[KS] the atomic bomb & German-Japanese cooperation

[Yong-Ho Choe]

I was a second year student of a middle school in Taegu when Japan
surrendered. We were mobilized to work on an air base at Tongch'on (now
Taegu airport), constructing and repairing runways and air plane shelters.
It must have been in July or August 1945 (I remember the heat of
Taegu summer) when a Japanese sergeant (Gunso), who was in charge of our
labor gang, told us that Japan was developing "a new type of bomb
(shin'gata bakudan)," which, with the size of a small match box, could
destroy a huge battleship.

Yong-ho Choe (최영호)

On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreanstudies.com>
wrote:

> Would be great if you add some juice to the blurb, Bill.
> Let me at least try to put this into a larger historical context.
>
> -----
> 4 Dec 2014  - Bill Streifer wrote:
> > This may be of little interest to most of you, but I thought I'd
> share. I just learned that the Germans were experimenting with a new
> way of making the atomic bomb during WWII, and in 1944, they
> transferred that technology to Japan. I know for a fact that the
> Japanese were experimenting with the process in Tokyo, but they may
> also have been experimenting with it in Hungnam, North Korea, a
> colony of Japan at the time. For more details, contact me directly.
> -----
>
> The Japanese started to get military training in Prussia as early as
> the 1880s. This was only interrupted by the First World War, when both
> countries were enemies and the Japanese took over some German colonies.
> And it is right after WW I that the Japanese received firsthand German
> technological information from the kaiser's, by then the Weimar
> Republic's aviation program as well as deep insights into the private
> airplane industry, simply because Japan was one of the victorious
> powers and the Versailles Treaty allowed them to monitor German
> aviation industries. Other than the usual textbook history, the
> military development of the aviation industries was not all too much
> concerned about the Versailles regulations though: the testing was
> outsourced, as we would say today, to Soviet territory (which was
> possible through a secret agreement of the new Weimar government with
> the new Soviet government). The French, Americans, British, and
> Japanese thus got to see the 'historical' and new official version of
> the new German developments, while the Soviets, also among the
> victorious powers, shared insights to new developments -- for several
> years at least. Still, the Germans and the Japanese always worked well
> together, and both sides seemed rather released when they could
> continue the relationship under different conditions. Large numbers of
> top technical personnel of both Japanese air forces, that of the Navy
> and that of the Army, received extended training in Berlin, all through
> the 1920s and 1930s. German engineers, on the other hand, worked in
> Japan to help developing the Japanese aviation industries.
>
> When Japan started the Pacific War, when they bombed Pear Harbor, the
> Nazi leaders continued to support them in any technical means possible.
> Until 1941 communication and physical transport between Germany and
> Japan went through various channels: (a) via Trans-Siberian Railway
> through the Soviet Union, Manchukuo, Korea, (b) via U-boats and ships,
> (c) via Switzerland (which functioned as Germany's international bank,
> trading platform, and number #1 supplier of military technology) and
> then on by train through parts of non-occupied France (as a hidden
> route) to a sea port, (d) and as for communication purposes only also
> through Sweden and Norway. When the Germans started the war with the
> Soviets in 1941 that route was cancelled out, and in 1942 the secret
> Swiss-French railway link (to a French Harbor) also disappeared. Direct
> physical transports from/to Japan were thus rather problematic in the
> last three years of the war. You may have seen the movie _U-234_ that
> points to exactly these circumstances and whose storyline seems pretty
> close to the actual historic events.
>
> In any case, the tactics the Nazis followed here were already tested
> during World War I, and they had already failed at that time. I some
> cases even the same personnel was responsible. Karl Haushofer, for
> example, said to have been the theoretical mentor of Hitler, the
> creator and mastermind behind the Japanese-Nazi cooperation, was
> already involved in similar policies during the prior war, when the
> Germans sponsored rebellions in India to keep the British busy (which
> did not work out), or promise the Mexicans to assist them in marching
> into California after having won the war -- which backfired, as that
> communication was intercepted, the content published, and President
> Wilson then found himself forced to enter the war to fight against the
> Germans. But it also explains some really strange relations, e.g. Karl
> Haushofer sponsoring the communist reporter Agnes Smedley (who was on
> the kaiser's payroll, first in New York, then in Berlin -- later she
> was active among the Chinese communists, as we all know). Smedley was
> the lover of Chatto (Virendranath Chattopadhyaya), the Indian
> independence leader who also lived in Berlin and who was put in charge
> of the Indian anti-colonial rebellions. Some left-wing Koreans in
> Germany then again worked with Chatto and his organization. As
> mentioned, in the 1930s, under the Nazis, we still see some of the same
> personnel being active, and the basic idea of supporting one's enemy's
> enemies was pursued just the same way as before. Sharing the
> half-functional Wunderwaffe with the Japanese thus comes as no
> surprise, as it must have had the only purpose of hoping to keep the
> British and Americans busy elsewhere -- EVEN if the Japanese would just
> unsuccessfully test it. In this context, I should note that the
> Japanese did not trust the German leadership. Japanese intelligence in
> Europe during World War II was as much directed towards spying out the
> Germans as it was aimed at the enemy. Before anything, the Japanese
> were of the opinion (certainly right so) that the Nazi leadership had
> fallen into the trap of believing its own propaganda and that it
> misjudged military successes and defeats. The consequences of this
> evaluation is quite obscure then: for example, the official Japanese
> news agency in Europe, Domei News Agency, known by all involved war
> parties to do what we would today term open-source intelligence tasks,
> same as similar Third Reich agencies did, was in fact also involved
> into human intelligence collection (classical 007 hard core spying).
> That is obscure because they seriously thought that the Nazis would not
> know that -- while, in fact, by 1943, if not before, even the Americans
> knew all the details. The Nazis let them do their thing, but they in
> return hired their own personnel to spy them out. The few Koreans still
> living in Europe during the war seem almost all to have been involved
> -- either spying out the Germans for the Japanese or spying out the
> Japanese for the Germans (as well as propagating Nazi ideologies, of
> curse). At least one of them was a movie-ready top agent (details in my
> piece in Andreas Schirmer's forthcoming book), but Koreanists will also
> recognize some other names.
>
>
> Best,
> Frank
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreanstudies.com
>
>
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