IS this true that Japan had a secret atomic project during world war II?

During the 1930s, the scientific community in the world started to understand the power of nuclear energy, and Imperial Japan, like many other governments, was made aware of the possibility of developing a weapon which utilized nuclear fission as the source of its energy. The central figure of the Japanese atomic program is Dr. Yoshio Nishina, who also was a friend of Niels Bohr, and a close associate of Albert Einstein. Dr. Nishina was a highly skilled world class scientist with excellent leadership qualities. He also co-authored the Klein-Nishina Formula, and the Nishina crater on the moon is named after him.





Dr. Nishina established his own Laboratory at the Riken (the Institute for Physical and Chemical Research) in 1931 to study high-energy physics. He built his first 26 inch cyclotron in 1936, and another 60 inch 220 ton cyclotron in 1937. In 1938 Japan also purchased a cyclotron from the University of California, Berkeley.





Dr. Nishina knew and understood the military potential of nuclear weapons, and was worried that the Americans were working on a nuclear weapon, which could be鈥攁nd eventually was鈥攗sed against Japan. About the same time, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the first investigations into fission weapons in the United States, which eventually evolved into the massive Manhattan Project (the very laboratory from which Japan purchased its own cyclotron would become one of the major sites for weapons research). Dr. Nishina tried to match the U.S. research, and promoted the development of a nuclear weapon. In October 1940, Lt. General Takeo Yasuda of the Japanese army finally decided that such a weapon was feasible and practical, and the Japanese atomic program started in July 1941 under the guidance of Dr. Nishina.IS this true that Japan had a secret atomic project during world war II?
Immediately prior to and/or during (the government in exile, in some cases) the following countries were exploring the possibility or working to make one: U.S., England, Italy, Germany, U.S.S.R., France, Japan. Yes, folks--at least seven countries wanted the bomb. Germany had a delivery vehicle. The U.S. wanted to join with England in the effort, but the English wanted to go it alone. When the U.S. pulled out in front, England wanted to join the U.S. effort but by then there wasn't any advantage to the Americans.





Among physicists, it wasn't that big a secret.IS this true that Japan had a secret atomic project during world war II?
if thats true I don't sympathise them
Of coarse and so did Germany.
It probably had such a project. For some reason Japan felt confident enough to attack Pearl Harbour. However, during the years leading to World War II three countries were competing to unlock a key secret into the developing of a nuclear arsenal. They were Germany, the US, and France. The point of contention was reaching or discovering the point of fission for the uranium.
My sources say no.





As I see it, yes.
yes. the japanese were getting information, and uranium from germany, but when germany was defeated, the german subs turned themselves over to the allies. the japanese never received the german technology.
Yes. But it was not that secret. And US air force bombed and destroyed the R%26amp;D facilities.
Yes, and chemical and biological weapons programs.
In the fall of 1940, the Japanese army concluded that constructing an atomic bomb was indeed feasible. The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, or Rikken, was assigned the project under the direction of Yoshio Nishina. The Japanese Navy was also diligently working to create its own ';superbomb'; under a project was dubbed F-Go, headed by Bunsaku Arakatsu at the end of World War II. The F-Go program [or No. F, for fission] began at Kyoto in 1942. However, the military commitment wasn't backed with adequate resources, and the Japanese effort to an atomic bomb had made little progress by the end of the war.





Japan's nuclear efforts were disrupted in April 1945 when a B-29 raid damaged Nishina's thermal diffusion separation apparatus. Some reports claim the Japanese subsequently moved their atomic operations Konan [Hungnam, now part of North Korea]. The Japanese may have used this facility at for making small quantities of heavy water. The Japanese plant was captured by Soviet troops at war's end, and some reports claim that the output of the Hungnam plant was collected every other month by Soviet submarines.








There are indications that Japan had a more sizable program than is commonly understood, and that there was close cooperation among the Axis powers, including a secretive exchange of war materiel. The German submarine U-234, which surrendered to US forces in May 1945, was found to be carrying 560 kilograms of Uranium oxide destined for Japan's own atomic program. The oxide contained about 3.5 kilograms of the isotope U-235, which would have been about a fifth of the total U-235 needed to make one bomb. After Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, the occupying US Army found five Japanese cyclotrons, which could be used to separate fissionable material from ordinary uranium. The Americans smashed the cyclotrons and dumped them into Tokyo Harbor.


Although possession of nuclear weapons is not forbidden in the constitution, Japan, as the only nation to experience the devastation of atomic attack, early expressed its abhorrence of nuclear arms and determined never to acquire them. The Basic Atomic Energy Law of 1956 limits research, development, and utilization of nuclear power to peaceful uses, and beginning in 1956, national policy has embodied ';three non-nuclear principles';--forbidding the nation to possess or manufacture nuclear weapons or to allow them to be introduced into the nation. Prime Minister Eisaku Sato made this pledge - known as the Three Non-Nuclear Principles - on February 5, 1968. The notion was formalized by the Japanese Diet on November 24, 1971. In 1976 Japan ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (adopted by the United Nations Security Council in 1968) and reiterated its intention never to ';develop, use, or allow the transportation of nuclear weapons through its territory
of course; everyone was trying to build ';the Bomb';, and we just got there first.





oh, and a reminder that information off Wikipedia, while usually true, can be edited or blurred or just deleted, so be advised that, though extensive, it is not always reliable.