Could this be true? Well, the Germans were going for it but after the destruction of the heavy water industry in Norway the lost it. And probably were doing it the wrong way. How about Japan? ------------- "It is a fact, but not widely known that the Japanese, like the Germans, were working on their own atomic weapons. Not only that, but the U.S. A-Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not surprise Akio Morita, founder of electronic giant Sony, Inc...." http://vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/usawwii.htm#japan's atomic bombs Richard Benke ASSOCIATED PRESS 01-Jun-1997 Sunday LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- When a captured Nazi U-boat arrived at Portsmouth, N.H., toward the end of World War II, the American public was never told the significance of what was on board. The German submarine was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, an ingredient for an atomic bomb, bound for Japan. Two Japanese officers on board were allowed to commit suicide. It was even possible -- but not probable -- that some of the uranium headed for Japan reached there aboard the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, says U.S. Energy Department archivist Skip Gosling. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9 used plutonium, not uranium... How far Japan got remains unclear. It's also unclear whether President Truman knew about Japan's program when he ordered the bomb dropped on Japan. According to Japanese science historian Tetsu Hiroshige, preliminary research for a Japanese bomb program began in 1940, and the program called F-Go, or No. F (for fission), began at Kyoto in 1942. However, a memoir by Kyoto physicist Bunsabe Arakatsu says the military commitment wasn't backed up with resources, and the 1978 Science article concluded the danger of a Japanese atomic bomb "was not a real one The Constitution writer, David Snell, reported he was a 24th Corps investigator when he learned of the Hungnam plant from a Japanese officer. Japanese success? Snell said the officer, whom he wouldn't identify, claimed Japan detonated a small atomic device Aug. 12 on an island off Hungnam three days before Japan's surrender. He said the Japanese destroyed the plant, including incomplete bombs, hours before the Soviets arrived. Snell said his source told him the Japanese moved their atomic operations there because of the B-29 raids. "We lost three months in the transfer," Snell quoted him as saying. "We would have had (the bomb) three months earlier if it had not been for the B-29." However, it is clear that Japan's nuclear efforts were interrupted in April 1945 when a B-29 raid damaged Nishina's thermal diffusion separation apparatus.... http://vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/jbmbibl.htm The Nazi submarine U-234, which surrendered to U.S. forces in May 1945, was found to be carrying a diverse cargo bound for Tokyo as part of a secretive exchange of war materiel between Hitler and Hirohito. The payload represented the pride of German technology and included parts and blueprints for proximity fuzes, antiaircraft shells, jet planes and chemical rockets. But nothing the U-234 concealed in its warrens was more surprising than 10 containers filled with 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, a basic material of atomic bombs. Up to then, the Allies suspected that both Nazi Germany and imperial Japan had nuclear progr ams but considered them rudimentary and isolated."
I can honestly say I have never thought about a Japanese a-bomb. I always assumed they had nowhere near the technology for it and really focused more in other areas. Had Japan gotten it though, I doubt they could have cause the damage Germany could have. Interesting stuff.
