pdf - WHALE

this weapon could be used, and the plant where it had been made was
now in Russian hands.
By the summer of 1946 the report was public. David Snell, an
agent with the Twenty-fourth Criminal Investigation Detachment in
Korea... wrote about it in the Atlanta Constitution following his
discharge. 6
Snell's source for the allegation was a Japanese officer returning to
Japan. The officer informed him that he had been in charge of
security for the project. Snell, paraphrasing the officer in his article,
stated:
In a cave in a mountain near Konan men worked, racing against
time, in final assembly of "genzai bakudan," Japan's name for the
atomic bomb. It was August 10, 1945 (Japanese time), only four days
after an atomic bomb flashed in the sky over Hiroshima and five days
before Japan surrendered.
To the north, Russian hordes were spilling into Manchuria.
Shortly after midnight of that day, a convoy of Japanese trucks moved
from the mouth of the cave, past watchful sentries. The trucks wound
through valleys, past sleeping form villages.... In the cool predawn,
Japanese scientists and engineers loaded genzai bakudan aboard a ship
at Konan.
Off the coast, near an islet in the sea of Japan, more frantic
preparations were under way. All that day and night, ancient ships,
junks and fishing vessels moved into the anchorage.
Before dawn on August 12, a robot launch chugged through the
ships at anchor and beached itself on the islet. Its passenger was
genzai bakudan. A clock ticked.
The observers were 20 miles away. The waiting was difficult and
strange to men who had worked relentlessly so long, who knew their
job had been completed too late.
The light in the east, where Japan lay, grew brighter. The moment
the sun peeped over the sea there was a burst of light at the anchorage,
blinding the observers, who wore welder's glasses. The ball of fire was
estimated to be 1,000 yards in diameter. A multicolored cloud of
vapors boiled toward the heavens, then mushroomed in the
atmosphere.
The churn of water and vapor obscured the vessels directly under
the burst. Ships and junks on the fringe burned fiercely at anchor.
6 Wilcox, op. cit, p. 15.
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