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Why Japan lagged in World War II weaponry BOWLING GREEN, O.—In his 1985 book, “Japan’s Secret War,” Robert Wilcox contends Japan successfully tested a nuclear device
on Aug. 12, 1945—six days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and three days after the attack on Nagasaki.
Wilcox makes his case in an upcoming History Channel documentary in which Dr. Walter Grunden, a Bowling Green State University
historian, takes the opposing view. The program, titled “Japan’s Atomic Bomb,” is scheduled to premiere at 8 p.m. Aug. 16.
(Check local times and listings.)
Grunden argues “there’s just not enough evidence to say they succeeded” in developing a nuclear weapon, and in a new book,
he outlines reasons why Japan was unable to produce any potentially decisive weapons during the war.
In “Secret Weapons and World War II: Japan in the Shadow of Big Science,” Grunden explains that “Big Science”—a term coined
after the war—requires the intersection of several elements. Sufficient numbers of scientists, engineers and technicians are
needed. So is scientific apparatus—a nuclear particle accelerator, for instance—for experiments. Weapons production then requires
abundant natural resources and industrial capacity, in the form of factories, machines and tools. And extensive capital is
needed to fund it all.
World War II-era Japan had some of the necessary components, although not to the extent of the United States, Germany and
the Soviet Union. “They were a player,” says Grunden, an assistant professor of history who has taught at BGSU since 1999.
But a failure of policy is largely to blame, he maintains, for the Asian empire’s inability to develop what are now called
weapons of mass destruction.
Coordinating the components among the state, military and large corporations requires a central administrative organization,
which was in place elsewhere, Grunden points out. Germany had its Reich Research Council, for example, and the U.S.’s Manhattan
Project—which produced the atomic bomb—was an affiliate of the central Office of Scientific Research and Development.
Japan’s comparable entity was called the Technology Agency. But unlike the American OSRD, which directed all branches of the
military, the Japanese agency was essentially an office of the army, which had been heavily involved in its formation, Grunden
says.
It had been designed to have authority but due to infighting for resources, “the Technology Agency in Japan never rose to
that level,” according to the author. Because the agency couldn’t implement policy across the board, the Japanese army and
navy didn’t work together, even having separate programs for radar development, nuclear research and advanced aeronautical
weapons, he adds.
It may be too simple to say this is why Japan was ultimately defeated, but “all of the factors that go into why they couldn’t
produce WMDs are the same explanation for why they lost the war,” says Grunden, who holds a Ph.D. in history from the University
of California-Santa Barbara.
By the war’s end, even advanced technology such as better radar or jet interceptors wouldn’t have turned the tide in Japan’s
favor, “because all of that would have been used for defensive systems by ’45,” he says. “Only a nuclear weapon would have
made any difference.”
His research indicates that probably wasn’t a possibility. And while he thinks Japan may have tested something on Aug. 12,
1945, he doesn’t believe it was nuclear.
Grunden says a possible explanation for Wilcox’s belief otherwise is that his source, a counterintelligence agent, may have
been trying to throw him off the trail of a biological weapons production facility. In that area, Japanese development was
more successful, although it is not believed they used biological weapons against the Allies. “Where there was fear of retaliation,
they didn’t use them,” he notes.
Nonetheless, the Japanese example can be a lesson, and concern, in today’s global climate, Grunden says.
“The (weapons) program with the highest priority for a developing nation would be biological weapons,” he contends, saying
they’re the easiest and cheapest to produce, as well as hide. “Japan serves as that model.” Although their work didn’t help
prevent defeat in World War II, Japanese scientists did lay the foundation for their country’s post-war emergence as an economic
power, Grunden adds.
“There are people in Japan who will tell you it was a useful war,” he says, arguing that “the Japanese were able to make a
rapid economic and industrial recovery after the war because they had laid the groundwork for the evolutionary transition
to ‘Big Science’ during the war.”
His book, published by University Press of Kansas, is available online and at major local and national bookstores.
(Posted July 14, 2005 )
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