Was Japan close on our heels in the production of an atomic bomb? (If not, explain why it is reported that?

Question

they exploded one, resulting from their research at Hungdam, Korea, but totally covered up by our government.)

All traces of the facility were destroyed, so there'd be no evidence left.

I saw this report very recently as a documentary, but I can't remember which one. (This is said so that some will not say that I conjured this up).

Did anyone else see the documentary??

I'd like to know if the whole program was a hoax...

Answer 1

The document was probably made with some rumors. As you say no evidence. Japan didn't make it (having nuke bomb.)

But about the possibility of development, yes. Actually Japan was in R&D at that wartime.
But May 15. 1945, US bombed and the destroyed the facilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_atomic_program

About the prototype in the article:
|| and was detonated on a small island off the coast of what is today
|| North Korea, only weeks prior to the bombing of Hiroshima.
|| Had a device been available, the Imperial Navy planned to
|| mount it on the deck of a Kamakazi Japanese U-Boat and
|| sail it into San Francisco harbor and detonate it.

This part is weired. small island? but there is no name.
And put it on the deck of Kamikaze? or U-boat? which one?
You know what I mean?
Kamikaze was the name for the attacking team by airplane. and no such name for submarines in Japan. and also nobody call the subs as U-boat in Japan. In the time, such western name was prohibited.
As you see, you can find this article is also strange and can't be an evidence.

Answer 2

Yes I saw the documentary. I don't believe that there was ever a Japanese atomic bomb, but it's a fact that Japan had an atomic research program and Germany attempted to ship uranium to Japan. Early in the occupation the University of Tokyo cyclotron was cut up and dumped in Tokyo bay.

Like the Germans, the Japanese realized an atomic bomb was theoretically possible but did not have the industrial capacity to actually construct one in a reasonable time from. After the bombing of the home islands intensified secret weapons programs were moved out of range of the bombing to Korea. If they were able to build one they already had a delivery system in the form of their submarine launched planes.

If you look around the Internet you will find the story of the German sub that surrendered to the Allies while en route to Japan with uranium on-board, details of the research at the University of Tokyo and destruction of the cyclotron. That documentary contained a lot of wild speculation IMO, but there is some truth to the whole story.

Answer 3

Whatever you saw this on should not be called a documentary by any stretch of the imagination. The Japanese were nowhere close to developing a nuclear weapon during the war. What may be clouding the issue for you is the fact that they did have a working biological weapons program near Harbin at Pingfan (I believe that's the name) in Manchuria. They produced and tested (on human subjects) a wide range of biological agents at Pingfan and used some in action during the Sino-Japanese War,euphemistically referred to as the "China Incident". The facilities were leveled by the Japanese near the end of the war. Some of the scientists involved were captured by the Soviets, some by the western allies. Most of the latter avoided being prosecuted for war crimes by sharing their "research" with the United States and presumably others.

Answer 4

The US had captured the right German scientists to make the Manhatten Project work and in a short time. The next closest were the USSR, who were still several months from producing a useable warhead.
It is not totally impossible that Japan was experimenting in that area too but it seems more likely that this 'completely new story out of nowhere' is a product of 'selective revisionism' as the debate still rages over how justified the use of the H-bomb (X2) was in the first place.