Japanese Navy NZ plant

[Werner]

History Channel is reporting the IJN conducted a separate nuclear programme at the "NZ" plant in present day North Korea. We are all aware of the Army program in Tokyo which had been destroyed by B-29 bombing. This plant produced a test article used on an offshore Korean island in July, 1945. The History Channel provides Western verification of the test.

A few weeks later, Russians hauled off all the equipment.

So, the Imperial Japanese Navy was a nuclear power at the same moment as the USA.

Input?

[kennylibben]

yes, didn't we discuss this before?

the Navy nuclear program was much better than the armies, in fact according to many reports they successfully tested in Korea.... thats why the german u-boat (forget the number) was carrying rocket parts to Japan...it was around the moscow area when Germany surrendered - and Japan ordered all germans arrested because they were defectors to the axis alliance.

The germans had the rockets, the japanese the bombs.

[Guest]

thats why the german u-boat (forget the number) was carrying rocket parts to Japan...it was around the moscow area when Germany surrendered -

It must be one might advanced U-boat to navigate itself into the land locked Moscow area.



-Chuck

[Guest]

History Channel is reporting the IJN conducted a separate nuclear programme at the "NZ" plant in present day North Korea. We are all aware of the Army program in Tokyo which had been destroyed by B-29 bombing. This plant produced a test article used on an offshore Korean island in July, 1945. The History Channel provides Western verification of the test.

A few weeks later, Russians hauled off all the equipment.

So, the Imperial Japanese Navy was a nuclear power at the same moment as the USA.

Input?

The notion of IJN building a workable bomb in the same time frame as the US is as far fetched as Dos Moine's 8" shells penetrating Yamato's decks.

The Manhattan program was such a vast project that only concentrated efforts by nations with the greatest resources, and availing itself of the whole hearted assistance of the bulk of the world's most elite physics community, could have pulled it off. It is utterly inconceivable that a theoretical physics nonentity like Japan, not known to be the most intellectually liberal and encouraging of free spawning of ideas needed to advance the frontier of science, devoid of access to physics talents except a meager few home grown, possessing of limited resources, and devoting only such a small portion of that to nuclear research that it could escape notice for 60 years, could have beaten the US to the bomb.


>>>> Inappropriate comment snipped by Cadman, consider this your last warning Chuck.<<<<

[Guest]

The above editorial was mine. I am still having trouble logging in on Firefox.

-Chuck

[Werner]

Several articles I have read in the last few minutes say the claim is made on the flimsiest of evidence.

[kennylibben]

well i didn't say it was true!

However just because they tested one doesn't mean it was on the scale of the manhattan projects...just like North Koreas.

All it had to do was detonate, i didn't say how big, how much fallout, or anything like that.


Also, as most people probably understood - the uboat was north of the moscow area in the WATER. i'm sorry i dont know every russian coastal town...

[Deckard]

What? The Japanese had a nuclear program during WWII?

I can't find any ref's to Japanese nuclear physicists involved with either Soviet, American or British nuclear developement and testing post war.

If they existed, why were these Oriental geniuses sidelined and ignored?

[kennylibben]

well for all we know they might have helped the soviets, we dont know everything that went on in the gulags but we do know the soviets threw many engineers and whatnot in them and forced them to work.


or perhaps, following japanese thinking ... committed suicide?

[Werner]

The Navy scientists in North Korea were most definitely hauled off by the Russians, along with their lab equipment.

One of the Army physicists gets lots of television time talking about how the B-29s ruined his lab.

[Guest]

The Navy scientists in North Korea were most definitely hauled off by the Russians, along with their lab equipment.

One of the Army physicists gets lots of television time talking about how the B-29s ruined his lab.

It would be most amazing if the Russian really did get hold of a program that already produced a bomb, and yet still take another 4 years to make another bomb of their own.

-Chuck

[Roger T]

This story gets trotted out every few years, I'm surprised it took the Nazi Channel, sorry, History Channel this long to cotton on. Now, I've not seen the HC prog itself, though I have no doubt it adheres to that channel's well known high standards of accuracy and non-sensationalism, but the basic story as recycled many times over many years is rot. Both the IJA and IJN ran small research programmes during the war, but neither got very far because of lack of resources. In fact, to call them 'programmes' is to overstate their scale considerably. And yes, a German U-boat went to Japan carrying, among other things, a quantity of yellow cake, but an amount sufficient, I calculated once, to have yielded at most only a couple of pounds of weapons-grade uranium, even had the Japanese possessed the means to do so. The submarine, incidentally, never reached Japan; the war in Europe having ended during her voyage, she surrendered to the USN.

But the idea that Japanese scientists and equipment may have played any role in the development of the Soviet Bomb is nonsense. Not only did the Soviets throw resources after WW2 at the project, they had top class scientists and the work of Klaus Fuchs to help them.

The claim is mainly trotted out for the following reasons:

1) Novelty value. It's part of the slightly morbid desire to imagine a world in which the Axis almost won, and we get a frisson from how close it was when we consider the miracle weapons they almost developed.

2) Sensationalism. Authors have to sell books, so how better to do so than by appealing to (1)?

3) Extra justification for the American use of nuclear weapons. If Japan was seriously working to develop nuclear weapons, then they deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the more.

[chuck]

Also, even with the vast Oakridge nuclear facility, the US only produced enough fissile material for 3 bombs in the 1941-1945 time frame, material for more bombs not becoming available for another year. Where is the facility of corresponding magnitude located in Japanese held territory?

Did the Japanese recognize the fundamental mistakes of physics that made the German program an effective dead end? Who were the unsung supermen of physics in Japan who manage to match the combined efforts of most of the world's most elite theoretical and experimental physicists in New Mexico? Is it plausible that Japan would make such superhuman accomplishments in cutting edge hard science between 1941-1945 when at no other time in its modern history, including the period right up to the present day, has it ever shown either inclination or aptitude in that area?

If the Japanese had a working atomic bomb, don't you think they would realize how hard it was to get the material for just one, and therefore know that the US probably didn't have many more up its sleeve after Nagasaki?

Japanese military has never failed to hang hopes of victory on far thinner thread than a working atomic bomb. If the Japanese actually had a bomb, and suspected the US has just about exhausted its own immediately usable stockpile, would it have surrendered?

[Werner]

3) Extra justification for the American use of nuclear weapons. If Japan was seriously working to develop nuclear weapons, then they deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the more.

I tend to agree to this point most. The nascent "no nukes" movement was already making noise on campus and in universities, particularly because of the letter circulating from a faction of the Los Alamos scientists calling for the new UN to be responsible for nuclear weapons and not the USA.

Their letter is most remarkable and revealing in the political and social naivete of these men. I guess several years on the high plateau of New Mexico had damaged their understanding of the political world unfolding post-war.

[Werner]

It appears that at least two major uranium producing mines are located in Liaoning Province of Manchuria, which would have been under Japanese influence for years before and during the war.

[Guest]

It appears that at least two major uranium producing mines are located in Liaoning Province of Manchuria, which would have been under Japanese influence for years before and during the war.

Not the mines, but the refining facilities. Where are the evidence of uranium refinement on industrial scale?

[Guest]

Perhaps Kim Jung Ill's weapon program is a Japanese leftover?

[Roger T]

The nascent "no nukes" movement was already making noise on campus and in universities, particularly because of the letter circulating from a faction of the Los Alamos scientists calling for the new UN to be responsible for nuclear weapons and not the USA... I guess several years on the high plateau of New Mexico had damaged their understanding of the political world unfolding post-war.

I think you are traducing the Los Alamos scientists. As far as I'm aware, the Los Alamos scientists were remarkably united in their determination to see the bomb completed and used in some way. There was disagreement over how to use it (e.g. a demonstration as opposed to operational use), but that was it (and even then, Oppenheimer was one of the most vociferous critics of the 'demonstration' school of thought). Leo Szilard headed a petition by the Chicago scientists asking the government to think seriously about the use of the bomb, and to do so after making its terms of surrender public and clear to the Japanese:
http://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-17.html

But even then he wasn't ruling out of hand the use of the bomb, but rather requesting greater thought and transparency over consideration of its use.

[Guest]

I believe Werner is, as always, complaining about the perceived idiocy of present day dissenters.

[Roger T]

I believe Werner is, as always, complaining about the perceived idiocy of present day dissenters.

Dissent is a vital element of a mature democracy. I would have thought it would have been welcomed. After all, it's only in police states like the old USSR that dissent is not welcome...

On a more serious note, I've always felt that the anti-nuclear weapon lobby have been a vital counterbalance to the nuclear weapon lobby. God knows what the latter would have got up to if there was never anyone to disagree with them...