The Japanese nuclear weapons program

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wm
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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#496

Post by wm » 12 Feb 2019, 19:20

Genro wrote:
07 Feb 2019, 12:12
In the early part of 1938, several thousand Jewish refugees congregated at Otpor, a railway station on the Russian Manchuria border requesting permission to travel to Shanghai and Japan. General Kichiro Higuchi who was in charge of the army in Manchuria forwarded the request to Tojo on humanitarian grounds and Tojo agreed. Hitler was furious and instructed Ribbentrop the foreign minister to demand that Higuchi be punished but Tojo did nothing for a few months and then promoted Higuchi.
That's interesting, may I ask for a source?
Because in 1938 the Nazis actively and eagerly cooperated with anybody who facilitated Jewish emigration from Germany, and that included the Jews themselves - see the Haavara Agreement.
The main problem the German Jews faced, and only the poor ones, was the high cost of emigration, not the Nazis.

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#497

Post by Genro » 13 Feb 2019, 13:57

There are numerous references on the web under Otpor incident and Gen. Kiichiro Higuchi. He is honoured in Israel along with Chiune Sugihara the Japanese vice consul to Lithuania.

Sugihara was inundated with requests for visa for Shanghai and Japan from refugees from Poland and asked three time for permission to issue them. Three time Tokyo said only transit visa i.e. only to a third country and only if they have sufficient financial resources. Sugihara ignored the instruction and issued some 5000 visas, one visa for a family. He spent his last days going door to door selling light bulbs. At his funeral the Israeli Ambassador and dozens of ex-refugees and their decedent attended, much too the embarrassment of the Japanese government.

You are right about the Haavara agreement the details of which are covered in detail on the web. What is forgotten though is that in July 1938 at the meeting of the League of Nations at Evian in France, apart from a few island counties in the Caribbean everybody else voted not to accept any further Jewish refugees. This was 3 month after the Otpor incident. The Nazi press made a lot out of this and as a result Hitler realizing the indifference of the rest of the world to the refugee problem terminated the Haavara agreement and looked for an alternative solution.


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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#498

Post by Genro » 13 Feb 2019, 17:59

As a footnote to the outcome of the Evian conference, the British government issued a ‘white paper’ prohibiting any further immigration into Palestine, which was then under a British mandate.

Then there was the case of the SS St Louis carrying some 960 Jewish refugees looking for sanctuary in America. Cordell Hull the secretary of state, refused to allow them to land and even sending out patrol boats to make sure. The ship eventually returned to Europe were the refugees were taken in by Britain, Belgium and France. Those who went to Belgium and France probably did not survive the war.

In 1940 the SS Quanzu carrying refugees requested permission to land in America and Hull again refused them but Eleanor Roosevelt out manoeuvred Hull and the refugees eventually disembarked in America.

Cordell Hull was instigator of the ultimatum to Japan (Hull Note).

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wm
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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#499

Post by wm » 13 Feb 2019, 22:05

Well, the St. Louis is a story of a group of (wealthy) Jews on a Nazi luxury ocean liner traveling to Cuba with fake Cuban visas, but in fact, shopping for a nice country to emigrate.
They refused to land in Cuba (because it wasn't a nice country), in Dominikana and Honduras (again, not nice countries) and ended up in Belgium, Britain, and France - and that by their own choice.

I was more concerned with that "Hitler was furious" which rather should have been "Hitler was delighted."

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#500

Post by Genro » 14 Feb 2019, 11:50

(They refused to land in Cuba (because it wasn't a nice country),
Cuba, America and Canada all refused them entry unlike France ,Belgium and Britain.

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#501

Post by Genro » 14 Feb 2019, 12:07

In the words of the Elizabethan essayist John Dunne ;
‘No man is an island for I am involved in mankind, therefore never send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’

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wm
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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#502

Post by wm » 14 Feb 2019, 21:14

Unfortunately, it's the Hollywood version of events.

They sailed without American/Canadian visas so no wonder they weren't allowed. Visas had to be obtained before sailing.
Even more, many of them were on the waiting list for American immigration visas, so by demanding to be admitted, they were trying to jump the queue ahead of other Jews.

Roosevelt and Batista had an agreement, Jews for lowering American sugar tariffs. As result, thousands of Jews were allowed to emigrate to Cuba.
But the St. Louis Jews didn't have proper visas, so as it was customary in that part of the world, they were asked for a bribe ($500 per person). The bribe money was ready to be handed over but in the end, the passengers decided to try their luck somewhere else, i.e. in Europe.

As I said it was their choice, actually they were delighted to be able to return to Europe.

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#503

Post by williamjpellas » 28 May 2019, 05:28

I have always wondered just how much cooperation existed during the alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan. The following would give the idea of a somewhat ’frosty’ relationship, certainly at a diplomatic level.

This may have been true on issues such as the Jewish question---and who would have believed that Japan would be more merciful towards them than the Nazis---but the big three Axis nations were certainly all in on military cooperation with one another. My primary interest in this regard is the nature and extent of nuclear weapons cooperation between Germany and Japan.

We know for a fact that German and Japanese submarines both attempted to take cargoes of uranium in some form from Germany or German-held territory to Japan. It is difficult to establish much beyond this in any definitive way without conducting a truly comprehensive archival search with a fine-toothed comb. (Italian "boats" and even a few surface ships were also running war materiel to Japan, but I have never read any source which states that Italy was directly involved in the atomic bomb angle.) I can tell you that during the war years, at least two Japanese scientist-technicians worked for Manfred von Ardenne's personal superlab, the Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik. Officially, they were there to study German work in developing radar, but von Ardenne was unquestionably one of the most important men, if not the most important, in the entire Nazi nuclear weapons effort. I suspect the Japanese were in von Ardenne's orbit as part of a nuclear weapons tech exchange, but I don't have any hard documentary proof at this time.

There was also a German POW interrogation which revealed that ultra long distance flights were made between Finland and Japan by at least one (1) of the prototype aircraft produced in the cancelled Amerikabomber project. These planes were four or six engined bombers, some of which were repurposed for use by German sonderkommando (special forces) units. I would imagine that they were employed for VIP transport and top secret courier missions, but surely they would have been well placed to serve as part of the supporting infrastructure connecting at least some aspects of the nuclear weapons R&D that was being done by various entities and organizations in Japan and Germany.

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#504

Post by OpanaPointer » 29 May 2019, 11:06

Look at the infrastructure needed in the US atomic bomb program. That would have been hidden after the war.
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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#505

Post by DavidFrankenberg » 29 May 2019, 13:44

wm wrote:
13 Feb 2019, 22:05
Well, the St. Louis is a story of a group of (wealthy) Jews on a Nazi luxury ocean liner traveling to Cuba with fake Cuban visas, but in fact, shopping for a nice country to emigrate.
They refused to land in Cuba (because it wasn't a nice country), in Dominikana and Honduras (again, not nice countries) and ended up in Belgium, Britain, and France - and that by their own choice.

I was more concerned with that "Hitler was furious" which rather should have been "Hitler was delighted."
Cuban authorities didnt authorize the St Louis to land there. It was not authrozied to debark its passengers. No Cuba, no USA, no Canada... Back to Europe !

That was not "their own choice".

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#506

Post by lazycat1984 » 01 Jun 2019, 21:48

There's definitely more going on that we've all been told. For obvious reasons.

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#507

Post by wm » 02 Jun 2019, 23:52

DavidFrankenberg wrote:
29 May 2019, 13:44
That was not "their own choice".
The Cubans demanded $500 per passenger for the right to stay in Cuba, but the passengers' arrogant spokesperson Berenson (a friend of Roosevelt) decided it wasn't worth it.

They didn't merely return to Europe, they ended up in Britain, Belgium, and France and were very happy about their choice - because reasonably, most Jews strongly preferred Western Europe over Latin America.

The entire story is basically an anti-American conspiracy theory, that the Americans sent Jews to gas chambers.

Thanks to Roosevelt-Batista "Jews for lower sugar tariffs" deal already about 6000 Jews arrived in Cuba (Berenson himself was behind the arrangement), and the local elites, fearing for their livelihood, facing so many doctors and other highly qualified professionals invading their island, protested - but still, over 2000 Jews were admitted after the St. Louis.

St. Louis Refugees Express Gratitude for Havens and J.D.C. Aid
James N. Rosenberg, chairman of the national council of the Joint Distribution Committee, today made public the following radiogram from the former passengers of the German liner St. Louis, all of whom have now found havens:
“Please accept for American Joint Distribution Committee and for Governments of Belgium, Holland, France and England the deepest and eternal thanks of men, women and children united by common fate aboard St. Louis.
Committee of Passengers.”


Well, recently the Canadian leader begged for forgiveness for St. Louis, i.e., for the Hollywood version of the story. :)

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#508

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 03 Jun 2019, 16:46

wm wrote:
12 Feb 2019, 19:20
Genro wrote:
07 Feb 2019, 12:12
In the early part of 1938, several thousand Jewish refugees congregated at Otpor, a railway station on the Russian Manchuria border requesting permission to travel to Shanghai and Japan. General Kichiro Higuchi who was in charge of the army in Manchuria forwarded the request to Tojo on humanitarian grounds and Tojo agreed. Hitler was furious and instructed Ribbentrop the foreign minister to demand that Higuchi be punished but Tojo did nothing for a few months and then promoted Higuchi.
That's interesting, may I ask for a source?
Because in 1938 the Nazis actively and eagerly cooperated with anybody who facilitated Jewish emigration from Germany, and that included the Jews themselves - see the Haavara Agreement.
The main problem the German Jews faced, and only the poor ones, was the high cost of emigration, not the Nazis.

I request a Moderator to isolate the comments about Jewish Refugees of Japan and other places in/before WWII and the inevitable Godwin Laws/antisemitism of the world/ etc issues and those to be split-off into its own topic rather than endanger and derail this totally unrelated and great long running topic about the Japanese nuclear weapon program.

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#509

Post by DavidFrankenberg » 09 Jun 2019, 19:21

wm wrote:
02 Jun 2019, 23:52
DavidFrankenberg wrote:
29 May 2019, 13:44
That was not "their own choice".
The Cubans demanded $500 per passenger for the right to stay in Cuba, but the passengers' arrogant spokesperson Berenson (a friend of Roosevelt) decided it wasn't worth it.
You seem to be right !
"[cuban president] Bru offered to admit the passengers if the JDC posted a $453,500 bond ($500 per passenger). Berenson made a counteroffer, but Bru rejected the proposal and broke off negotiations."
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... e-st-louis

Terrible...
500$ in 1939 is like 9.000$ today. 900 refugees meant like 8 millions $ today !

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Re: The Japanese nuclear weapons program

#510

Post by wm » 11 Jul 2019, 22:24

From their perspective their decision was correct, they chose first-world Western countries over third-world Cuba.
At that time the defeat of France, the Holocaust, even the ww2 were things beyond sci-fi.

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