But could the Japanese have built an atomic bomb during World War II?
Historians, both Japanese and American, have concluded that Japan had no uranium resources, or an enterprise on a large scale along the lines of the Manhattan Project. So this threat, as it ended up being (probably) the case of Nazi Germany, was not real.
But the historical importance of the project is not in the fact that Japan has failed, but the fact that has tried, and also in the attitude of Japan's postwar - posing as a nation victim of the atomic bomb, with no interest in nuclear weapons - not be entirely true.
Historical records show the eagerness of the military and the willingness to cooperate of the scientists. If other events had become the Japanese atomic bomb a reality, they probably would not have hesitated to use the bomb against their enemies, even against the will of the Emperor Hirohito that was against the plan of the atomic bomb since the beginning.
The emperor believed that the use of an atomic bomb would mean the extermination of all mankind. Finally, near the end of the war, the researches for the Japanese atomic bomb were closed by order of the Emperor.
