Japan's A-Bomb project
sites.google.com
sites.google.com
First, this totally fails to address the enormous industrial capacity required for enrichment of sufficient fissile material. It is implausible that 1943-1945 Japan could have achieved anything like this, regardless of technical expertise. The speculation of multiple stockpiled bombs and at least one test is far beyond feasible; even if they could have afforded the required scale of investment, the facilities and staff involved would be too large to have hidden: it likely would have required literally tens of percent of the entire Japanese industrial base over this period.
Second, the enriched uranium gun-based design (Little Boy) required more than 1000 tons of uranium oxide ore for the production of a single bomb, which is as much as the entire supply the author cites (maybe) reaching Japan.
Third, the speculation about bomber delivery seems extremely out of touch. Even the (much larger-capacity) B-29 required significant adaptation to deliver the 5-ton Mk 3 (Fat Man) and Little Boy, and, beyond mass, the designs could only barely fit within its fuselage dimensions.
Much more likely, all of the source reports were the result of rumors and misunderstandings. The most they could feasibly have built, tested, or hoped to deliver would have been small dirty bombs (a concept also well-known at the time). Perhaps they did, and this was the origin of the rumors; perhaps it was simply hearsay and speculation at a time of atomic fever.
"The success rate of 95% of the H-2A is on a par with 96.4 percent for the Atlas V of the United States and 94.9 percent for the European Ariane 5"
The much smaller Japanese Mu series is a solid space launcher and provides a much better technology base for missiles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28rocket%29
Here's a list of various Japanese launch systems and their success rates.
System - success - fail - percent success
- Epsilon - 1 - 1 - 100%
- GX - 0 - 0 - (abandoned)
- H-1 - 9 - 9 - 100%
- H-2 - 5 - 1 - 80% (or 60%, one of the successes was a partial failure)
- H-IIA - 23 - 1 - 95.7%
- H-IIB - 4 - 4 - 100%
- J-I - 1 - 1 - 100% (then abandoned)
- Lambda 4 - 9 - 5 - 44%
- Lambda 4S - 5 - 4 - 20%
- M-V - 7 - 1 - 85%
- N-I - 7 - 1 - 85%
- N-II - 8 - 0 - 100%
"Between 1954 and 1972, 19 different types of nuclear weapons were deployed in Okinawa, but with fewer than around 1,000 warheads at any one time."
That is not in conflict with that other page. Okinawa wasn't part of Japan between 1945 and 1972. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Okinawa_Reversion_Agreemen....
"In 1999 and 2002, The Japan Times and the Okinawa Times reported speculation that not all the supposed weapons were removed from Okinawa."
May be true, but as stated, just unconfirmed rumor.
"In an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun in 1981, Edwin O. Reischauer, former U.S. ambassador to Japan, said that U.S. naval ships armed with nukes stopped at Japanese ports on a routine duty and this was approved by the Japanese government."
So, it seems the USA got permission to have nuclear weapons aboard ships in Japanese ports. There also may still be nuclear weapons on Okinawa (not that unlikely, I would say, but that's pure speculation)
Japan recently returned a large quantity of weapons-grade plutonium to the US -- sufficient to start its own nuclear weapons program -- but only after it had broken ground on a plant that would enable the country to enrich its own "suspiciously large" stockpile of plutonium.
Japan's space agency, JAXA, uses solid-fuel rockets. This choice limits the size of payloads JAXA launch, but it's ideal for nuclear missiles.
That said, Ukraine is also "protected" by the US thanks to a binding treaty, and we see how that's turned out. Japan has watched events in Ukraine, as well as in China's sphere of influence, and right or wrong their policies reflect their conclusions about US protection.
... and what's Japan's policy, today? They've carefully put together all the ingredients they need to build nukes on very short notice, and continue in that direction. They're glad to be on the US's "friends" list, but they're keeping an insurance policy all the same.
The Budapest Memorandum isn't a binding treaty. A treaty must be ratified by the Senate, but the Budapest Memorandum was just an unratified political agreement. We do however have a formal treaty with Japan that guarantees military assistance.
Furthermore it didn't say anything about the United State's obligations to protect Ukraine with our nuclear umbrella. It only said that the US (along with Russia and Great Britain) would: respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine; not use force, economic pressure, or nuclear weapons against Ukraine; and seek UN Security council action if nuclear weapons were used against Ukraine.
Nowhere does it say we are under any obligation to respond with military force if another country invades Ukraine, it just says we won't invade.
Japan's constitution prohibits production of possession of nuclear weapons - all this as a result of the suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan's_non-nuclear_weapons_pol...
Waterboarding: Torture enough for the Soviets.
Of course, that wasn't the reason the U.S. bothered to eject Japan from the Aleutian Islands in 1943, but if Japan had really been able to develop a bomb that would certainly be a useful defensive move.