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Robert K. Wilcox

Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb Paperback – August 15, 1995

by Wilcox (Author), F A Wilcox (Author), Clyde Wilcox (Author)

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After years of research based on material gathered by American intelligence during the occupation of Japan as well as extensive interviews with surviving participants, Robert Wilcox gives the first detailed account of Japan's version of the Manhattan Project - from its earliest days to the possible testing of an actual weapon. The story involves Japan's leading scientists, including a future Nobel prize winner; a network of Spanish spies working in North America; and a German U-boat desperately trying to reach Japan with a cargo of uranium in the final days before the Third Reich's collapse. But perhaps the most fascinating element is the giant industrial complex in northern Korea where the final aspects of the Japanese atomic research may have taken place. When the Soviet army invaded Korea at the war's end, they had the entire complex dismantled and shipped back to the Soviet Union. We can only speculate about the information they gained from it. This new edition includes recently unearthed research showing that the Japanese spent much more time on their atomic program than previously made public.

Print length

268 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Da Capo Press
Publication date

August 15, 1995
Dimensions

6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

156924815X
ISBN-13

978-1569248157
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Though the United States's use of atomic weapons against Japan has been the subject of much recent debate, Wilcox here contends that the Japanese had successfully assembled and tested its own nuclear device in August 1945 for use in the war. This updated edition includes new information that claims the Japanese spent much more on its atomic program than originally thought. This remains "a story of moral and historical significance" (LJ 3/1/85).
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Da Capo Press; Updated edition (August 15, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 268 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 156924815X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1569248157
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,434,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #786 in Nuclear Physics (Books)
- #2,380 in History of Technology
- #2,392 in Japanese History (Books)

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27 ratings

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JM

Mounting evidence substantiate the claims in the book.

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2016

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At first I was quite shocked to learn some researchers claim Japan exploded a nuclear bomb a few days following the Hiroshima bomb. However, after doing a substantial amount of research, I have come to believe the claim to be accurate. The pieces of the puzzle fit. German U boat 234, Japanese scientist testimony, the newspaper article, the Russian invasion of North Korea, the Korean war, and the cover-up. This book makes a substantial contribution towards a more accurate rewrite of history.

3 people found this helpful

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James Rondo Jensen

Japan almost beat the US to the Atomic Bomb

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2013

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Fifteen years ago I heard that at the end of WW II, the US Navy destroyed 5 cyclotrons in Tokyo by throwing them into the ocean in spite of the protests of a scientist named Nishina. To this day, no one knows who authorized their destruction. I even found a photo on Google of one cyclotron toppling over the edge of a ship in Tokyo Harbor. The story fascinated me because four of my uncles served in the military in the Pacific during the war, also because my dad was a machinist-welder who worked on the Manhattan Project in Hanford, Washington and then on the reconstruction of Pearl Harbor itself. However, on-line searches, the only resource available to me at the time, only produced tantalizing bits of information and photos, e.g. photo of Neils Bohr in Japan in the 1920's with Japanese physicists.
But Robert K. Wilcox has, once more, produced an amazing book that reflects his dogged determination to get to the bottom of an unusual story and write a fascinating book about it. Filing hundreds of FOIA requests, sending letters everywhere he thought he might find information, and interviewing as many people as he could, produced the information that he skilfully put together in this text that reads like a mystery novel.
One of the most surprising parts of the story is the role of Germany in this Japanese project, and the use of their submarines to transport not only uranium, but also samples of novel German armaments, planes, drawings and blue prints. The Tripartite Agreement entered into in the 1930's by Japan, Germany and Italy formed the basis for this sharing of information and materials. It turns out that Japan had a long history of physics research. Einstein even visited Japan in the 1920's.
Another surprising part of the story is how ineffective and incompetent US investigators were in their attempts after the war to discover how far Japanese science had progressed in developing their own atom bomb. One of the keys to unraveling the whole story was a document that one dissenting Japanese scientist secretly refused to incinerate when Japan was frantically destroying evidence and records of their nuclear research and development at the War's end. This document was concealed by Kazuo Kuroda but later came to the US. An excellent one-hour program from "Military History" which is essentially a distillation of Mr. Wilcox's book is available at: [...] Dr. Nishina himself is actually interviewed in this video.
But the most surprising part of the story to me is how far the Japanese atomic bomb project had progressed in spite of a minuscule budget, a small number of nuclear scientists and limited industrial capabilities. Yet as the war was ending, Japan set off a low yield 'bomb' in Konan, Korea where its nuclear industries had already been transported to both protect and conceal them. In comparison to the enormous U.S. Manhattan Project, the Japanese nuclear program was surprisingly small yet it was able to manufacture and set off its own 'gadget'. The facts about Japan's nuclear program during WW II -and the ham-fisted investigation by the U.S. into it at war's end- have been concealed for reasons still not revealed for 50 years, both in and by the US and Japan, are now available.
I recommend this book without reservation. But I recommend it especially to Americans who feel guilty about the nasty consequences to Japan of the atom bomb. As Mr. Wilcox has demonstrated, Japan was attempting to do the exact same thing to the US. We just got the job done first. (jrjensen2000@yahoo.com)

12 people found this helpful

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C. Wagner

Sure! Well, maybe...

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2005

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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.

12 people found this helpful

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Arbitrator

I bought it but I don't "buy" it

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2014

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I just don't believe that Japan was even in the running to build a nuke. Given the massive costs involved and how even for the United States this was an undertaking akin to the later moon landing effort, and that Germany didn't even come close to developing a nuclear weapon, I think the case being made here is ultimately very weak. I've read 100s of scholarly and historical works on WW2 and the Pacific theater and there's nary any other mention of Japan having a clue when it comes to nuclear weapons. Evidently their leaders were totally mystified when the first reports were coming back about what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If they had been working on nukes wouldn't they have a clue about what happened in those incidents? They could also have suspected that the United States might have shot its load with two bombs and perhaps Japan could have held out longer knowing that nukes are hard to build and very expensive, something they would have better realized if they had their own nuclear development program.

It's fashionably in "popular history" to posit that Germany was working on every kind of secret weapon imaginable, from death rays to invisibility cloaking devices, etc. This has been much less the case with Japan and maybe there's a discriminatory element here, with Japanese scientists typically considered to be more imitators than innovators. This book appears to try to redress that imbalance but, again, I'm not convinced.

Surprisingly, even though the subject itself should be very intriguing, the book is a slow read. I found myself struggling to finish and usually with good books about WW2 history, I regret coming to the end.

One man's opinion, yours may differ, of course!

6 people found this helpful

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Eugene Cramer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2018

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This should have been more promoted, it shows the truth

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Top reviews from other countries

northolt

A Great book on a little known subject

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 24, 2011

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This is a very interesting book about a subject that is not widely covered in current literature.It has been updated by the release of declassified imformation.There is perhaps a little too much techniacl information,but it has been very well researched. A book not to be missed by anyone with an interest in this subject.

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Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb Paperback – August 15, 1995

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