflicted on innocent civilians by the first bomb sink in. I don't fault Truman for demonstrating the awesome power of the bomb. I fault him for using it to slaughter 140,000 innocent Japanese civilians. Many of the bomb's inventors advocated him testing it in front of the Japanese leaders say in Tokyo Bay for full effect. That's what I would have done, but then again I would have accepted the original Japanese surrender entreaties in the April-July 1945 time period and there never would have been an Okinawa or Iwo Jima and 90,000 US lives would have been saved along with hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives--civilian and military. I must say that I find it truly amazing that people can consider themselves moral conservatives and justify and even advocate mass murder of innocents on so massive a scale that would make Osama Bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh pale in comparison.