Japan.

This is coolbert:

Japanese a-bomb development.

In a previous post, I mentioned that it has long been thought that a-bomb development in Japan during WW2 was in the bows and arrows stage. Perhaps, and only perhaps, theoretical research going on, but only limited in that regard, and really nothing more than that.

A book ["Japan's Secret War, by Robert K. Wilcox] that came out about twenty years ago seems to suggest otherwise.

This is another subject that reputable historians just do not want to touch. Too much controversy with this subject. Now, in the days just after the surrender of Japan, a Japanese counter-intelligence [CI] officer was captured in Korea by U.S., forces and interrogated. This man made a startling claim. That the Japanese not only were working on a bomb, they had actually detonated one. This was done from a base in Korea, where the bomb was put together, placed on a remotely operated barge, the barge sailing into the Sea of Japan where it was detonated.

The precipitous advance of the Soviet Army into Korea prevented any further work from being done, and the Japanese did not get to build and detonate their a-bomb over American cities. This Japanese officer reportedly told his interrogators that if the war had continued much longer, American cities would have tasted atomic devastation!

Is this fantastic claim at all plausible?

According to the author of this controversial book, it was plausible.

Japan possessed, in Korea, which was a colony of Japan's at the time, a large industrial complex, with abundant electrical power. Such an industrial complex would have allowed for the machining of and research on an a-bomb. Enormous power sources of electricity would have been needed for such development and research. This was available to the Japanese from their Korean complex. [Think of the U.S. Manhattan Project. The two centers of R & D for the Manhattan Project were at Oak Ridge TN. [TVA], and Hanford [Columbia River Project], sources of vast amount of electrical power].

In addition, the rocks of the northern part of Korea, where almost all of this industrial complex was located, contain very high trace amounts of background radiation, mostly from uranium. Processing enough rock would have allowed the Japanese to possess the necessary amounts of uranium to do valid and serious research on a-bomb development, and having enough would have allowed for sufficient material to build a small number of bombs. [At the end of WW2, the U.S. possessed enough uranium to build 70 Hiroshima type a-bombs].

The author further points to the fact that Soviet forces were extremely precipitous in their advance into Korea. Even more so that what would have been expected.

This advance was done mostly by special purpose type units. These units were the forerunner of the Soviet Spetsnaz units. Advance was done mainly to capture, in the eyes of the author, the labs, research and manufacturing facilities of the Jap a-bomb project intact. For transport back to the Soviet Union. This captured Japanese CI guy stated that the Japanese a-bomb effort was captured intact by the Soviets, along with the scientists involved in the project. These scientists would have been of particular interest to the soviets, as the Soviets were well underway at the time with their own a-bomb project. Short circuit the whole process of a-bomb development by interrogating and finding out critical information from the Japanese scientists would be one way to accelerate the entire Soviet a-bomb project.

[The entire Kwangtung Army of Japan was captured by the Soviets at the end of the war. About 400,000 prisoners were taken. They were sent to the soviet Union to work on constructive Socialist projects, in forced labor camps. Very few survived to return to Japan].

Now, why would none of this come out after the war??

According to Wilcox the U.S. government had a very vested interest in keeping knowledge of Jap a-bomb development secret. Even concealing the whole mess.

With the advent of the cold war, it was felt, correctly so, that Japan would be an important ally against Soviet and communist expansion.

This especially became a fact when the Korean War broke out. Anything that would detract from portraying Japan as an important ally would be counter-productive. The once warlike and militaristic Japan was now portrayed as a peaceful and benevolent society friendly to the U.S. To suggest that Japan was on the verge of a breakthrough in weapons development that would have endangered the entire U.S. would be impermissible.

And the decision by Truman to drop the U.S. a-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be seen in the light of Jap a-bomb development. If the U.S. even had the slightest inkling that the Japanese were either on the verge of having the bomb, or even working on and nearing completion of a bomb project, this would have undoubtedly caused Truman to make his decision sooner than later. Saving immense destruction for the U.S. and Japan both. [This all assumes that the U.S. and the Soviets had good intelligence on Jap a-bomb development].

[By the way, Wilcox, when using Japanese translators during his research in Japan for his book, reports that his translators acted as if they had been pole axed when they came to the realization as to what Wilcox was looking into].

coolbert.