Assuming for the purpose of argument that Japan had developed an atomic weapon capable of detonation, why would it test it in a place of no military or strategic significance instead of testing / using it offensively against the rapidly advancing Soviets on the same land mass?
It just doesn’t make sense that, facing certain defeat from the advancing Allies on all fronts, Japan would test in the middle of nowhere the only weapon it had which might have improved its negotiating position with the Allies.
Why would Japan cave in after Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it had the opportunity to say to the Allies: So what? We have a nuclear weapon too.
Japan’s nuclear capacity never figured in its increasingly desperate negotiations for surrender, which demonstrates that Japan had no nuclear capacity.
Actually, Rising Sun, both the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Army had active nuclear mob programs. They didn’t get the resources they needed to bring this to a conclusion and I don’t believe a test was ever conducted.
It’s worth pointing out that at this time in the war Japan had no strategic bombers and was starved of fuel.
It just doesn’t make sense that, facing certain defeat from the advancing Allies on all fronts, Japan would test in the middle of nowhere the only weapon it had which might have improved its negotiating position with the Allies.
Why would Japan cave in after Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it had the opportunity to say to the Allies: So what? We have a nuclear weapon too.
Actually the Japanese Government did not cave-in after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ozawa recommended to the Cabinet holding out. the Royal family however sent peace feelers to Russia insisting that Japan would only surrender conditional that:
The Royal Family retained their position
The Japanese Government remained in full sovereign control
War Crimes trials be conducted by Japan on Japanese soil
Japanese armies would be disarmed only by Japanese officers
Japan’s nuclear capacity never figured in its increasingly desperate negotiations for surrender, which demonstrates that Japan had no nuclear capacity.
The “peace feelers” which Japan transmitted to the Soviet Union were sent weeks before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with atomic bombs.
The Soviet Union declared war on Japan the day before the Nagasaki atom bomb attack, but the news did not reach Tokyo until just a couple of hours before the news of the second atom bomb being dropped on Nagasaki.
The Japanese government did not “cave in” after the atom bomb attacks; in fact, the military, which controlled the Japanese government at that point, still wanted to continue the fight. But key elements of the leadership, including Hirohito, and several senior Army commanders realized that there would now be no American ground invasion of Japan, and thus the last chance to inflict devastating casualties on the enemy, and gain negotiating leverage, was lost.
Hirohito directed that the Potsdam Declaration be accepted, but tried one last negotiating ploy; that a condition be attached that he be allowed to remain a sovereign ruler. This condition was implicitly rejected by the US in the State Department reply to the Japanese message, which stated that the Emperor would be subject to the orders of the Occupation authorities.
Because it’s not a “trump card” (more appropriately “ace in the hole”) unless the other side actually believes you have it.
Case in point: The Japanese initially rejected the Potsdam Declaration because they thought the sentence, “The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” was just bombastic Allied rhetoric. It wasn’t until the atomic bombs were demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the part about “utter destruction” was understood to be an accurate statement.
…or alternately as you yourself put it unless the trump card was the element of surprise
But key elements of the leadership, including Hirohito, and several senior Army commanders realized that there would now be no American ground invasion of Japan, and thus the last chance to inflict devastating casualties on the enemy, and gain negotiating leverage, was lost.
I think you just answered your own question.
These references may shed extra light on the question:
This was the start the cold war (@ end of WWII). Russia didn’t trust us or many other countries. They’re certainly not going to “share” any knowledge of Japanese traces (or about Russia invading Japanese held parts of China and Korea and kidnapping Japanese nuclear scientist).
Most of the information/data the Russians employed in their Atom Bomb Project was acquired, one way and another, from Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
The Russians DID kidnap and employ various British and French Nuclear Scientists between 1946 and 1950: this is amply documented in many and varied sources.
Later information that fell into Russian hands was confirmed as reasonably accurate by the father-son-mother team arrested by the FBI in about 1987: the son had been a Lieutenant in the US Navy, and most of the Russian interest in his information related to submarine propellers, with occasional diversions into the nuclear missiles/warheads topic.
Did the Russians kidnap and employ British and French Nuclear scientists? Yes: that makes most sense: Stalin and Beria being at the height of their powers and consequent paranoeias. However: I do not believe that even that much extra “help” gave the Russians more than 6 to 8 months advance on that which Soviet Nuclear Scientists already knew or were aware of.
Granted: the Soviet Nuclear Bomb Project WAS a “crash program”; I can’t see any room for debate there.
But even so: by 1952 at the latest; Soviet Nuclear Scientists unaided would have had the ability and know-how to produce a usable Nuclear Bomb. And that was Stalin’s aim.
A successful Japanese or German Nuclear Weapon Test Detonation would have required from either Nation resources that, by the time the alleged Test detonation took place; simply did not exist.
That the Russians may have to some minute degree profited from either Japanese or German Research is not beyond the realms of reason. Nor is it a guaranteed fact. The Russians, by Stalin’s Directive, were gathering all and any Nuclear data they could find.
I do not believe either Japan or Germany ever conducted a proper Atom Bomb test Detonation.
I do believe it to be within realm of reason that some form of unplanned or accidental detonation took place for either Japan or Germany (or both), and that it was closer to a “Dirty Bomb” detonation than a true, verifiable Atom Bomb detonation.
My readings on the subject indicated that both the Japanese army and navy had active nuclear bomb programs, neither of which got very close to producing a weapon of any sort. It would be typical of army-navy rivalry in Japan that parallel “programs” existed. I’m familiar with the destruction of a primary lab during a B-29 raid. I also read somewhere that even after the 2 bombs were dropped on Japan, that a leading Japanese scientist sought permission to continue to conduct research with the aim of producing an atomic weapon. This is sketchy, I know, and am drawing on memory, but I find it rather ironic in light off Japan’s virtuous protestations to the contrary that they had their own nuclear weapons program which, if successful, they would have used in a New York minute on whoever was closest to hand. can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-I-t-e?
In Richard Rhodes book on the making of the a-bomb (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize), he asserts that the Japanese didnt pursue their Atomic Bomb programs, in large part, because they felt that no other country would be able to successfully produce one before the war ended. And in commenting on what country stole or used whoever elses data, keep in mind that in the 20s-40s when fission was first being speculated on, and later proven, there were probably only 1000 or so nuclear physicists in the whole world, and due to the need to cross borders for education, many of the leading physicists new each other often quite well. Teller was friends with the chief Russian physicist; Fermi, Szilard and Bohr were friends with Heisenburg who ran the German a-bomb program.
What really scares me, the principal behind the fusion bomb was already understood before the war, and Teller was actively campaigning for the Hydrogen Bomb (the Super), to be the end goal of the Manhattan Project.
By “Bill Hilfer” do you mean “Bill Streifer,” yours truly? Actually, small portions of The Flight of the Hog Wild have already been published in the OSS Society Journal and the American Intelligence Journal, and more are forthcoming. They dance around the subject of a Japanese nuclear program in Konan. Instead, they discuss OSS mission to rescue Allied POWs in Manchuria and Korea, and the downing of B-29 “Hog Wild” over Konan on August 29, 1945.
The mission of the Hog Wild, by the way, was to deliver 10,000 pounds of food and medical supplies to British and Australian prisoners at a camp in Konan. If you believe the Soviet explanation for the downing of an ally aircraft on a “mercy mission” to a POW camp (an “error”), I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. The Russians never made errors… Everything they did with cold calculation. The difficult part is determining that calculation.
My co-author is a Russian journalist, so I was very pleased to learn that the Soviet archive (during the WWII period) is open to all (who speak Russian). Their intentions in downing an American bomber is revealed in the Soviet archives, and the Japanese/Soviet nuclear program in Konan is revealed in the U.S. archives.
Richard Rhodes may say the Japanese didn’t pursue their Atomic Bomb programs, but that was not the view of those Japanese scientist involved in the project:
On 15 October 1946 for example the New York Times published an interview by an ABC reporter who interviewed Prof Arakatsu Bunsuku. At page 4 of the article it was reported that Arakatsu claimed he was making “tremendous strides” towards making an atomic bomb and that Russia probably already had one.
Here’s another example:
JAPANESE PHYSICIST, 83, SAYS JAPAN TRIED TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB
—Associated Press, dateline Tokyo, 20 July 1995.
Japan’s World War II atomic research team had no ethical qualms about its goal—building an atomic bomb and unleashing it on America, a team leader said Wednesday. “We had no doubts about using it if we could. No one ever contemplated how terrible it would be,” physicist Tatsusaburo Suzuki, 83, said Wednesday. “We were just doing our best to put it together.”
Suzuki was a leading researcher in Japan’s wartime effort to construct an atomic bomb. He spoke Wednesday in a rare and candid explanation of Japan’s World War II atomic bomb research.
Scientists in Japan developed theories of how to build a bomb, he said, but never came close to actually making one because they lacked money and materials.
So desperate were they for parts that military officials discussed scrapping a battleship and using the steel for the atomic experiments, Suzuki said.
“I was confident at the time we could have built a bomb if we had better equipment,” he said.
The projects was supported by Japan’s imperial household, and the emperor’s brothers were among the leaders who inspected and encouraged their work, he said.
Suzuki was part of a team of 50 scientists culled from Japan’s army and top universities to work on developing the bomb. They made about 11 pounds of enriched uranium, he said—far short of what would have been needed to produce an atomic weapon.
Americans found evidence of the project after the war and dumped the research equipment into Tokyo Bay. But few Japanese have provided detailed descriptions of the program, and the Japanese army destroyed all records of the project.
He said none of the scientists working with him on the Japanese atomic bomb ever mentioned any ethical concerns about their project.
His attitude changed, he said, when he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after they were devastated in August 1945 in the world’s only atomic attacks.
He was not clear about his reasons for calling a news conference now, almost 50 years after the end of the war, to describe in detail the effort to build an atomic bomb.
Japanese officials had discussed targets including US air bases that were being used to bomb Japanese cities.
Bunsaku Arakatsu, whilst Head of Particle Physics at Taipei, constructed a Cockcroft-Walton accelerator in Taiwan and conducted nuclear experiments using it for the first time in 1933. In 1936 Arakatsu moved back to Japan, to became a Professor of Kyoto University. At Kyoto, he performed several experiments on nuclear reactions with neutrons from D-D (Deuterium) reaction and γ-rays from Li + p reaction with a Cockcroft-Walton accelerator both before and during WWII. One of the most significant experimental results was determining the average number of neutrons produced in the fission chain reaction of Uranium 235 induced by slow neutrons as 2.6, which was the most accurate value obtained before the War.
In 1934, Tohoku University Professor Hikosaka Tadayoshi’s paper on atomic physics theory was released. Hikosaka pointed out the huge energy contained within the atomic nuclei and a possibility that both nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons could be created.
As early as 1934, therefore, the Imperial Japanese Navy was intrigued enough to sponsor investigation into the feasibility of producing a “super-weapon” based on Dr Enrico Fermi’s theories of atoms. From 1937, Osaka Imperial University professor Asada Tsunesaburo gave lectures at the Naval Technical Research Institute advocating the development of an atomic bomb.
By about Sept/Oct 1944 Germany had transferred to Japan technology to construct a 1kt boosted fission warhead based on the Schumann-Trinks concept. Technology was also transferred for the construction of V-2 rockets at Mukden in Manchuria which the Japanese intended to use nuclear warheads with. Corroboration can be found in a 1945 US Navy Intelligence report “German Technical Aid to Japan: a Survey”, 15 June 1945, held by the Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA, reference 3-1695-00561-5885,
So far as all arguments about Japan actually building an atomic weapon, let alone detonating one as suggested by the article at the start of this thread, is concerned, I’m happy to accept Tatsusaburo Suzuki’s confirmation that Japan never came close to making one.
Richard Rhodes certainly didn’t say that. In fact, he quotes from 1943-1944 conversations between Dr. Yoshio Nishina and a Japanese General, urging him to develop the atomic bomb.
Regarding Dr. Bunsaku Arakatsu and “tremendous strides,” Kiwiguy is correct. In my recently copyrighted manuscript, I explain in great detail the nature of Arakatsu’s “tremendous strides.” [Arakatsu was not boasting or lying] Upon publication, I will include the actual experiments that Arakatsu conducted, and show that his calculations were more or less in line with the work done by Manhattan Project scientists. By the way, my co-author is a Stanford-educated particle physicist… and a hell of a nice guy.
Tatsusaburo Suzuki was in no position to know. The Japanese Army and the Japanese Navy had their own atomic programs, and they only consulted ONCE (concerning uranium). If you want to know how far Japan got, read what Arakatsu and Arakatsu’s students have said.
Well you’re wrong because Suzuki was part of the research group at Kyoto University with Arakatsu and he commented after the war that he was bitter that he and his F-Go teammates were excluded by Nishina from participation in F-NZ which was the project reborn in Korea under the Imperial 8th Army laboratory headed by General Kawashima so Suzuki by October 1944 was no longer in a position to know either way.
What happened in October 1944 was that the Japanese switched efforts from uranium enrichment to developing Uranium 233 from Thorium found in ten mines all commissioned by the Japanese in October 1944. At the same time a Thorium refinery was built in the port of Konan (now Hungnam) and a powerful cyclotron was installed in a mine on hill slopes above the town. Konan was an industrial centre with a large Ammonia fertiliser plant converted for production of explosives and heavy water in WWII. It also had a large Tungsten Carbide plant with electric arc furnaces.
The cyclotron was used for conversion of Thorium 232 into Uranium 233 via Protatcinium. How do we know that fact today?
Because in 2005 the Russians declassified KGB archives revealing correspondence from the Soviet garrison commander for Konan, Maj Gen Shytkov with his boss, one certain Josef Stalin about the Uranium 233 production facility they captured intact from the Japanese when they captured the city by paratrooper landings on 24 August 1945.
Indeed the Soviets were so impressed they used six Japanese scientists and a number of Japanese chemical engineers to keep the Thorium/Uranium project running until the end of 1947. The Soviets sent relays of submarines to Konan to collect small crates of the precious Uranium 233 for Russia’s own atomic bomb project. (there was no railway connection to Russia until 1951-52). Soviet interest in U233 waned by 1949.
We also know this from a Japanese chemical engineer who stole a small fishing boat in 1946 and fled Soviet captivity to the south. He was questioned by American Intelligence and confirmed the Japanese did successfully test a nuclear weapon in 1945.
Anybody wishing to check for themselves can consult US intelligence reports NA, RG 224, Box 3 interrogation of Otogoro Natsume 31 October 1946 by Dr Kelly “Further questioning the newspaper story about Atomic bomb explosion in Korea” with T/4 Matsuda present as interpreter.Natsume escaped on small sailing boat in December 1945.
No, I am not saying that. ALL information has value. How you interpret that information is key. The credibility of the source and other factors must be taken into account. Also keep this in mind: When the Manhattan Project concluded their investigation in September 30, 1945, they concluded that the Japanese military and government had no program to produce an atomic bomb. Do you believe that is true? Have we learned nothing about Japan’s two atomic programs in the past 70 years?
Regarding Tatsusaburo Suzuki:
Did he tell the truth?
Did he lie?
Did he intend on misleading?
Where did he obtain this information?
Does his information agree with other information obtained from other sources?
Was he familiar with both Nishina’s and Arakatsu’s programs?
Did he have an axe to grind?
I am an author on intelligence matters.
I have to do this sort of analysis every time I quote a supposedly knowledgeable source.
Can I tell you what the IJA and IJN accomplished? No, sorry.
