# Did the Japanese realise what hit Hiroshima + misc. questions
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 6, 2015, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142 "2015-08-06T09:25:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/1 "2015-08-06T09:25:25Z")
I have some rather tough questions about bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let´s see if you guys can help me out.
It took many hours for Tokyo to find out Hiroshima has been wiped out. They knew the city didn´t have ammunition storages that could have caused it, also they knew not sizable bomber formations had been on area. Was the concept of atomic weapon so familiar to them that they could have immediately start to suspect it?
Is there any account written by crews of bombers that accompanied Enola Gay? I have heard very little information about these planes. I guess their flight was rather uneventful. I mean relatively so! They also saw the destruction of the city and got hit by a blast wave, as far as I can understand.
Was these two bombs dropped with a parachute? If not, wouldn´t that have been good idea since it would have given more time for bombers to escape?
If you get hit by a nuke that goes off let us say 100 meters away from you, do you have time to realise something is happening or is the death imminent?
There are some account about voice recorder onboard Enola Gay (for crew reactions). Any information about this? Was it officially sanctioned? Could it still lay in some government archive?
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### Author:  [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/2 "2015-08-06T10:26:33Z")
Oh and one more question. Americans did earlier Trinity test, the first atomic explosion in history. They allowed newspaper to report about it as a ammo storage accident. Newspaper also told how far away the explosion was seen, thus giving a hint of its yield. Did Japanese intelligence has access to American newspapers? Could they in theory have made a right conclusion? Not that it would have changed anything…
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/3 "2015-08-06T11:38:54Z")
According to John Hersey’s book, _Hiroshima_, there certainly were people who figured out what had happened, some of them on the scene.
According to Richard Rhodes’ book _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ (and other books, as well), there was a small Japanese technical effort looking at the possibility of an atomic bomb.
Here’s Wikipedia’s page on the subject:
> **[Japanese nuclear weapons program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_program)**
>
> During World War II, Japan had several programs exploring the use of nuclear fission for military technology, including nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Like the similar wartime programs in Nazi Germany, it was relatively small, suffered from an array of problems brought on by lack of resources and wartime disarray, and was ultimately unable to progress beyond the laboratory stage during the war.
> Today, Japan has no known nuclear weapons programs. It is a signatory in good standing of ...
Note the last sentence here:
> [@](#):
>
> In 1934, Tohoku University professor Hikosaka Tadayoshi’s “atomic physics theory” was released. Hikosaka pointed out the huge energy contained by nuclei and the possibility that both nuclear power generation and weapons could be created.[3] In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting that they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons;[4] simultaneously, they communicated these results to Lise Meitner. Meitner, and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, correctly interpreted these results as being nuclear fission[5] and Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939.[6] Physicists around the world immediately realized that chain reactions could be produced and notified their governments of the possibility of developing nuclear weapons.
Japanese agents wouldn’t need to access accounts of the Alamagordo explosion to know about the feasibility of an atomic bomb.
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### Author:  [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/4 "2015-08-06T11:52:12Z")
see this:
> **[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Japanese realization of the bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Japanese_realization_of_the_bombing)**
>
> The Tokyo control operator of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation noticed that the Hiroshima station had gone off the air. He tried to re-establish his program by using another telephone line, but it too had failed. About 20 minutes later the Tokyo railroad telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From some small railway stops within 16 km (10 mi) of the city came unofficial and confused reports of a terrible explosion in Hiroshima. A Mili...
A young officer was instructed to fly immediately to Hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to Tokyo with reliable information for the staff. It was felt that nothing serious had taken place and that the explosion was just a rumor.[157]
The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about three hours, while still nearly 160 km (99 mi) from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the bomb. In the bright afternoon, the remains of Hiroshima were burning. Their plane soon reached the city, around which they circled in disbelief. A great scar on the land still burning and covered by a heavy cloud of smoke was all that was left. They landed south of the city, and the staff officer, after reporting to Tokyo, began to organize relief measures.
The US told Japan immediately after the destruction of Hiroshima that it was an atomic weapon :
After the Hiroshima bombing, Truman issued a statement announcing the use of the new weapon.
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### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/5 "2015-08-06T11:54:46Z")
They definitely used parachutes too.
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### Author:  [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/6 "2015-08-06T12:48:56Z")
My uncle was a young boy in New Mexico during the Trinity blast, and says he saw the flash and a later boom while out delivering papers. He went home and told his dad he thought a gas station must have blown up somewhere out there.
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### Author:  [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/7 "2015-08-06T13:21:03Z")
> [@dr\_zippermeyer](#):
>
> …If you get hit by a nuke that goes off let us say 100 meters away from you, do you have time to realise something is happening or is the death imminent?..
Nitpick: I think you probably mean _instantaneous_. Imminent means “about to happen” and would give you time to realize something.
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### Author:  [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/8 "2015-08-06T13:59:39Z")
> [@dr\_zippermeyer](#):
>
> If you get hit by a nuke that goes off let us say 100 meters away from you, do you have time to realise something is happening or is the death imminent?
Well, you can see the fireball in [this Trinity photograph](http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/Trinity/image7.shtml) has a radius of about 100 meters. It says it was taken .016 seconds after detonation.
Now another consideration is that you might be vaporized by radiation even before the fireball got to you. Note that this is what happens to the mooring cables that stabilize the platform that nuclear weapons were detonated from (see [Rope trick effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect)).
My guess would be that you wouldn’t feel a thing.
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### Author:  [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/9 "2015-08-06T14:35:58Z")
I will also second “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Rhodes. It gives a very complete history of the entire run up and events.
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/10 "2015-08-06T14:53:54Z")
> [@Hermitian](#):
>
> Now another consideration is that you might be vaporized by radiation even before the fireball got to you.
This.
The energy release from the nuclear reaction takes place in the space of microseconds. Some of it is absorbed by the atmosphere immediately around the bomb (and the material of the bomb itself), but some of it heads out and roasts nearby objects. Note that the guy wires which were exhibiting the “rope trick” effects were pointed approximately toward the blast center, yet the surfaces of those cables still absorbed enough energy from the expanding fireball to vaporize. If you presented a surface of your body such that it faced the blast center at a distance of 100m, you’d expect to intercept a massive amount of thermal radiation even before the fireball reached you.
Either way, you’d be dead before you could comprehend that detonation had even occurred.
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/11 "2015-08-06T15:03:13Z")
The Japanese Navy had a small bomb project headed by the physicist Yukio Nishina-it never went anywhere. at first, the Japanese army did not believe it was a nuclear bomb-but the scientists confirmed it.
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### Author:  [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/12 "2015-08-06T15:44:32Z")
> [@coremelt](#):
>
> see this:
> [Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Japanese_realization_of_the_bombing)
Hilarious. Bolding mine:
I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb … It is an awful responsibility which has come to us … We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and **we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.**
—President Harry S. Truman, August 9, 1945
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/13 "2015-08-06T16:22:23Z")
If this [_Cracked.com_ article](http://www.cracked.com/article_22714_5-true-wwii-stories-too-insane-history-books_p2.html) is to be believed, some of the uranium we used on the Japanese was captured from a German U-boat on its way to Japan, to be used to make dirty bombs launched from Japanese subs…
> [@](#):
>
> Right before the war ended, the Nazis ordered a submarine, the U-234, to take all of their secret weapons to Japan – including, apparently, a shitload of uranium. After their Arctic plutonium factory was blown up, the Nazis had tried their hands at a uranium bomb but didn’t get enough before Roosevelt, Truman, Stalin, Churchill, and whoever was in charge of France showed up to party in Berlin. The likely Japanazi plan was now to use what they had to build a dirty bomb, a bomb with radioactive stuff attached to it for when a normal explosion doesn’t say “fuck you” loudly enough. The recipient of that “fuck you”? The U.S. West Coast.
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### Author:  [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/14 "2015-08-06T17:07:32Z")
> [@campp](#):
>
> My uncle was a young boy in New Mexico during the Trinity blast, and says he saw the flash and a later boom while out delivering papers. He went home and told his dad he thought a gas station must have blown up somewhere out there.
As an aside, my dad worked with [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Beser):
> [@](#):
>
> Jacob Beser (May 15, 1921 – June 16, 1992) was a lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces who served during World War II. Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, when it dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, Beser was a crewmember aboard Bockscar when “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki. He was the only person to have served as a strike crew member of both of the 1945 atomic bomb missions.[1]
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### Author:  [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/15 "2015-08-06T17:22:32Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#):
>
> They definitely used parachutes too.
Neither of the bombs had parachutes.
(The rear fins of some conventional iron bombs are sometimes referred to as parachutes, but they aren’t parachutes in the more accepted usage of the word.
And seeing a both planes that dropped the bombs as well as the chase planes all escaped, I guess they didn’t need parachutes.
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### Author:  [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/16 "2015-08-06T17:36:37Z")
You sure about that?
From the account of the guy who was recognized as surviving both nukes:
At 8:15 am, he was walking towards the docks when the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb near the centre of the city, only 3 km away. Yamaguchi recalls seeing the bomber and two small parachutes, before there was “a great flash in the sky, and I was blown over”. The explosion ruptured his eardrums, blinded him temporarily, and left him with serious burns over the left side of the top half of his body. After recovering, he crawled to a shelter, and having rested, he set out to find his colleagues. They had also survived and together they spent the night in an air-raid shelter before returning to Nagasaki the following day. In Nagasaki, he received treatment for his wounds, and despite being heavily bandaged, he reported for work on August 9.
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### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/17 "2015-08-06T17:39:43Z")
Like campp and dasmoocher… I was visiting with one of my F-I-L’s old friends, a real quiet guy that didn’t open up much so I was shocked when he told us of being an electrical specialist that worked in the rear of the bombers that performed a number of drops in the Pacific when we resumed airborne nuclear testing back in the early 60’s in an effort to drive the Soviets to negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty. I believe that must have been Dominic I.
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### Author:  [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/18 "2015-08-06T17:41:29Z")
> [@Unpronounceable](#):
>
> You sure about that?
Pretty sure.
It’s my recollection (from reading not being there!!) that the chase planes dropped some measurement equipment that had parachutes.
I’m virtually certain that the bombs themselves didn’t.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/19 "2015-08-06T17:50:23Z")
The iron frame of the dome atop the Hiroshima observatory survived intact. Apparently this was a combination of (a) the blast was directly above, so the shock waves did not try to push the frame sideways; directly down was most stable… and (b) the initial flash apparently evaporated the copper sheeting, so there was much less wind effect pushing on the stronger steel frame.
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### Author:  [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Your_Great_Darsh_Face)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-japanese-realise-what-hit-hiroshima-misc-questions/727142/20 "2015-08-06T20:11:41Z")
> [@spifflog](#):
>
> Pretty sure.
>
> It’s my recollection (from reading not being there!!) that the chase planes dropped some measurement equipment that had parachutes.
>
> I’m virtually certain that the bombs themselves didn’t.
The [maths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#The_bombing) seems to bear you out.
> [@](#):
>
> Little Boy containing about 64 kg (141 lb) of uranium-235 took 44.4 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at about 31,000 feet (9,400 m) to a detonation height of about 1,900 feet (580 m) above the city.
That’s about five and a half miles in three-quarters of a minute - in the region of 500 mph which is somewhere near what you’d expect from a free-falling object. I imagine a parachute would entail too much drift.
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