1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,200 The Second World War pitched the United States against Japan in some of the bitter... 2 00:00:09,200 --> 00:00:14,939 in the history of warfare. 3 00:00:14,939 --> 00:00:22,199 On both sides, thousands of lives were being sacrificed. 4 00:00:22,199 --> 00:00:27,440 America's answer was to develop a weapon so awesome that it would end the fighting almost 5 00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:29,440 at a stroke. 6 00:00:29,440 --> 00:00:34,399 Billions of dollars were plowed into ensuring that the USA would be the first nation in 7 00:00:34,399 --> 00:00:38,719 the world to have the atomic bomb. 8 00:00:38,719 --> 00:00:43,920 What the Americans did not know, and what many are unaware of to this day, was that 9 00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:47,760 they were actually engaged in a race. 10 00:00:47,760 --> 00:00:53,320 Their enemy, Japan, was also working on a nuclear program. 11 00:00:59,439 --> 00:01:09,120 Not one, but two teams of Japan's top scientists were engaged in a desperate bid... 12 00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:10,120 the bomb. 13 00:01:10,120 --> 00:01:24,680 They had completed the first crucial steps and may even have detonated a nuclear... 14 00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:29,520 The Western Allies had no inkling that the Japanese program was so advanced. 15 00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:34,720 They did not know that with just a little more time, the course of World War II might 16 00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:37,720 have taken a very different turn. 17 00:01:55,560 --> 00:02:00,760 The Second World War ended when the United States used atomic bombs against the Japanese 18 00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:04,000 cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 19 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:10,879 The devastation was so complete that the Japanese surrendered within days of the... 20 00:02:10,879 --> 00:02:16,439 Although Japan was much criticized for its wartime brutality, it won universal sympathy 21 00:02:16,439 --> 00:02:21,439 as the victim of this terrifying new weapon. 22 00:02:21,439 --> 00:02:26,840 For Japan, scientists, unknown to the world and to America in particular, had set out 23 00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:36,680 to harness the same destructive force in a weapon of their own. 24 00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:42,599 Once defeat was inevitable, the Japanese set about destroying their military secrets. 25 00:02:42,599 --> 00:02:48,159 Orders were given for all evidence of scientific and weapons research to be burned. 26 00:02:48,159 --> 00:02:53,120 In those last frantic days before the arrival of the conquering Americans, mountains of 27 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:57,680 papers and files from the bomb project went up in smoke. 28 00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:02,639 But one survived. 29 00:03:02,639 --> 00:03:08,479 In Tokyo, amid the chaos of surrender, a bomb team member handed the salvaged file to a 30 00:03:08,479 --> 00:03:13,960 brilliant young scientist named Kazuo Kuroda, a member of a different team. 31 00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:20,600 He asked him to protect him and he said, because your name is not on any of the... 32 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:25,520 and so you wouldn't be prosecuted as a war criminal. 33 00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:34,200 And so he kept the, and he promised to take care of those documents. 34 00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:39,560 After the war, Professor Kuroda emigrated from Japan to America, to the University 35 00:03:39,560 --> 00:03:41,520 of Arkansas. 36 00:03:41,520 --> 00:03:50,120 He had come to the United States in 1949, one of the first group of Japanese scientists 37 00:03:50,120 --> 00:03:58,719 to be allowed to come to the United States after the war, and had come on a special 38 00:03:58,719 --> 00:04:04,280 visa, the same kind of a visa that the German rocket scientists came in under. 39 00:04:04,280 --> 00:04:06,760 These are chopsticks. 40 00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:08,640 Use like this. 41 00:04:08,639 --> 00:04:13,319 Professor Kuroda often entertained students and colleagues at his home. 42 00:04:13,319 --> 00:04:16,800 Here guests were shown an extraordinary document. 43 00:04:16,800 --> 00:04:17,800 Is this high? 44 00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:26,279 It was on maybe one or two or three of those occasions that I in fact saw these secret 45 00:04:26,279 --> 00:04:28,039 plans to build the atomic bomb. 46 00:04:28,039 --> 00:04:30,079 Japanese had to make bombs. 47 00:04:30,079 --> 00:04:31,079 Really? 48 00:04:31,079 --> 00:04:37,159 He would show them to students, none of them could read Japanese, but you know, he made 49 00:04:37,200 --> 00:04:44,320 reference to the fact that they had they been successful, it would probably have been used. 50 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:49,480 Remarkably, this explosive secret didn't escape from the Arkansas campus into the 51 00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:51,240 wider world. 52 00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:57,660 But after Kuroda's death in 2001, his widow decided to make his papers public. 53 00:04:57,660 --> 00:05:05,379 After nearly 50 years, Japan's most sensitive war secret was about to become public... 54 00:05:05,379 --> 00:05:15,620 How would Japanese wartime scientists, silent for so long, react to this new evidence? 55 00:05:15,620 --> 00:05:21,579 Yochiro Nambu is a distinguished Japanese nuclear scientist who emigrated to the USA 56 00:05:21,579 --> 00:05:23,740 in 1952. 57 00:05:23,740 --> 00:05:34,740 Although not himself a member of the nuclear weapons team in Japan, he was their... 58 00:05:34,740 --> 00:05:42,780 Professor Nambu had not known that Kuroda's document existed. 59 00:05:42,780 --> 00:05:50,000 I didn't know that they had this much information. 60 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:55,840 The seemingly dead document suddenly comes alive when Professor Nambu spots the name 61 00:05:55,840 --> 00:05:58,280 of one of his friends. 62 00:05:58,280 --> 00:06:01,240 Mr. Kigoshi, I knew Kigoshi myself. 63 00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:05,800 He's my fellow student in Tokyo. 64 00:06:05,800 --> 00:06:12,079 Kuroda's document describes a team developing weapons-grade uranium and names Kunihiko... 65 00:06:12,079 --> 00:06:13,079 as a member. 66 00:06:13,079 --> 00:06:17,319 Today, he's the sole survivor of those named in the papers. 67 00:06:17,319 --> 00:06:22,460 This is the first time he has talked of the project on camera and the first time he has 68 00:06:22,460 --> 00:06:26,519 seen Kuroda's evidence. 69 00:06:26,519 --> 00:06:33,959 How did you get hold of this? 70 00:06:33,959 --> 00:06:39,159 Kigoshi's name appears prominently in the document. 71 00:06:39,159 --> 00:06:46,240 Other names should be written here as well. 72 00:06:46,240 --> 00:06:50,599 Strange that only my name appears here. 73 00:06:51,560 --> 00:06:57,680 Cautiously, Professor Kigoshi begins to describe the project he worked on during t... 74 00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:05,760 At first, he denies that weapons were involved. 75 00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:10,320 In no way did I consider a weapons project. 76 00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:16,439 All I could think of was the fact that we could extract energy from it. 77 00:07:16,439 --> 00:07:23,600 The military perhaps didn't think of using it either as an energy source or as something 78 00:07:23,600 --> 00:07:25,600 like a bomb. 79 00:07:25,600 --> 00:07:37,319 But juniors like me knew nothing of these things. 80 00:07:37,319 --> 00:07:41,959 The first atomic bomb program had been initiated by the military. 81 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:48,560 In the spring of 1941, Tatsuo Suzuki, at that time a young lieutenant colonel, contacted 82 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:55,439 the prestigious Rican Research Institute on the outskirts of Tokyo with a commission. 83 00:07:55,439 --> 00:08:01,319 The nuclear laboratory there was run by Professor Yoshio Nishina, a physicist,... 84 00:08:01,319 --> 00:08:06,839 enough that he had a commemorative postage stamp issued in 1990. 85 00:08:06,839 --> 00:08:11,879 Suzuki informed the professor that the Japanese army was commissioning him to... 86 00:08:11,879 --> 00:08:14,000 weapon. 87 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:21,439 Nishina began assembling a team. 88 00:08:21,439 --> 00:08:35,600 Professor Nishina asked me just before I graduated whether I wanted to join his lab. 89 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:48,040 He said that if I did, I might not have to join the army. 90 00:08:48,040 --> 00:08:51,080 So Kigoshi became a member of the team. 91 00:08:51,080 --> 00:08:56,920 Among the faces in the Rican group photograph of more than 60 years ago, another scientist, 92 00:08:56,920 --> 00:09:01,220 Professor Ryohi Nakani, proved to be still alive today. 93 00:09:01,220 --> 00:09:08,220 He is less guarded about the true nature of their project. 94 00:09:08,220 --> 00:09:15,540 I was in my third year at Osaka University when Professor Nishina started the A-bomb 95 00:09:15,540 --> 00:09:25,940 project, and he recruited students who were studying nuclear physics, in particular... 96 00:09:25,940 --> 00:09:34,240 And when Nishina asked my supervisor to send one student from his lab, I was the one sent 97 00:09:34,240 --> 00:09:37,240 there. 98 00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:43,080 Nakani was about to become part of a small and inexperienced team that had quite a job 99 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:44,960 on their hands. 100 00:09:44,960 --> 00:09:48,280 Build an atom bomb. 101 00:09:48,280 --> 00:09:54,240 The simplest way to build an atom bomb in the 1940s was to use uranium, but not uranium 102 00:09:54,340 --> 00:09:56,860 in its natural occurring form. 103 00:09:56,860 --> 00:10:02,500 One part in X thousand of this radioactive metal is of a slightly different form known 104 00:10:02,500 --> 00:10:05,899 as uranium-235. 105 00:10:05,899 --> 00:10:12,659 If a quantity of uranium-235 is bombarded with a stream of neutrons, its atoms split 106 00:10:12,659 --> 00:10:14,659 with devastating force. 107 00:10:14,659 --> 00:10:16,659 A nuclear explosion. 108 00:10:25,060 --> 00:10:32,060 Kigoshi's job was to turn uranium into a gas so that the uranium-235 could be separated. 109 00:10:34,820 --> 00:10:37,820 Nobody in Japan had achieved this feat. 110 00:10:37,820 --> 00:10:44,820 At first, I had no idea how to go about it. 111 00:10:44,820 --> 00:10:51,060 Uranium gas is so corrosive that normal materials can't contain it, so even making... 112 00:10:51,119 --> 00:10:54,119 was a project in itself. 113 00:10:54,119 --> 00:11:01,119 In order to make the brass solder, we made and tested many types of fluxes and solders. 114 00:11:07,719 --> 00:11:14,719 This produced all sorts of gases, and the workers who were conducting the test would 115 00:11:14,719 --> 00:11:19,719 come up to me and say, are you trying to kill us? 116 00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:22,720 I remember. 117 00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:25,720 Mr. Sakano was happy. 118 00:11:25,720 --> 00:11:28,860 I remember. 119 00:11:28,860 --> 00:11:35,860 One problem was solved, but according to the document, the mixture was likely to be... 120 00:11:35,860 --> 00:11:41,200 It only exploded once. 121 00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:48,200 When it reacted, this thing broke and was blown off. 122 00:11:50,040 --> 00:11:57,440 But I wonder where Nishina heard about it. 123 00:11:57,440 --> 00:12:00,720 I don't remember telling anyone about it. 124 00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:06,120 Kuroda's document and the scientists' reaction to it establishes that Japan was... 125 00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:11,840 on a nuclear weapons program in direct competition with the United States. 126 00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:14,120 But was it a real contest? 127 00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:21,120 A small group of Japanese scientists compete with the massively-resourced might of the 128 00:12:21,120 --> 00:12:24,120 Manhattan Project. 129 00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:31,120 The secret Manhattan Project was spending its way through the equivalent of $30 billion 130 00:12:32,120 --> 00:12:35,120 in its quest to develop an atomic bomb. 131 00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:40,120 It employed 130,000 people working at full stretch. 132 00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:45,120 Did the Japanese, with their much smaller resources, possibly have been making... 133 00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:46,120 progress? 134 00:12:46,120 --> 00:12:51,620 The Manhattan Project of the United States was unprecedented in its size and scope and 135 00:12:51,620 --> 00:12:56,720 could only have been successful because of its size and scope and the enormous amount 136 00:12:56,720 --> 00:13:03,720 of resources dedicated to simultaneously developing several unknown, very complicat... 137 00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:08,000 projects. 138 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:11,000 The Japanese project was tiny by comparison. 139 00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:16,000 Kigoshi's staff could be counted on one hand. 140 00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:23,000 Well, you could say four people, but really there was only one person who was actually 141 00:13:28,919 --> 00:13:35,919 doing the brain work, and that's me. 142 00:13:35,919 --> 00:13:42,919 The others were either graduates of vocational schools or were totally untrained. 143 00:13:47,679 --> 00:13:54,679 The project didn't have tremendous support in the beginning because it was going to 144 00:13:55,279 --> 00:14:01,079 be something that they knew was going to take several years, if not more, and they thought 145 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:06,560 the war was going to end soon and it didn't have really the support. 146 00:14:06,560 --> 00:14:12,040 But whatever the odds, the team did make steady progress. Their goal was achieved a... 147 00:14:12,040 --> 00:14:17,160 gas reproduced, as Professor Kigoshi can finally admit. 148 00:14:17,160 --> 00:14:24,160 I did not think that something like this document would emerge. It says that it was... 149 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:29,400 made. 150 00:14:29,399 --> 00:14:33,559 Their resources may have been less lavish than the Americans, but their scientists 151 00:14:33,559 --> 00:14:39,039 were first rate. Nishina had been a student of Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, where he was 152 00:14:39,039 --> 00:14:46,039 very highly regarded. In addition, the Japanese scientists were driven by... 153 00:14:46,519 --> 00:14:53,519 and as the war began to go against them, desperation. For the Japanese, defeat was... 154 00:14:54,399 --> 00:15:01,399 Most would do anything to avoid such a humiliation. Not just the military, but th... 155 00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:07,960 were rooted in the century-old tradition of the samurai warrior code of honor and 156 00:15:07,960 --> 00:15:12,960 loyalty, even to the death. 157 00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:19,960 Nishina was coming from a samurai tradition, so they all wanted to serve the country and 158 00:15:19,960 --> 00:15:21,800 fight for the country. 159 00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:28,800 It is impossible for young people now to understand the way of thinking of the time... 160 00:15:30,160 --> 00:15:37,160 to have experienced the war in order to understand. We were educated through... 161 00:15:38,680 --> 00:15:45,680 the primary school level. We were prepared for death at any moment. 162 00:15:45,679 --> 00:15:52,679 But as the war progressed, the nightmare possibility of defeat suddenly became a... 163 00:15:54,759 --> 00:16:00,239 America was destroying their navy and approaching ever closer to their homeland.... 164 00:16:00,239 --> 00:16:05,839 their drive to perfect the bomb, the search for effective weapons took on a feverish... 165 00:16:05,839 --> 00:16:10,959 and an extraordinary level of ingenuity. 166 00:16:10,960 --> 00:16:16,360 One of their ideas was a missile known as the Oka. Made of cheap materials, plywood 167 00:16:16,360 --> 00:16:22,920 and aluminum, it could be launched from aircraft or from rails, as at this coastal... 168 00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:29,920 missile was primarily a glider, and the catch was it required human guidance. Pilots who 169 00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:33,920 would never return. 170 00:16:33,920 --> 00:16:39,840 Japanese engineer said that the Japanese have given this missile eyes. Only the type of 171 00:16:39,840 --> 00:16:46,759 eyes the Japanese could give to this sort of weapon, meaning a human being. These were 172 00:16:46,759 --> 00:16:53,759 used with varying degrees of efficacy. They did manage to sink a few American naval ships 173 00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:56,680 with them. 174 00:16:56,680 --> 00:17:00,519 Big guns, little guns, all guns, one to one. 175 00:17:00,519 --> 00:17:06,880 Although Oka was a dismal failure, eerily suicide pilots were not. Known as kamikazes, 176 00:17:06,880 --> 00:17:10,960 they would become a strength in the Japanese war effort. 177 00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:16,640 Some kamikazes got through and heavy damage was done to American warships. 178 00:17:16,640 --> 00:17:23,640 Kamikaze pilots were so fierce that they struck terror in the hearts of American... 179 00:17:26,240 --> 00:17:32,040 The desperation to hold off the allies made its way into the classroom. Thousands of... 180 00:17:32,079 --> 00:17:37,720 manufactured by Japanese school children were loaded with incendiary bombs and... 181 00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:43,319 devices and launched into the Pacific jet stream, which took them straight across to 182 00:17:43,319 --> 00:17:46,399 North America. 183 00:17:46,399 --> 00:17:51,960 Although they were easy targets for US fighter pilots, about 500 made it to the... 184 00:17:51,960 --> 00:17:57,920 causing numerous forest fires and several deaths. The only fatalities inflicted on the 185 00:17:57,920 --> 00:18:04,920 United States mainland in the entire war. And the material used for these balloons? 186 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:08,600 Paper. 187 00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:13,600 Japan was far more sophisticated and potentially deadly under the sea. 188 00:18:13,600 --> 00:18:20,600 The E-400 class was the largest submarine built of the second world war. The E-400... 189 00:18:21,599 --> 00:18:28,599 was close to 6,000 tons displacement submerged. 190 00:18:29,599 --> 00:18:36,359 This was three times the size of the biggest US vessel, large enough to house three... 191 00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:41,599 It was nothing less than an underwater aircraft carrier. 192 00:18:41,599 --> 00:18:48,599 They designed a special aircraft that would be capable of folding its wings in sort of 193 00:18:48,719 --> 00:18:55,719 a bug-like fashion while it was inside the submarine hanger. And then they would be 194 00:18:55,759 --> 00:19:00,679 brought out on the deck when the submarine is surfaced, the wings would be opened up, 195 00:19:00,679 --> 00:19:07,679 a large bomb would be attached and the aircraft would be launched with a catapult. 196 00:19:08,139 --> 00:19:13,959 The aim was to destroy the locks of the Panama Canal, denying America's Atlantic... 197 00:19:13,959 --> 00:19:18,519 access to the Pacific Ocean and to Japan. 198 00:19:18,519 --> 00:19:25,519 The submarine would perhaps be a hundred miles or so off of Panama and the aircraft 199 00:19:27,119 --> 00:19:34,119 would go directly to the canal and drop a dive bombing type of explosive into the... 200 00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:42,920 And of course the locks are very complex, very large, you have to carry a sizable ball 201 00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:48,440 at a minimum of 500 pounds. 202 00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:55,080 But as the military outlook for Japan worsened, work on the nuclear research... 203 00:19:55,080 --> 00:20:00,380 It was clear that the atom bomb was the only weapon that could save Japan. There was still 204 00:20:00,380 --> 00:20:07,380 a long way to go, but the Japanese team was catching up. 205 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:13,720 At the Riken Laboratories in Tokyo, the Japanese atomic bomb project had reached a... 206 00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:20,720 stage. Thanks to Kigoshi and his team, Professor Nishina had the uranium gas he... 207 00:20:21,079 --> 00:20:26,400 he faced a critical choice. There were several ways to attempt to extract... 208 00:20:26,400 --> 00:20:32,720 uranium from the gas. It could be heated, filtered, spun at high speed or subjected 209 00:20:32,720 --> 00:20:39,319 to strong electromagnetic fields. No one knew which would work best. The Americans with 210 00:20:39,319 --> 00:20:46,319 their huge resources simply tried all four methods. Nishina had to decide on one.... 211 00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:52,039 it involved the least new development of ultra-high tech hardware, he chose the method 212 00:20:52,039 --> 00:20:58,179 known as thermal diffusion. Very high temperatures would drive some of the activ... 213 00:20:58,179 --> 00:21:00,559 through a different channel. 214 00:21:00,559 --> 00:21:07,559 He felt that would be the easiest for them to do. And he built in the Riken a thermostatic 215 00:21:09,639 --> 00:21:16,639 thermal diffusion unit. It was actually a great big unit for him. It rose through a 216 00:21:17,179 --> 00:21:21,000 second story and they cut a hole out. 217 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:28,000 The Imperial Army officer overseeing the project, Tatsuziburo Suzuki, monitored... 218 00:21:31,279 --> 00:21:38,279 For one method, thermal diffusion. We had to build installations. We had to build a 219 00:21:39,559 --> 00:21:46,559 separator. And we conducted experiments with nuclear fission on the basis of uranium... 220 00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:57,359 We had got as far as that. 221 00:21:57,359 --> 00:22:02,439 Uranium was the next problem. America had plenty of local supplies for its bomb... 222 00:22:02,439 --> 00:22:07,439 Japan had next to nothing. 223 00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:14,440 I was given an assignment to find uranium resources. Since we desperately needed... 224 00:22:20,799 --> 00:22:27,799 ore, we searched for it around Korea, Manchuria and Malaysia. Though we did not... 225 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:44,440 actual uranium ore, we found a mineral which contained a good volume of uranium. Better 226 00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:54,680 than any of the minerals in Korea. 227 00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:59,799 Japan's wartime alliance with Germany was uneasy at the best of times. The Germans had 228 00:22:59,799 --> 00:23:04,759 stocks of uranium. But would they agree to share it with Japan? 229 00:23:04,759 --> 00:23:10,960 Professor Nishina had sent a telegram to Germany asking them to send some uranium 230 00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:17,960 over. At the time, I was the one answering the queries regarding what it was going to 231 00:23:18,519 --> 00:23:25,519 be used for. So I filed the request telling them that we needed to use it as a catalyst. 232 00:23:27,279 --> 00:23:31,960 Kigoshi's little lie did not fool the Germans. But Hitler's Third Reich was on t... 233 00:23:32,039 --> 00:23:38,720 of collapse. Well aware of what uranium was useful for, they agreed to send some. Getting 234 00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:41,920 it to Japan, however, was another matter. 235 00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:48,920 They're separated by 12,000 miles. And there are no direct air routes over communist... 236 00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:57,559 And so the only way the Germans and the Japanese could communicate in a physical w... 237 00:23:57,879 --> 00:24:04,879 sub-rings that weren't designed as cargo carriers. And yet that's the only conduit 238 00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:08,279 they had open. 239 00:24:08,279 --> 00:24:14,559 In March 1945, a German U-boat set out from the port of Kiel. Its manifest showed that 240 00:24:14,559 --> 00:24:20,679 it was carrying a thousand pounds of uranium oxide. Enough after processing for probably 241 00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:27,840 two atomic bombs. While America knew that Germany had a nuclear program, they had... 242 00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:33,360 the idea that Japanese scientists could be doing anything significant. The Americans 243 00:24:33,360 --> 00:24:39,799 who had long since cracked Japan's naval ciphers were in for a shock. 244 00:24:39,799 --> 00:24:44,759 We knew everything they carried because we always had the manifest, because we read 245 00:24:44,879 --> 00:24:50,920 the codes and ciphers. And we knew that it was carrying nuclear material. 246 00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:55,960 Nishina's recon processor was working. The uranium was on its way. The Japanese could 247 00:24:55,960 --> 00:25:02,960 see success within their grasp. Then disaster struck. In March and April 1945, the U.S. 248 00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:10,079 launched a series of devastating firebomb attacks on the Japanese mainland. The bombs 249 00:25:10,079 --> 00:25:15,799 dropped from hundreds of B-29 bombers created firestorms that swept through Japanese cities 250 00:25:15,799 --> 00:25:22,799 with a destructive force exceeding even that of the eventual atom bombs. 251 00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:33,720 The Recon Institute was in the path of one such conflagration. 252 00:25:40,079 --> 00:25:47,079 Oh, this is the picture just after the air raid. This is the place exactly where the 253 00:25:53,799 --> 00:26:00,799 thermal diffusion cylinder was. Yes, April 14th in the morning. This is the exact site. 254 00:26:00,799 --> 00:26:07,799 The crucial component in uranium processing was gone. Meanwhile, the uranium carrying 255 00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:19,200 U-boat was still on its way to Japan. But historic events again intervened. During 256 00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:25,279 the submarine's long voyage, Germany was finally defeated, Adolf Hitler committed... 257 00:26:25,279 --> 00:26:30,159 and his successor, Admiral Dennitz, ordered all naval vessels to surrender to the nearest 258 00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:37,160 ally power. The U-boat, by now well out into the North Atlantic, was close to Canada, 259 00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:44,560 but the Americans got to it first. In fact, there is some suggestion that the 260 00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:52,960 Americans deliberately jammed the Canadian radio broadcasts out to the U-234 when it 261 00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:59,960 ran up a black flag and it was to surrender, so that the Americans would have this... 262 00:27:03,360 --> 00:27:10,360 submarine. The United States wanted to make certain that the U-234 surrendered to... 263 00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:17,240 forces and not to Canadian forces. The submarine was seized along with its uraniu... 264 00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:24,240 to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Two months later, the Manhattan Project completed its... 265 00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:31,720 atomic bomb, but the Japanese venture seemed doomed. The story of Nishina's program is 266 00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:42,519 convenient for a lot of people because it says they had a little interest, they tried, 267 00:27:42,639 --> 00:27:47,920 they were doing a little bomb work, and it got bombed out anyway before the end of the 268 00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:53,740 war and that's all they did. That's a very nice story for those who don't want to deal 269 00:27:53,740 --> 00:27:59,379 with the facts. And the facts are that the Japanese had not invested all their nuclear 270 00:27:59,379 --> 00:28:06,039 effort in the Tokyo Project. There was a second secret bomb program controlled by t... 271 00:28:06,159 --> 00:28:13,159 not on the Japanese mainland. Japan's nuclear project in Tokyo was in ruins, but Japan 272 00:28:15,319 --> 00:28:21,119 had an even more closely guarded nuclear secret. A second, quite separate bomb project 273 00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:27,559 started by the Navy some months after the Army's program, but not in Japan. The two 274 00:28:27,559 --> 00:28:33,119 sectors of the armed forces were bitter rivals. The Navy scientists were every bit... 275 00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:40,119 for Nishina. They included a future Nobel Prize winner, Hideki Ikawa. I believe that 276 00:28:41,759 --> 00:28:48,359 the real story is beyond Nishina. It is involved in the Navy program, which spent... 277 00:28:48,359 --> 00:28:55,359 on it, which was more desperate, and which is more secretive. The Japanese Navy had already 278 00:28:55,359 --> 00:29:02,359 sustained massive losses. In the face of defeat, their leaders were ready for... 279 00:29:08,399 --> 00:29:15,399 measures. The Navy, as the war got worse and worse, started putting more stock in 280 00:29:17,039 --> 00:29:22,839 suicide planes. And one of the things they wanted to do was to put an atomic bomb in 281 00:29:22,839 --> 00:29:28,559 a suicide plane, which they would send against the fleet that was going to come a... 282 00:29:28,559 --> 00:29:35,199 Japan. They were also thinking of putting it on a submarine. One idea floated was to 283 00:29:35,199 --> 00:29:41,159 put the submarine into the San Francisco Bay. American bombing was a danger to the Navy 284 00:29:41,159 --> 00:29:46,439 project too, but Robert Wilcox believes that the most significant part of the scheme had 285 00:29:46,439 --> 00:29:52,720 been removed from the mainland. Wilcox has sifted through hundreds of U.S. intelligence 286 00:29:52,839 --> 00:29:59,160 reports written during the closing stages of World War II. We have numerous documents 287 00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:05,519 showing that all factories that could be moved were sent over to Korea, and that's... 288 00:30:05,519 --> 00:30:12,519 I think that the Navy program went. We do have these consistent reports that they had 289 00:30:15,039 --> 00:30:22,039 a plant there, the NZ plant, and that they were working on atomic nuclear bomb that 290 00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:29,720 was there at the NZ plant. Korea was the ideal place for such a project. North Korea 291 00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:37,160 grew by 1940 to be the engine of Japan's war effort. It was one of the largest industrial 292 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:44,160 areas in the world. It certainly was the largest concentration of high-tech industr... 293 00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:52,160 power in Asia at the time. Power was a crucial factor in full-blown nuclear bomb... 294 00:30:54,279 --> 00:30:59,640 The Japanese, like the Americans, were discovering that uranium processing plants... 295 00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:05,560 much power as a small city. The Manhattan Project had always been given as much power 296 00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:12,080 as it needed, and it seemed that in Korea the Japanese project was catching up. As well 297 00:31:12,159 --> 00:31:19,159 as electricity, Korea had ample supplies of another vital resource, labor. In the 298 00:31:20,159 --> 00:31:27,159 summer of 1945, they had to use people to dig tunnels where they were planning to put 299 00:31:27,159 --> 00:31:33,039 the machinery underground in anticipation of bombing raids. And so prisoners of war 300 00:31:33,039 --> 00:31:40,039 were used there, as were numerous unskilled workers taken from the countryside in Korea, 301 00:31:40,399 --> 00:31:47,399 as were Japanese students whose schools were shut down, and a whole host of other people 302 00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:54,039 were involved in digging these tunnels. Japan could only hope their massive mobilization 303 00:31:54,039 --> 00:32:01,039 of labor would pay off, because this would certainly be their last chance. Then came 304 00:32:01,639 --> 00:32:08,639 August 6, 1945. America's huge investment in nuclear research paid off. 305 00:32:10,039 --> 00:32:17,039 A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroye... 306 00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:30,920 to the enemy. America had won a race they scarcely knew they were in. The loser,... 307 00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:37,920 Nishina, was mortified. He wrote this remarkable letter to his bomb team. 308 00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:45,920 If President Truman's statement is true, the time has come for us, as the members of the 309 00:32:46,519 --> 00:32:52,880 project, to commit suicide by harakiri. I will tell you when to do it, when I come back 310 00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:59,880 from Hiroshima, so please await my return. U.S. and British scientists have won a great 311 00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:07,160 victory against Japanese scientists, the scientists of building 49 at the Riken. It... 312 00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:15,160 less than that. The personality of U.S. and British scientists was first period to... 313 00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:22,160 scientists. Nishina's assistant, Kigoshi, who had left Tokyo after the firebombing, 314 00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:26,680 now returned, hoping to visit Nishina. 315 00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:34,480 I had to walk a long way across the ruins that were burnt to the ground to get to 316 00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:42,680 the science labs. Professor Nishina was not around at that time. However, his secretary, 317 00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:49,680 Mrs. Yokoyama, suddenly told me that the professor wanted him and me to commit... 318 00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:07,920 together. When I laughed out loud, she said, with a serious look on her face, that it 319 00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:14,920 was no laughing matter. The professor, Nishina, was serious about it. 320 00:34:20,240 --> 00:34:26,559 In the end, Nishina thought better of his plan. And soon, things took an even worse 321 00:34:26,559 --> 00:34:33,559 turn. President Truman ordered another atomic bomb strike, this time on the city of... 322 00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:44,920 If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, 323 00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:51,680 the like of which has never been seen on this earth. 324 00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:58,680 The military supervisor of Japan's bomb project went to examine the ruined cities... 325 00:34:59,679 --> 00:35:06,679 I flew over Hiroshima and Nagasaki at low altitude, and saw that the results were... 326 00:35:18,279 --> 00:35:25,279 But it was the work of the enemy. I saw that this weapon was horrible. 327 00:35:28,679 --> 00:35:35,679 It worked well against armies and military bases. But it was cruel to use it against 328 00:35:43,839 --> 00:35:50,839 cities. Nonetheless, the first thing I thought of was 329 00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:57,840 that we had to strike back fast. Of course, I didn't know that the war was about to 330 00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:13,280 end. I wanted us to have such a weapon ready as soon as possible. 331 00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:27,840 But the task for the Japanese to perfect their atomic bomb was immense, and time was 332 00:36:29,240 --> 00:36:36,240 not on their side. The Japanese situation was desperate. Two major cities had been 333 00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:49,480 annihilated by America's atomic bombs. But even now, the Japanese Empire resisted... 334 00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:56,240 searching for any way to stave off the inevitable. According to one report, they... 335 00:36:56,240 --> 00:37:03,240 ditch effort. They conducted a nuclear test. Immediately after the war, David Snell, an 336 00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:11,760 American journalist at that time in the U.S. Army, had an extraordinary encounter in Korea 337 00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:18,760 with a Japanese intelligence officer who stated he was attached to Japan's atomic b... 338 00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:25,960 He claimed to have been an eyewitness at the detonation of Japan's first atomic bomb. 339 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:32,240 Shortly after midnight of that day, a convoy of Japanese trucks moved from the mouth of 340 00:37:32,240 --> 00:37:39,240 the cave past watchful sentries. The trucks wound through valleys past sleeping farm 341 00:37:39,240 --> 00:37:45,760 villages. It was August, and frogs in the mud of terraced rice paddies sang in a still 342 00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:52,760 night. In the cool pre-dawn, Japanese scientists and engineers loaded Genzai... 343 00:37:53,200 --> 00:38:00,200 bomb aboard a ship in Conan. Off the coast near an islet in the Sea of Japan, more... 344 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:07,240 preparations were underway. All that day and night, ancient ships, junks, and fishing... 345 00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:13,560 moved into the anchorage. On August the 12th, a robot launch chugged through the ships 346 00:38:13,599 --> 00:38:20,599 at anchor and beached itself on the inlet. Its passenger was Genzai Bakudan. A clock 347 00:38:21,159 --> 00:38:27,920 ticked. The observers were 20 miles away. This waiting was difficult and strange to 348 00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:33,840 men who had worked relentlessly so long and who knew their job had been completed too 349 00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:40,119 late. The light in the east where Japan lay grew brighter. The moment the sun peeped 350 00:38:40,159 --> 00:38:45,400 over the sea, there was a burst of light at the anchorage, blinding the observers who 351 00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:52,400 wore welder's glasses. The ball of fire was estimated to be 1,000 yards in diameter. 352 00:38:52,839 --> 00:38:59,839 A multicolored cloud of vapors boiled towards the heavens, then mushroomed in the... 353 00:38:59,839 --> 00:39:05,199 Snell's story was published in 1946. It was reproduced around the world, but was soon 354 00:39:05,359 --> 00:39:10,719 lost in the fast-moving developments of the postwar years. No further backup of Snell's 355 00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:15,960 story emerged, but he was a respected journalist who went on to gain a reputatio... 356 00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:22,960 integrity. My dad got a job on Life magazine. From what I understand, Life checked him 357 00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:29,960 out and interviewed him for over a year. It was a rather long process. And they... 358 00:39:36,720 --> 00:39:43,720 carefully scrutinized him. And I think that anybody who knew my dad or worked with my 359 00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:51,719 dad would vouch for his integrity. I was able to find David Snell in Texas. He was a... 360 00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:03,719 person at this time. And he told me, yes, it all happened. He said exactly as I wrote 361 00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:10,719 it, I believed it. The man, the security agent was a high-level officer, and I... 362 00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:17,719 him. Most assuredly, I believed him. He is a sterling gentleman, and I believed him. 363 00:40:20,279 --> 00:40:26,539 If Snell's eyewitness was correct, Japan had all but caught up with the United States. 364 00:40:26,539 --> 00:40:31,079 But there is still a large gap between exploding a test device and successfully... 365 00:40:31,079 --> 00:40:34,079 it against an enemy. 366 00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:46,719 And now, Japan was dealing not only with America, but with a declaration of war by 367 00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:53,719 the Soviet Union. Whatever the facts of the Korean test, it was already too late. 368 00:40:54,639 --> 00:40:59,359 Bombed to destruction, assailed on all sides by their enemies, Japan finally announced 369 00:40:59,359 --> 00:41:06,359 its surrender on August 14, 1945. The records of the Tokyo bomb project were burnt by the 370 00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:13,360 scientists themselves. The evidence from Korea simply disappeared. Soviet troops had 371 00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:18,360 fought their way across the border into what is now North Korea, site of Japan's alleged 372 00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:21,360 bomb factory and bomb test. 373 00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:28,360 They came and took away machine parts from Hannam's fertilizer factory, pipes, mortars. 374 00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:36,360 They stole so many machine parts to bring back to Russia. I even saw them taking away 375 00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:41,360 a farmer's cow and loading it onto the plane. 376 00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:48,360 Anything that was anything in terms of manufacturing, in terms of military... 377 00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:53,360 picked up and took back with them. So if the Japanese had anything, they would have taken 378 00:41:53,360 --> 00:42:00,360 it with them. So if the Japanese had anything in North Korea, it's in my guess that it 379 00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:05,360 went to Russia and it went fast. 380 00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:12,360 In Korea, the NZ plant in particular became a focus of Soviet interest. 381 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:19,360 Now, as a result of the highly secret nature of this particular plant, the Russians were 382 00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:25,360 very interested in it. And some of the people who worked there, six of the researchers 383 00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:32,360 who worked there, were initially taken away as war criminals by the Russians. Five of 384 00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:40,360 them were convicted and one of them was not, who was let go, and there's no explanation 385 00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:42,360 of why. 386 00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:48,360 Once the Soviets were in control of Korea, access was denied to the rest of the world. 387 00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:54,360 The whole area where the NZ plant once stood and the island off Hungnam, where David... 388 00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:59,360 eyewitness claimed to have watched a nuclear test, are now part of North Korea. They are 389 00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:02,360 still closed to outsiders. 390 00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:08,360 Meanwhile, the Americans arriving in Triumph in Tokyo found that evidence of the nuclear 391 00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:14,360 project there had already been reduced to ashes. Even so, they took a close interest 392 00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:16,360 in the buildings. 393 00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:26,360 Every day, I would go to the science lab and one morning when I went, they were pulling 394 00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:36,360 down the walls. I heard all this noise coming from inside the campus grounds. And I... 395 00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:44,360 what was going on. When I went to see, they were cutting the big cyclotron into small 396 00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:48,360 pieces using a hydrogen battery. 397 00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:55,360 Nishina protested strongly, but the cyclotron ended up in pieces in Tokyo Bay. 398 00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:03,360 Well, it was explained as a mistake, but in truth, it was not a mistake. We found out 399 00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:08,360 something. We found out they were lying. We found out that there was much more going 400 00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:15,360 on that they hadn't told us about, including possibly we were getting whiffs already of 401 00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:23,360 Korea. And that was the reason that order from the War Department to destroy every 402 00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:27,360 single piece of equipment they had was given. 403 00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:33,360 It is not hard to see why Japan's secret remained buried for so long. It was not in 404 00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:39,360 anyone's interest to reveal it. Even now, final confirmation is impossible. Any... 405 00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:45,360 not burnt by the Japanese themselves was destroyed by the Americans. The evidence f... 406 00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:49,360 including the scientists, was annexed by the Russians. 407 00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:56,360 The Japanese were certainly not anxious to draw attention to their own atomic bomb... 408 00:44:56,360 --> 00:45:00,360 and the Americans may well have been both shocked and embarrassed by the failure of 409 00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:02,360 their intelligence. 410 00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:11,360 There had been plenty of hints about the Japanese interest in nuclear physics, but 411 00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:16,360 they had not been followed up. The Americans just hadn't believed that Japan had the 412 00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:22,360 resources to develop an atom bomb, or that their scientists were capable of creating 413 00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:23,360 one. 414 00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:31,360 Americans saw the Japanese as, I mean, if you look at the cartoons of the day, the 415 00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:37,360 Japanese were next to apes, they were next to monkeys. They were depicted this way. 416 00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:44,360 Slant-eyed, they couldn't possibly fly, because they couldn't see very well, they 417 00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:48,360 didn't have the balance because their mothers had carried them on their backs and their 418 00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:54,360 balance was off when they were carrying. Japan was a backward country. If they looked 419 00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:59,360 at Americans, they would lose just looking at us. Well, we went on and estimated them. 420 00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:06,360 The message is, don't underestimate anybody. All of us tend to have, every civilization 421 00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:14,360 tends to have made that mistake. We in the South underestimated the damn Yankees. The 422 00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:20,360 British underestimated George Washington. We all underestimate people, and it generally 423 00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,360 is to our harm.