The Japanese nuclear weapons program

[williamjpellas]

Larry,

You are right to say that the purported test detonation is in question and that there is little or no empirical proof that it actually occurred---although the captured Japanese officer, who had been in charge of counterintelligence at Hungnam/Konan, did give some details of the alleged blast that are definitely in line with what we do know for certain about the Japanese atomic weapons design that has been discovered to date. (See my previous post on "Wakabayashi's" description of the size of the test blast fireball.) However, it is more than noteworthy that all trends in the information unearthed to date definitely point to a Japanese atomic weapons program that is "larger than usually understood", as the Federation of American Scientists puts it in their website article "Japan Atomic Weapons Program". Really, the only question is how close Japan came to a functional, deployable atomic fission warhead. What is emphatically not in doubt is that Tokyo was definitely pursuing weapons of mass destruction during the war and would certainly have used them with neither hesitation nor remorse had she been able to. We already know bioweapon attacks were carried out against Chinese civilians and Allied POWs, by the notorious "Unit 731", in China. (The lead Japanese scientist in this effort was a special guest lecturer at Ft. Detrick, MD, shortly after the war.) We already know that larger bioweapon missions were planned for September 1945 against US west coast cities, via aircraft launched from submarine dry decks. It would have been a simple matter to turn one of these already-planned missions into a nuclear kamikaze attack against a US port city such as San Francisco or Seattle. (Such an attack would have used a submarine itself as the delivery platform, as the aircraft carried by Japanese subs were not capable of lifting even a relatively small first generation atomic bomb.) There is more to this story than has been made public; the first place to start looking is of course Wilcox, but remember that Wilcox himself was tipped off by the late Yale University professor, Derek de Solla Price. Price got wind of this through (among other sources) his Japanese graduate student, Eri Yagi. Yagi, now widely known---like her mentor, de Solla Price---as "a distinguished historian of science", is still alive. I have attempted to contact her, but she is not talking, at least, not to me. In any case, Price wrote a letter in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in the early 1960s seeking more information about Japan's wartime a-bombs, and was soundly rebuffed. It took Wilcox, with the Freedom of Information Act, and his research at the National Archives, to finally bring this story back to the light of day.

[Larry D.]

I have no issues with your concise summation, wjp. The one thing I found of particular interest in the History Channel documentary came at the end when the narrator implied rather strongly that the HC's staff had tried to obtain more information on their own from the USG and were told that there was no more undisclosed documentation, at least that anyone knew about. Like you and many others, I do believe that there is additional documentation on this subject that we have not yet seen. But unlike most others, I do not believe it is being intentionally withheld. I believe it is simply "lost", i.e., buried in boxes in agency storage areas somewhere and no one wants to expend the time and energy to try and find it. I also believe that if ever found it will not reveal much that we don't already know or bring new facts to bear that will significantly alter the conclusions arrived at by Wilcox.

[williamjpellas]

It has been brought to my attention recently that the explosive yield of atomic detonations does not follow an arithmetic model but rather an exponential model. In other words, in an earlier post I mentioned that the Japanese source in David Snell's article said the Japanese bomb produced a fireball that was 100 yards in diameter, whereas when the American Fat Man went off, it produced a fireball that was 300 yards in diameter, ie, 3 times as large. Thus I speculated that, if it actually happened, the Japanese test detonation had an explosive yield about a third the size of the American plutonium bomb, therefore: Fat Man was 20-22 kilotons, the genzai bakudan must have been 6-8 kilotons.

The physics of atomic detonations evidently does not work this way. Perhaps there is someone with precise knowledge who could give a more exact estimate of the approximate yield in kilotons of an atomic explosion that produced a fireball 100 yards in diameter.

Again, though, the smaller size of the purported test blast in comparison with the contemporary American weapons is consistent with the other information that has come to light thus far.

[LWD]

Well if the fire ball is considered an energy phenomina then it will be porportional to the cube of the linear dimensions. That is all other things being equal a fire ball that is half the diameter of the referance one will have 1/8th the energy and if it's one third the referance diameter 1/27th of the energy. Other factors can effect this in particular ground vs air vs subterainian burst. This probably overstates the power of the smaller explosions to some extent as more energy will be lost in the bigger ones expanding out to maximum diamter. The bomb design can also make a bid difference here.

[williamjpellas]

Using the calculations just posted, it would mean the Japanese bomb was just under 1 kiloton in terms of its yield. That is, using 22 KT as the yield for Fat Man, with a fireball of 300 yards, compared with the Japanese bomb's fireball of 100 yards, thus 1/27th of 22KT which equals .814 KT.

Hmmm. That still seems small to me, although there are the "other factors" you just mentioned. And once again, a small yield is consistent with the BBC story which said "experts" concluded the Nishina/Riken weapon would have worked but was "not very powerful". I have read that Nishina's original design studies called for a very small core of U-235 which would then be surrounded by U-238, perhaps even in the form of ore instead of refined and machined metal. Perhaps the Korean test, if it happened, was a Nishina bomb and not some later, more refined, or even Navy-original design. I have never thought this likely, given that the Nishina/Kuroda/Riken papers date from 1943, given the trickle of stories about the (reputed) discovery of bomb designs comparable to the American Little Boy weapon, and given the presence of Arakatsu and Yukawa---if anything, greater scientists even than Nishina---on the Navy's atomic team.

I know that the Asahi Shimbun newspaper has been the most consistent and forthcoming Japanese source in recent years regarding Japan's WWII atomic bomb efforts. It will certainly be the next place I look in my research.

In the meantime, I recently came across something on the Federation of American Scientists site that made me sit up and take notice. It turns out that India has made a considerable investment in thorium fuel cycle technology. It also turns out that U-233 is an even better bomb fuel than U-235, albeit more dangerous to work with in terms of radiation exposure. But the critical mass necessary for detonation of U-233 is much smaller than that of U-235. In fact, U-233 is almost as readily fissionable as plutonium. This may perhaps lend more credence to the theory that IJN's crash, end of the war bomb assembly program in Korea was based on U-233 derived from thorium and not the less readily available U-235---though this is speculative, it is interesting.

Go here for the article from FAS: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Fission.html The U-233 comparison with U-235 and Plutonium is at the bottom of the page.

For information on the modern Indian Thorium-to-U233 production, go here: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaArsenal.html

The most relevant paragraph follows. Note especially the last sentence:

Given its immense thorium resources, India is actively interested in developing the thorium/U-233 fuel cycle. India is known to have produced kilogram quantities of U-233 by irradiating thorium in CIR, Dhruva, and MAPS reactors. Substantial production of U-233 is not practical though with natural uranium fueled reactors. The thorium cycle requires more highly enriched fuel to have an acceptable breeding ratio with the non-fissile thorium blanket. Reactor-grade plutonium from MAPS could serve as start-up fuel for U-233 plants in the future. If available U-233 is as effective a weapon material as plutonium.

U-233 can also be produced by accelerator bombardment, as with a cyclotron. Cyclotrons were of course 1930s technology and Japan had at least a few of them. Certainly what India is doing today is only partially relevant to what Japan may have been trying to do in the 1940s, but again: while speculative, it is noteworthy. I will post more information as I dig it up.

[williamjpellas]

If anyone is interested, there is some great spadework that was done on another forum not long ago, including the posting of the only photos I've ever seen of the Hungnam installation. The link that follows takes you to Page 3 of the Enola Gay discussion. The entire thread is great, but pages 3 and 4 are the most relevant to what we're doing here.

http://www.jref.com/forum/showthread.php?p=237346

[Kim Sung]

Nice link, thanks~

[Larry D.]

If anyone is interested, there is some great spadework that was done on another forum not long ago, including the posting of the only photos I've ever seen of the Hungnam installation. The link that follows takes you to Page 3 of the Enola Gay discussion. The entire thread is great, but pages 3 and 4 are the most relevant to what we're doing here.

http://www.jref.com/forum/showthread.php?p=237346

Hi William,

Well, I see you are still gnawing on the radioactive bone of historical contention. "Silverpoint" and "Lexicon" on the link you directed us to seem to be just as skeptical as I and many other are.

The main stumbling block is still the centrifuge, or rather the lack of them. The news is full of the Iran "bomb scare" story today and great speculation as to the number of centrifuges they have, with 250 to 1,000 being the most-heard number. A number of scientific "experts" have come forward and ventured that Iran will need 5,000 centrifuges to construct a working weapon is less than 3 to 5 years. That, of course, is in addition to an ability to master the difficult shaping process of the core ball. If my terminology is not up to snuff here, please forgive me as I am no where near as knowledgeable about this subject as you are.

So, given the centrifuge issue noted above, I still cannot understand how Japan could have produced sufficient material for a detonation with just a single Army centrifuge and a single Navy centrifuge. And this is the same hurdle that has tripped up the other skeptics, too, including the official USG postwar investigators.

Anyway, William, I sure hope you continue your inquiries because this will be one of the top 5 or 10 stories of the past 61 years if you are able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Japan detonated a nuclear weapon on that hot and humid morning of 12 August 1945.

Well, I'll leave it with that, William, because it is not my intention to restart this discussion. I'm out of ammunition because I don't try and keep up with the subject. However, I still find it interesting and I enjoyed reading the postings on the link. Thanks.

Best,

--Larry

[williamjpellas]

Nice to see you again, Larry!

However, the centrifuge is not the only machine Japan used, or tried to use, during WWII in her effort to produce HEU. As background, we know from the Lake Biwa Conference just prior to the US atomic missions that IJN's Project F-Go had in mind to produce centrifuges to separate U-235 (and maybe U-233) from the naturally-occuring U-238. The postwar (1960s) Japanese source, The Emperor and Showa History, claims that the Navy centrifuges were never built. Robert Wilcox critic John Dower, the leftist history professor, adds in his book Japan In War and Peace the claim that even if they had been constructed, they wouldn't have been capable of the speed necessary to complete their task. Jane's Defence is the most prominent organization of which I am aware that says at least one centrifuge was built at Hungnam. Jane's, in fact, considers this WWII Japanese machine to be the beginning of the modern North Korean weapons program.

So, there is still some mystery about the centrifuges. But there is no doubt that 6 massive thermal diffusion separators were built, under the personal supervision of Lt. Col. Tatsusaburo Suzuki, at Sumitomo Corporation's Amagasaki Factory. These were upgraded versions of the prototype machine constructed earlier under Nishina, at Riken; Nishina's device, although technically sound, barely worked because low grade metals had been used in its piping and they were not suitable for processing the incredibly corrosive uranium-hexaflouride gas from which U-235 could be separated. Suzuki, remember, testified at a 1995 press conference in Tokyo that Japan got as far as actual HEU production, albeit supposedly only a few pounds (he said it was "about 11"). You'll forgive me for being skeptical, given the fact that as more time passes, the Japanese bomb programs, so to speak, keep getting bigger and more advanced. The thermal diffusion separators were huge, several stories tall, and what became of them is a mystery. They were not discovered by US Occupation troops on the Japanese mainland. Wilcox has papers that refer to "an evacuation point" related to the Navy program, so the most likely possibility is that there was an attempt to move them to Korea. Were they sunk en route, were they captured by the Soviets, and did they serve as a template for production of more indigenously-built separators in Korea?

These are some of the most relevant remaining questions. In addition to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, I intend to ask for help from the Russians. Ya never know what documents might be lurking in the Kremlin, or in some Soviet era filing cabinet somewhere. There is also the thorium to U233 route to be considered, which is less likely but still deserving of thorough investigation.

So, we'll see what happens. And yes, it would be one of, if not the biggest, science stories of the past century if it happened and if it could be proven. That's why I keep digging!

More information as I get it....

[Larry D.]

.....So, we'll see what happens. And yes, it would be one of, if not the biggest, science stories of the past century if it happened and if it could be proven. That's why I keep digging!

More information as I get it....

Fascinating as ever, William! Your plans regarding Soviet documentation sound promising. I have no doubt whatsoever that there are many thick files on the subject in Russia. The information they contain would greatly expand our knowledge of the Japanese atomic projects and especially the Hungnam facility.

Best wishes for success!

[williamjpellas]

A useful tidbit here is the fact that a number of Koreans have testified in a South Korean TV documentary that they personally witnessed IJN lead nuclear scientist Bunsaku Arakatsu deliver a series of lectures in Korea during WWII, and that among the topics he discussed was atomic fission. This might seem silly on the surface of it until you remember that academics are a remarkably resilient (or is it deluded?) bunch; German atomic scientist Werner Heisenberg, for example, travelled to Switzerland on a speaking tour during the War. At one of his speeches, American OSS agent Moe Berg was in the audience, and he was under orders to shoot Heisenberg if he made any mention of an atomic bomb. Heisenberg did not, and Berg allowed him to live. (Or so the story went in a little blurb I read in the Time-Life WWII series; some of Berg's assertions are at least questionable in retrospect. But that's how it goes in "the war in the shadows"; there is much about the second world war that we will never know with any certainty.)

The Asahi Shimbun Japanese newspaper ran a story about Arakatsu a couple of years ago under the headline "Lost Atomic Research Surfaces in Hiroshima". I mention it here because it is further confirmation of his advanced knowledge of nuclear weapon physics.

[Kim Sung]

A useful tidbit here is the fact that a number of Koreans have testified in a South Korean TV documentary that they personally witnessed IJN lead nuclear scientist Bunsaku Arakatsu deliver a series of lectures in Korea during WWII, and that among the topics he discussed was atomic fission.

According to the TV documentary I've seen last year, the Japanese conducted an atomic test at the East Sea (Sea of Japan) near Hungnam during the war. This fact was covered in an American newspaper in 1946.

[williamjpellas]

This fact was covered in an American newspaper in 1946.

Well, this claim was covered in an American newspaper in 1946. If you read through this entire thread, you'll get a very good idea of where the historical research and scholarship is on this issue. Basically, there's a lot of smoke, but no smoking gun. At least, not yet. But we keep digging.

[Redbeard]

Documents hidden since World War II showing Japan's plans for an atomic bomb have been returned to the country, according to a newspaper report.
The widow of the Japanese scientist who had spirited the documents out of the country after the war has given them to a Tokyo research institute, the Asahi daily says.
The 23-page dossier shows the Japanese army's plans for a relatively weak atomic bomb - blueprints that were ordered destroyed just before Japan's surrender in 1945.
The documents were instead secretly given to chemist Kazuo Kuroda, who then left for the United States and died there last year.
The documents, the newspaper says, could be a valuable addition to the study of Japan's wartime history.
They show how far Japan got in trying to build nuclear weapons of its own before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people in August 1945 and forcing a surrender.
...
A photograph published in the newspaper shows diagrams and drawings of a bomb, together with text written by a military officer who interviewed the scientist at the head of the atomic bomb development team.
But the newspaper says experts who have examined the documents do not believe the bomb would have been very powerful.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2170881.stm

/Marcus

This story has changed and been mis-represented so much over the decades it is disturbing. Another version is that her husband was arrested and threatened with execution as a war criminal unless he was useful to the American agenda. Like so many, he lied about his importance and was set up as a Professor teaching classes to former enemy student eventhough he didn't speak English, and was protected from American investigations hunting war criminals finding haven in America.

That neither he, nor his wife nor children(who typically had immediate religious conversions the story points out), NEVER returned to Japan, but did provide documents on behalf of a book they were to share profits in authored by that same 'famous' American journalist who couldn't even provide a name let alone proof of 'witnesse's and 'sources' like his Japanese Security officer, let alone hold down a full-time job with the Post or get anyone's post-war support to publish his story which you know would be a best seller if he could.
The above article makes it sound different, doesn't it?
In reality, and I have seen counter-documentaries on Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese TV regarding this story, the reason alot of this 'evidence' was withdrawn from scrutiny was because of things like claims of fraud, post-war American ink and so forth, but especially the unproven Japanese sources at the foundation of the claims of actual successful weapons tests.

I was one who was trying to gain face(brown nose) to my (then) Korean employers with such stories only to find even they and Chinese not only telling me that if there were any evidence, radiation or otherwise, that they would be the first to support American claims on this story. Wheras in fact, although they also admit the Japanese were working on an atomic bomb, they find this entire story-line just another American propaganda effort to try to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki when even Korea, Taiwan and China agree they were wrong and war crimes.

I only came off as another 'ugly American', flaunting my revisioning of history and that international law and conventions apply to everyone else but us, and the world should be content with that 'reality'.

As far as these defector sources, my last Korean boss, who was a great fan of the American TV series "Law and Order", put it to me this way while translating a Korean documentary on the topic. A Judge nor Jury would accept the testimony of a prisoner facing the death penalty or prison, pardoned even rewarded by the Prosecuting District Attorney if he says what the Prosecution wants him to say. Trying to argue we would, was not a good idea to such a fan of the show.

I had honestly thought that by espousing this said same line or reasoning apparently in the majority here, that it would help my career with Koreans or Chinese. I was stunned to find it the opposite. And this was even before we invaded Iraq. But that has only made things worse. Needless to say, I ended up looking instead like the 'ugly American' trying to justify why we are above the law.

Today I have no problem accepting that the Japanese were working on their own atomic bomb program, but that in no way justifies Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I never assumed the Japan was 'innocent' in general. I had family part of reparation law-suits for relatives in service murdered even in hospital bed. But to say that just because they joined an arms race that we, not they, started, did not justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

By that reasoning Japan should have used their bio-chemical weapons to wipe out entire cities long before we had the atom bomb.
My Korean friends surprise me when they point out that however much they hated those Japanese, since Nanking especially, these monsters still did not use their WMDs on cities like we did. That we lost the morale high-ground in those 2 detonations.

If I was looking for support for this string proposal their work on their atom bomb justified Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Koreans, I was gravely mistaken. I hope my present position is clear, although I doubt any of them read such as they claim all English forums are guaranteed to be one-sided political agendas in the first place. But I don't speak let alone write anything but English very well lol.

[williamjpellas]

Redbeard, in reading your posts it is extremely tempting to dismiss you as another "blame America first" campus left pseudomoralist, but on the chance that you might have something of real substance to say, I would like to ask you a few questions.

One, on what basis do you conclude that the United States "lost the moral high ground" by using the atomic bomb in WWII---but the Japanese somehow retained said "moral high ground"? Presumably this is because the Japanese did not actually use their bioweapons against the US. But then you DO know, I presume, that Japanese bioweapons attacks against American population centers were in fact planned for September, 1945? These were to have been carried out by submarine-launched seaplanes. Other seaplane bombing missions using conventional weapons were executed by the Japanese during the war, and while they were not effective because of the miniscule payload of the aircraft, these same aircraft would certainly have sufficed as bio-bombers.

Two, you ARE aware, I trust, that Japanese bioweapons WERE used against US and Allied POWs and Chinese civilians? The scale of their use was smaller than the US atomic attacks, and of course Japan's germ warfare attacks were done to test their emerging bioweapon capabilities. Thus, they were not true military operations in the same sense that the US nuclear missions were. Nonetheless, Japanese germ weapons WERE used. The moral high ground here is...what was that, precisely? This is, of course, leaving alone entirely---for the moment---the long and well-documented history of Japan's wartime barbarism and brutality, from the Bataan Death March to sex slaves, slave labor, and the Rape of Nanking. And that's just for starters.

Three, given that Japan's disingenuous "peace feelers" toward the West were aimed at Russia specifically because Tokyo was trying to save face by avoiding dealing directly with Washington, and given that Japan's military was committed to forcing a US landing on the Home Islands in order to bleed America white and force more favorable terms of peace even in a tactical and strategic defeat, how would you have had the war end without a conventional amphibious assault against the Home Islands themselves? Blockade and conventional bombardment would certainly have caused more deaths and ultimately more destruction than did the atomic missions. A head on landing would have been the greatest bloodbath of the entire war when POW and civilian deaths are added to a military death toll that would surely have amounted to more than 500,000 men (here using Admiral Leahy's estimate of 65,000 American KIA and 250,000 wounded, plus at least 435,000 of the more than 600,000 Japanese troops massed to opposed Operation OLYMPIC---but Japanese soldiers almost always fought to the death, so the real total would certainly have been far higher). What, a conventional amphibious assault would have been "more moral" than bringing the war to a screeching halt by the use of standoff atomic weapons? Nor would a negotiated settlement have been acceptable, because Japan's clique of military-fascist leaders would have been allowed to remain in place, with only token war crimes trials---all of which were to have been conducted under Japanese law and auspices, with no Western oversight or intervention whatsoever. Is THAT the "moral high ground" you would have preferred?

Four, on what basis do you conclude that Dr. Kazuo Kuroda's Riken Institute atomic bomb blueprints are unreliable as historical documents / evidence? You make reference to "counter-documentaries" that, presumably in your mind, definitively discredit him, despite the fact that his documents were returned to Riken after his death in 2002. I note also that you resort to taking a snide shot at Robert Wilcox's book Japan's Secret War even though you don't cite specifics and of course you didn't want to mention him by name, dismissing him (as many others have tried to do) as some kind of National Enquirer-style sensationalist pseudo-journalist. Wilcox is anything but that, but of course he is also not part of the leftist pseudo-intellectual academic establishment which you obviously love. But okay, I'll bite: what are these documentaries you reference, who wrote and produced them, and why should I believe you and / or their take on Kuroda? Even if Kuroda himself was not reliable---which I don't believe for a moment, but I'll play along for now---but even if he himself was not reliable, on what basis do you dismiss the Riken documents themselves? The BBC article on which this thread was based cited "experts" who have studied the Kuroda - Riken documents and who concluded that a bomb made from them would have been "not very powerful" quote-unquote---though of course what these same experts did NOT say was that the bomb would not have worked. I wonder why the BBC and its article don't come in for the same withering contempt which you aim at Wilcox, and I am curious what "moral high ground" the Japanese retained but the US lost when BOTH were working furiously on building and deploying atomic weapons.

Then there's this little gem which you posted:

That neither he, nor his wife nor children(who typically had immediate religious conversions the story points out), NEVER returned to Japan, but did provide documents on behalf of a book they were to share profits in authored by that same 'famous' American journalist who couldn't even provide a name let alone proof of 'witnesse's and 'sources' like his Japanese Security officer, let alone hold down a full-time job with the Post or get anyone's post-war support to publish his story which you know would be a best seller if he could.

I don't know what "immediate religious conversions" have to do with the Riken bomb plans. Further, you are factually in error when you clumsily attempt to smear Robert Wilcox by insinuating that Kuroda's family lied to him and that he stupidly included their lies in Japan's Secret War. For your information, redbeard, Secret War was first published in 1985, with a revised edition done in 1995. The BBC Kuroda story did not appear until 2002, although Wilcox critic John Dower appears to cite knowledge of the blueprints that dates from sometime in the 80s. Nonetheless, neither edition of Wilcox's book ever used or cited the Kuroda - Riken documents as evidence! Very sad and also dishonest that, like most Wilcox critics, you obviously have never read his book!

As for the Japanese counter-intelligence officer who was interviewed by David Snell in Korea in 1945, Snell made it very plain in his article that the Japanese officer only agreed to speak with him on condition of anonymity. Some critics have pointed to this as "evidence" that the whole story was fabricated and akin to conspiracy theories, but when you consider the circumstances then extant (Soviet domination of the North, along with chaos and uncertainty following Japan's surrender), speaking under a pseudonym is surely a reasonable precaution.

By the way, Snell had no trouble "getting anyone to publish" his article. It appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper in October 1946.

Naturally, you ignore completely the later presence of Derek De Solla Price and Eri Yagi in this story; they are the ones, along with Snell, who put Wilcox onto this particular trail, NOT Kuroda. I guess De Solla Price, Yagi, and Snell were all crackpots, right?

Finally---for now---I don't suppose it has ever occurred to you that the biggest reason Japan did not carry out large scale WMD attacks against the US was that her leadership feared the consequences? In other words, they knew that US retaliation would be exponentially greater if Japan successfully carried out a WMD / bioweapon attack. Of course, this same calculus evidently didn't apply to the aforementioned germ warfare attack plans that were set for September 1945, but by that point Japan had already concluded that a US invasion was imminent and so Tokyo presumably figured by then that she no longer had much to lose.

Come on, redbeard. The bottom line is that you have to do a whole lot better than what you've shown thus far if you expect me and others to embrace your worldview and painfully obvious Marxist deconstructionism and revisionism.


PS You're wrong yet again with this assertion:

But to say that just because they joined an arms race that we, not they, started, did not justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Alas for you and your pseudomorality, Japan's atomic bomb program began in 1940, nearly a full year before Einstein and Szilard's letter to President Roosevelt formally launched the Manhattan Project. Don't believe me? Try this reference: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/nuke/ Please note that the article just cited is written by the Federation of American Scientists, which is not remotely any kind of right-wing propaganda organ. If someone otherwise more or less friendly to your own ideological bias points out factual errors in your statements, it means you really need to do more homework before you run your mouth.