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Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb

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The author's research shows the Japanese came far closer to cracking the atomic riddle than they have ever let on. After a half-century of stonewalling by the Japanese and loss of records by the United State government, Robert Wilcox couldn't find the definite answers. Much of his research is unfortunately larded with such phrases as "perhaps" or "possibly." Some of the oral accounts of a Japanese bomb experiment are secondhand or possibly repeated versions of a similar rumor. But the records he dug out of the National Archives (cited box by box) show a pattern of frantic wartime expenditures on fission materials by Japan, attempts to build uranium separators, and plans by the Japanese navy and army to use atomic weapons if the scientists could only finish them in time. The Japanese have never admitted to massive wartime atrocities, let alone their own attempt at building a bomb. The biggest riddle of the book is whether the Japanese, as some reports say, test-detonated their own bomb at a site in present-day North Korea just before the Soviet army closed in. The definite answer may be lost forever.

Wilcox's book explains not only how essential it was to finish WWII as soon as humanly possible, it ties up some loose ends. Why did Russia make a beeline to Hungnam when it entered the war, and why was it so antsy to start the invasion? Why was our country so sure that orientals wouldn't ever develop the bomb? And for those who doubt that Japan would have used it, read the definitive, massive, but eminently readable Japan's Imperial Conspiracy by Bergamini.

Bob Wilcox has done an excellent job of telling the story of Japan's quest for the atomic bomb and has provided credible background and references to substantiate it. His account of Japan's progress towards atomic weapon development is consistent with processes that would be logical and recognizable by anyone familiar with the principles of modern day atomic weapons. I have also discussed the contents of Bob's book with my father, who served as an officer in Korea in the early 50's. He remembers Hangnam, which is cited in Bob's book as one of Japans most important atomic bomb development point and having been captured by Russia, as a secret North Korean missile complex. This is consistent with the book's content. A must read book by those who seek the truth and wish to dispell the guilt complex that the anti-nuclear crowd wishes to impose upon America for bombing Hiroshmia and Nagasaki.

You'll never read Wilcox's theory in your high school history texts. Well, if you believe the U.S. government never lied about or covered up anything, put on your dunce cap and give me twenty pushups. It would appear that both the allies and axis were well on the road to nuclear discover, with the probable exceptions of Italy and Spain, as scientic documents of nuclear interest were freely available and the Manhattan Project was not able to keep the lid on their little secrets. While the FDR team had the lead in tenacity, resources, and money, Germany was well into development as was, according to Wilcox, Japan. Traditionally portrayed as the first victim of the nuclear age, Japan may merely have been slower on the draw, lacking the resources and political cooperation of the U.S. Otherwise, San Franciso may have been transformed into green glass and the invasion of Japan tranformed into an insurmountable task. The bad each country did during conflict would have filled the heavens with stench. There is no reason to believe that, for some altruistic ends, Japan would fail to play the only winning card it had left. So, the book unfolds and the U.S. and Japanese goverments went out of the way to deny Japan's probable attempt to enter the nuclear age. Then, Russia did not help by carrying off everything, probably including top Japanese scientists, from North Korea and forbidding entry to that area by the West. Stalin's cronies did not even let the cat out of the bag about Hitler's skull until more than five decades later. So, do not expect any confirmation from those folks. Wilcox's supposition deserves serious thought and his book deserves wider publication.

Just like other Great Powers of the time, Japan has physicists who knew that an atomic bomb could be built and they did divert resources towards their own bomb program, resources which were extremely scarce in wartime Japan.

Wilcox does a great job with this book. He explains the scientific aspects of the Japanese program, including their hopes for Thorium and other workings unique to the Japanese. Overall, a great book and one that does not perpetuate the "Japanese as innocent victims" school of history.

A very well researched book. One can only wonder why some of the information the author was unable to obtain is still marked "Top Secret" Someday we will know all the facts in this matter, but until then this book provides enough information for us to stop feeling guilty about dropping the bomb, they would have if they had it.

This is a very interesting book. Every person interested in history, particularly histories of WWII and of the use of the atomic bomb at the end of WWII must have a copy of this book on their reference shelf! You can also extend this book to think about how it provides insights into the present day nuclear weapons program of North Korea.

The History Channel presented a television program which is available on DVD that uses some notes that were kept privately by some of the scientists. it would be worth while to compare the names from Wilcox's book (published in 1995) with some of the more recently released work.

It does appear that Japan tested a nuke a few days after the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. If Japan had put their test nuke aboard a submarine and detonated it under the U.S. invasion fleet or detonated it next to the island of Tinian where we had our B-29's bombers based, the war might have ended differently.

Here is the link to the History Channel's DVD:

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I added quotation marks to prevent it from being a hot link, so just remove the quotes.

If you add up what is publicly available, almost every major country was working on an atomic bomb in one way or another, quickly or slowly, during WWII.

Wilcox also points out that a lot of the nuclear weapons programs were deeply concealed with "code names" being given to make them look like something else.

It's also worth getting a book by Richelson, "Spying on the Bomb", here on Amazon that describes the atomic bomb programs in many other countries after WWII.

This book is extremely interesting and provides not only a huge amount of detail but also provides places to do further research if anyone is so inclined.

Totally fascinating!

Robert Wilcox has documented the final answer to those who might suggest that the US had some racist motive to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. They, in fact, planned to drop one on us! Yoshio Nishina, one of the world's formost nuclear scientists, had a major operation underway to develop nuclear weapons for WW-II Japan. It is only now that we have the declassified files, can we disclose this information. My hat is off to Robert for this outstanding book. REQUIRED READING IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH.

Robert A. Clark President Internation Association of Military Technology Historians

This is an interesting book about Japan building the atomic bomb. The location where the research was conducted was North Korea.

I think this is a good book.

Although personally I believe that they are never any real winners in wars. The winning side may suffer economic problems after and deal with the repercussions of what they did to win, the losing side may get economic sanctions placed on them that will cause suffering, or be looked at as a evil and terrible race. This book does states accurately using declassified WW2 documents how close the Japanese came to bombing us first. My dad told me that they were a day or two from mastering the A bomb, when we did it first, and well he was right. In this book the author interviews a japanese woman whose dad was a scientist on the Atomic Project is obviously upset that he was digging up history because she said to him:
"Whay are you trying to do this anyways? So the americans are justified in thier decision?"
He states back (rather surprised):
"Its that theres information out there to be learned and I wish to know."
Im paraphrasing from my memory when I read this book from a library so its prolly not entirely word for word, its a definite read for anyone who is interested in the "hidden" history of WW2.