Wartime Fission Research in Japan.

The article discusses works on atomic projects carried out in Japan during the second World War. An essay on the Japanese wartime fission research, based on primary sources was published by historian John Dower. It is the only one of the recent publications on Japan's nuclear science to cite an account of the wartime work written by a team of Japanese journalists and available in English since 1972, "The Day Man Lost: Hiroshima 6 August 1945," by the Pacific War Research Society (PWRS). Dower undertakes a comprehensive survey of sources in Japanese. Dower undertakes a comprehensive survey of sources in Japanese and indicates that the PWRS account is based on an untranslated 1968 work, "The Emperor and Showa History". Dower's book is based on three years' interview research, and it recounts the "tragedy of errors" leading up to the devastation of Hiroshima. Dower evaluates the Japanese technological accomplishments, puts them in international perspective, and examines historically the scientific and institutional contexts of the work. The account still provides the fullest description in English of the scientific aspects of Japan's wartime fission projects.