Tell that to Nancy Lugosi, Ted kennedy, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Lynn Woolsey, Ellen Tauscher, Charles Rangel, John Murtha and all the other doofuses impermeable to the lessons of history. That a little nothing entity, wet behind the ears and fresh from "journalism" school succumbs to the same ignorance is no great surprise.
Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it...
Just saying.
There's still debate on whether or not the Japanese atom bomb design(s) would have worked although the North Koreans appear to have tried, and failed, to set off a refurbished one last year.
Maybe they don't work even after you reprocess the plutonium cores (and just where in the world the Japanese hid their reactor is unknown to this day although the Chinese finally discovered the old Japanese germ warfare laboratory/factory barely 2 years ago. More surprises await eh).
Anyway, the fact the Japanese had or could have had an atom bomb program equal to our own was well known at the time, and that fact alone was feared. It was already understood that the German program was going nowhere since the Nazis had rejected "Jewish science", per se, as they called nuclear physics and other advanced studies. The Japanese had no problems at all with the Jews or with science.
Iran is not rejecting nuclear physics either and may be further along in developing a working atom bomb than the Japanese, albeit a cheap enriched uranium bomb.