Did the Japanese detonate an atomic device just days before they surrendered?

– Evidence suggests Japan was just weeks behind the U.S. in the race to build the bomb.
– See how the Japanese planned to deliver the deadly device.
– Formerly top-secret Japanese documents help tell the dramatic tale.

Since the end of World War II, conventional wisdom claimed that Imperial Japan was years away from building an atomic weapon. Japan’s Atomic Bomb shatters that view.

Using once-secret Japanese wartime documents, this special offers evidence that Japan had world-class nuclear physicists, access to uranium ore, and cyclotrons to process it. They devised an innovative way to deliver the bombs using 400-foot long Sen Toku submarines, capable of carrying and launching airplanes. Most startling, just six days after Hiroshima, Japan tested its own atomic device on a small island 20 miles off the Korean coast! The sobering conclusion is that Japan may have been just weeks behind the U.S. in the race for the bomb.