A Successful Japanese Atomic Bomb Test?

[JR*]

That the Japanese had an embryonic programme aimed at producing an A-Bomb I can believe. After all, the basic theory was not really a secret; in fact, it had some currency in general scientific circles by the late-1930s. Public experiments, such as Fermi's "reactor" experiment, meant that this was inevitable. I remain to be convinced that the Japanese got very far with this programme. As compared with the US (or even Germany), Japan lacked the expertise and resources required to come close to producing a practical nuclear device. Of course, if credible new evidence emerges to contradict this, well, I remain to be convinced. Best regards, JR.

[Rising Sun*]

Why would Japan have been preparing its citizens to defend Japan with sticks and stones against the last Allied assault when it had an atomic weapon it had already tested?

I'd suggest that the main reason Japan didn't put too much effort into an atomic weapon program, apart from lack of necessary materials, knowledge and skill, was that it was inconsistent with the dominant Bushido philosoply about 'spirit' overcoming every enemy and adversity.

The Japanese were in some critical respects very slow learners during WWII, one simple but critical example being a failure to abandon lengthy IJN pilot training programmes to match the Allies, notably the Americans', ability to produce pilots in a very much shorter time. This was doubly critical as, from mid-1942 onwards, IJN pilot losses grew at an accelerating rate.

[photografr7]

Why would Japan have been preparing its citizens to defend Japan with sticks and stones against the last Allied assault when it had an atomic weapon it had already tested?

This statement shows a misunderstanding in two areas:

1) nuclear weapons are difficult to make.
2) nuclear weapons are not like traditional weapons.

Here's what I mean:

1. An atomic test is just that, a test. It's conducted to see if it actually would work. Suppose Snell was correct and that Japan conducted a successful "test." That simply means that their design worked, nothing more than that. If and when the Americans conducted a full-scale invasion months from now, they might have one or two more weapons at their disposal. But even an atomic bomb would not have done much against an invasion of 500,000 men and equipment, conducted over many waves and a landing on many beaches. Yes, 150,000 might die, but the Americans expected 150,000 to die anyway.

2. An atomic test doesn't mean you have an arsenal of nuclear weapons ready for use. Suppose the ATF is preparing to raid a home (like the Americans or Russians ready to invade Japan). And as they approach, the home owner fires off one round of a shotgun. "Oh my God," they think. "He's got a weapon and ammunition. And if we bust down the door, he'll keep firing and kill all of our agents." That's how shotguns work, not how atomic bombs work. Just because Japan conducted an atomic "test" doesn't mean they have many more nuclear weapon ready to go; Maybe in a month they will, or three months, but not immediately. So having conducted a test doesn't mean all is well and the Japanese population doesn't have to prepare for an Allied invasion.

P.S.

Deborah Shapley contacted me yesterday and said she was surprised what new information about Japan's capability I had discovered.

I also received a phone call from the author of this book http://www.amazon.com/Technology-Sec.../dp/1412862671. He's a former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George Bush, Jr. and Donald Rumsfeld. Morley Safer of the CBS program “60 Minutes,” said, "Dr. Bryen was the Pentagon's top cop, the man whose job it was to ensure that sensitive technology would be kept from enemies, potential enemies and questionable allies."

Stephen Bryen said I've uncovered more about Japan's wartime nuclear program than he did, and wants to talk to me again today. He agrees with Deborah Shapley that Japanese scientists pulled a curtain of silence over their nuclear program at the end of the war, and that there are aspects of their program which have yet to be revealed to the public. That's what my upcoming book intends to do, co-authored by a Ph.D. nuclear physicist from Stanford.

Why do you think Dr. Yoshio Nishina ordered all documents destroyed?
But the cover-up goes a lot deeper than that.

[Rising Sun*]

This statement shows a misunderstanding in two areas:

1) nuclear weapons are difficult to make.

Really?

I never knew that.

I thought that the title "Manhattan Project" just meant that Groves and Oppenheimer went to a Manhattan drug store and bought a Little Boy and a Fat Man off the shelf and shipped them off to the Pacific so they could be dropped on Japan by a loadmaster kicking them out the side door of a DC3 about 1,000 feet above the target.

Boy, how stupid and embarrassed do I feel now that I've been informed that nuclear weapons are difficult to make?

2) nuclear weapons are not like traditional weapons.

Really? I didn't know that either.

I thought they were just like a pike, halberd, flail etc but with a really big and damaging flashlight / laser thingy on the end, the WWII Japanese version being made with heaps of glowworms on the end of broomsticks designed to defeat the invading Allies with light rays.

P.S.

Deborah Shapley contacted me yesterday and said she was surprised what new information about Japan's capability I had discovered.

I also received a phone call from the author of this book http://www.amazon.com/Technology-Sec.../dp/1412862671. He's a former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George Bush, Jr. and Donald Rumsfeld. Morley Safer of the CBS program “60 Minutes,” said, "Dr. Bryen was the Pentagon's top cop, the man whose job it was to ensure that sensitive technology would be kept from enemies, potential enemies and questionable allies."

Stephen Bryen said I've uncovered more about Japan's wartime nuclear program than he did, and wants to talk to me again today. He agrees with Deborah Shapley that Japanese scientists pulled a curtain of silence over their nuclear program at the end of the war, and that there are aspects of their program which have yet to be revealed to the public. That's what my upcoming book intends to do, co-authored by a Ph.D. nuclear physicist from Stanford.

Why do you think Dr. Yoshio Nishina ordered all documents destroyed?
But the cover-up goes a lot deeper than that.

I have no idea who Deborah Shapley and Stephen Bryen (apart from your link promoting his book) are, but that's probably because I have no idea who are today's outstanding nuclear physicists as unfortunately I've limited my knowledge to military history primary and secondary sources about WWII.

Perhaps you could illuminate Shapley and Bryen's qualifications as experts in this area, so the rest of us can consider their competence. As part of Rumsfeld's crew, I assume that Bryen is about to confirm your exposition of the unknown knowns about Japan's atomic bomb, or perhaps the known uknowns, or the known unknown knowns, ad infinitum. Or ad nauseam.

Be all that is it may, your consistent failure to present anything to support your assertions which contradict known history suggests that you are just putting out teasers to help the sales of your widely anticipated book.

If not, why don't you put your evidence forward now?

EDIT: Thanks to the marvel of Google, I now have some understanding of Bryen's analytical ability in the area of weapons of mass destruction when he was supposedly fully informed at the time as an analytical genius on these matters rather than looking back to Japan's atomic weapons program about which he was, necessarily, less well informed as you say that all documents were destroyed on the orders of Dr Yoshio Nishina and that the Japanese pulled a curtain of silence over their atomic program after WWII.

In a January 2002 article for National Review Online, Bryen pushed the erroneous thesis that Iraq had maintained a well-developed biological weapons program since the first Gulf War in 1991, making it the "leading threat" to "global survival." He argued: "Over the next few years the United States will be searching for ways to handle the anthrax threat, and threats from other biological weapons. But is that enough? Countries that build biological weapons whose effects can't be controlled or even predicted are engaged in global terrorism. That is one reason why the United States ended its offensive biological-warfare program years ago. Countries with a demonstrated capability and willingness to use chem-bio weapons, and who continue to develop nastier forms of biological-terror weapons, are a potential threat to global survival. Iraq, from all the evidence available including recent defectors, is the world's leading threat."[11]

Even prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bryen was part of a core group of foreign policy hardliners and neoconservatives who pushed for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. In February 1998, for example, he joined the likes of Richard Perle, Richard Allen, Frank Gaffney, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser in signing his name to an "open letter" to President Bill Clinton produced by the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf—a precursor letterhead group to the more infamous Project for the New American Century—which advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The letter, part of a broad neoconservative campaign that championed a new post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy aimed at overturning rogue regimes and aggressively pushing democracy, argued that "containment" of Iraq was not viable because of its purported weapons of mass destruction programs. "Only a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad will bring the Iraqi crisis to a satisfactory conclusion," the letter said.[12]
- See more at: http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/p....CaFwfHXO.dpuf

[tankgeezer]

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[JR*]

Nuclear (and later thermonuclear) weapons are probably the most important development in weapons evolution ... since the long pike and halberd. Reason being that they were a huge game-changer in the world of weapons, extending across the significance of other weapons and tactical systems, more important even than muskets, rifles, quick-fire artillery, machine guns and conventional ground-to-ground missiles. Actually, flint-headed spears and arrows might rank in the same bracket.

More recent posts in this thread have done little more than to persuade me that the notion of advanced Japanese nuclear programmes are no more than another emanation of "interested" conspiracy-fantastical notions, not far off the notion of Nazi flying saucers. Unless proved otherwise. Which, I think, is unlikely. Yours from Ice Station Zero, JR.

[royal744]

Don’t think this ever happened. It’s not as if the Japanese were unaware of the possibilities; they just didn’t have enough uranium to make it happen. There were about 3 different nuclear programs in Japan. They should only have had one but never mind; it didn’t happen for the Japanese.

I wonder if it ever occurred to the Japanese that the rather cruel atom bombs the US dropped on Japan, was exactly the same weapon the Japanese were hoping to develop but for which they lacked the fissile material; to make it happen.