[blam]

When Germany surrendered, wasn't there a German U-boat captured on the way to Japan with A-Bomb material? (I think so)

[correctthought]

Yes, (it gave itself up in newfoundland... and had about 400 LBS of Uranium oxide.)

[buffyt]

My father in law has always said that our bomb saved his life and won the war for us. This is just more proof that we had to do what we did when we did it. It was too late alread for my uncle Richard - still MIA from WWII.

[Eccl 10:2]

Which is why we need to attack Iraq sooner rather than later.

[muir_redwoods]

I'm sure the japanese were working on it. For that matter I'm sure physicists everywhere were aware of the possibility and certainly combatant nations were more than a bit interested. That being said, the best minds on the subject were right here working on the Manhattan project. I find it very hard to believe that a country like Japan that fielded such a poor rifle for its troops and valued courage and valor way above equipment and materiel would be nearly as far along as we were with much more skilled scientists working on it.

[sonofron]

wow! this is very interesting. the what if's...

[muawiyah]

There were people in General Stillwell's reconnaisance operation who knew about the Japanese atom bomb. They may well have observed one accidentally exploding in Harbin, or have examined photos that showed the aftermath.

General Stillwell undoubtedly had the information at hand and was informed.

[Wondervixen]

Little known radio message sent to the Japanese from the Enola Gay seconds before the bomb dropped on Hiroshima:

"Hey boy's, that thing you're working on down there...Look anything like THIS?"

[parsifal]

Yes. And FWIW, Arkansas has the bomb. Y'all yankees remember that. Woooo Pig Soooooieee! parsy.

[Southack]

As far as I know, the Japanese never got as far as making their first self-sustaining atomic chain reaction, something that the U.S. did in 1942 (and it then took us, with the world's largest economy tossing infinite money at the problem, another 3 years to go from that point to a working bomb).

The Germans and Japanese were always behind us in the technologies that counted (such as atomic weapons, computers, mass production, and cryptography).

But their atomic programs from more than half a century ago are still ahead of what most of the third world has cobbled together today.

[T. P. Pole]

Ok, question time.

If this is true, you would think that they would have therefore been able to come up with one in very short order after the war, like Russia did. When did they finally get one? Were the war sanctions so bad that they couldn't? Or are we just looking at somebody's "back of the napkin" guess?

[hc87]

"Doubtful" is the only word I can come up with to describe this story. Japan did not make a fraction of the industrial effort the United States, Germany (which was miniscule compared to our efforts) and later the Soviet Union made in A-bomb building. In order to build an A-bomb you need either plutonium (which does not occur in nature) or uranium-235 (which has to be seperated from uranium-238). In order to get either plutonium or or uranium in 1945, you had to make a massive industrial effort the size of the Manhattan Project. Just as a for instance, 13,540 tons of silver (395 million troy ounces) were used in the building of the calutrons used to separate U-235 from U-238 at Oak Ridge.I can't find the exact cost, but I beleive the Manhattan Project cost something like $2 billion in 1945 dollars.

The Japanese program was small scale and suffered from a lack of materials, experimental failures and lack of personnel. What little progress the Japanese made all but ended in April 1945 when the main laboratory used for nuclear research burned in a B-29 raid.

IF anyone has any interest, Richard Rhodes' book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684813785/qid=1028503335/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/002-4938812-2602442 is an excellent history of the Manhattan Project and one of the best books I have ever read.

[cynwoody]

Both the Japanese and the Germans were aware that an A-bomb was probably possible, although they were not as far along as previously believed.

But neither country had the resources to pull it off. The engineering needed to perfect the science was a huge project that got started in 1942 and cost about $20 billion in 1996 dollars. It was carried out in a large country that was protected from foreign attack (such as carpet bombing) by wide oceans. Moreover, a lot of the top problem solving talent had fled the Nazis and come to the US or the UK, including the guys (Einstein, Szilard, Wigner) who got the ball rolling by warning Roosevelt in their famous letter.

[WilliamWallace1999]

It was not weapons grade fissionable material. History Channel had a whole show about the inside scoop on the Japanese war machine. Geez guys, log off once in a while and tune in THE channel. The material being sent from the Germans was suitable for a "dirty" bomb that we have all heard so much about as of late. The reason we made only ONE uranium bomb was becuase it was so damn hard to produce. Plutonium could be mass produced with a breeder reactor which was WAY beyond any of the Axis powers technology. This article is a load of crap and suitable only for the tin-foil crowd.

[Rockpile]

The Japanese started working on the A-Bomb before the US did. Their great failing was in not having a central co-ordinating system forcing co-operation between the rival Army and Navy programs. The aerial bombing by the US also severely disrupted their efforts thankfully. They had to shift a lot of the production effort to their Korean colony where most of the uranium--which was of inferior quality to ours--was being processed.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that the things would actually work the Japanese exploded their own device. They had a small "tactical nuke" size bomb which was set off on a barge by a little rocky islet in the Sea of Japan. If Truman had not given the go ahead for our own bombs' use they may have had 2 or 3 ready for the invasion. Beaucoup dead Americans.

The Pujon, Chosin and Fujen Reservoirs in Japan's Korean colony provided electricity for ore extraction. Who was running the show there by 1950? Hint,they liked borscht and vodka :}

In November 1950 their Chinese buddies threw in 8 divisions to stop the 1st Marine Divsion in this area.

Anyhow, I ain't got no secret sources, just talk to old timers whose opinions you can rely on. For example knew a Marine lifer Sgt. Major, who paid attention to things, who was at frozen chosin. And my dad who was a lowly enlisted serf but who was interested in lots of things and would shoot the breeze with lots of people like the sailor he met who was a swabby on a USN landing craft that carried Japanese uranium seperator gizmos out to be thrown into the ocean.

BTW for literary reference here is one: Japan's Secret War-Japan's Race Against Time To Build It's Own Atomic Bomb-----Robert K. Wilcox--publisher Marlowe and Co. NY 1995-------He does NOT go so far as to say that the Japanese completed a device though.

Also, both of my Grandfathers were WW I, US Army and belonged to the American Legion and VFW. In the early 60s as a youngster I read one of those magazines which had a story about Japan and the bomb.

[Physicist]

"Days away from testing an A-bomb," my eye. It's simply not true that this could have been the secret of a small circle of scientists who kept it to themselves. The separation of isotopes implies a gigantic industrial infrastructure with thousands of employees. The entire U.S. effort in WWII--years of industrial effort at a massive scale--produced enough material to make exactly three bombs. One bomb does Japan no good if they were to waste it on a test, so they had to produce something comparable to what we produced. There's no way we would have overlooked an effort of that scale in either Japan or Germany.

[Erasmus]

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.

Thanks a lot for posting this, guy.

I just got shrapnel wounds from my exploding BSometer.

[Tennessee_Bob]

Wish I'd had this earlier today when the protesters were out at Y-12. Would have been interesting to see their reactions.

[First_Salute]

Small world.

[Brush_Your_Teeth]

Japan's scientists focused more on biological weapons then nuclear. In mongolia they killed thousands of people testing their bio weapons. A nuclear weapon at that time could takeout a city but bio weapons then could destroy an entire nation. I guess its just not as sexy for the media as a big mushroom cloud.

[Old Professer]

Everybody can win the game on Monday.