The First Atomic War
The Imperial Japanese A-Bomb
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The First Atomic War
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Narrated by:
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Virtual Voice
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By:
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Chris Lawrence
This title uses virtual voice narration
Virtual voice is computer-generated narration for audiobooks.
About this listen
In 1921, RIKEN provided funding for Nishina to study in Europe. There he met several famous Western physicists. At Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, he worked under Ernest Rutherford as a “kaigai ryfi gakusei” (“overseas student”) from November 1922 until March 1923. While there, Nishina co-authored a well-known theoretical paper with Oskar Klein on the rate and angular distribution of Compton scattering.
In April of 1923 Nishina relocated to Copenhagen, Denmark to work with Niels Bohr, from April 10, 1923, until September 30, 1928, with whom he developed a lasting friendship.
Bohr, half Jewish, had first left Germany with the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Then later during WWII Bohr was forced to escape Nazi-occupied Denmark for neutral Sweden to avoid arrest.
In 1929, Nishina also visited pre-war Germany, including trips to both Georg August University of Göttingen and to Hamburg, Germany. Curiously, he convinced a highly placed German acquaintance, Werner Heisenberg, head of the German A-bomb effort, to visit Japan and give a series of lectures. Heisenberg was sometimes known as the father of the German nuclear program.
Following his return to Japan, Nishina was promoted to a position in the Hantar Nagaoka laboratory at RIKEN. Finally, during mid-1930s Nishina graduated with his Doctor of Science degree in Physics.
Subsequently, Nishina’s friend and mentor Neils Bohr and his wife also visited him in Tokyo.
Nishina established his own laboratory in Japan in 1931. His research subjects included quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, cosmic rays, and high-energy proton beams. Nishina completed the construction of the first cyclotron built outside of the West (United States) at his lab in 1937.
Nishina had consulted extensively with American physicist Ernest Lawrence[iii] for help with designing and constructing the Japanese cyclotron. Lawrence was to receive the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cyclotron. An example of Lawrence’s help included assisting Nishina with buying an electromagnet from a U.S. firm for his Japanese cyclotron.
The day after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Nishina was quickly dispatched by the Japanese high command to head the team of top Japanese nuclear scientists to confirm whether Hiroshima had been attacked using an atomic bomb.
One day after the bombing, on August 7th, 1945, they arrived at the site of horrific destruction. After taking key measurements at the site, necessary to confirm the bomb's nature, Nishina identified it as being a Uranium bomb. This had been Nishina’s own A-bomb objective, a Uranium bomb, once believed unattainable in both Heisenberg in Germany and only slightly possible by Nishina in Japan.
Nishina then sent the team’s findings concerning the first American atomic bomb attack back to Tokyo on August 8th, 1945.
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