Quote:
Originally posted by stingc
There's a lot of conflicting evidence on Germany, but most accounts seem to point to any effort they put in being very minimal. Of course the people in the US wouldn't have known that until after the war was over, and the intelligence that did exist convinced people that Germany was close (incorrectly). That's the only reason the bomb was developed when it was.
Japan was not working on a bomb - at least not seriously. They didn't have the talent or resources to complete it. Nobody at the time considered Japan a threat in this way.
Developing the bomb was done out of fear that someone else would do it first. Dropping it had nothing to do with that. Germany had already surrendurred.
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There are quite a few who say that Japan was working on a bomb. There's no doubt they had a cyclotron and they worked to separate U235 from U238.
The fact remains that they had studied the possibility, they didn't put many resources behind it because they thought the US could not put the necessary resources into it. Do you really think there wouldn't have been a full-on effort by the Japanese to create an a-bomb if one was demonstrated? They certainly had the knowledge and drive to create one if they chose to go that route. If they knew it was possible and knew they needed to have the capability, no resources would have been spared to accomplish it.