Arakatsu Bunsaku

Arakatsu Bunsaku

Arakatsu Bunsaku ( Japanese 荒 勝 文 策 ; * March 25, 1890 ; † June 25, 1973 ) was a Japanese physicist who headed the Japanese nuclear research program of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II . Arakatsu was a student of Albert Einstein .

Arakatsu Bunsaku studied at the Imperial University of Kyoto and became a professor at the Imperial University of Taihoku (now Taiwan State University ) in 1928 and at his alma mater in 1936.

Bunsaku Arakatsu built its own 1934 particle and found that any cleavage of a ²³⁵ U - atom on average 2.6  neutrons releases. He published his result on October 6, 1939 in a physics journal. In the period that followed, Arakatsu held discussions with other physicists at the University of Kyoto about the possible uses of atomic energy and did not even rule out the development of an atomic bomb . For this purpose he put together a research and development team, which also included Sakae Shimizu and the later Japanese Nobel Prize in Physics Hideki Yukawa . The institute for chemical and physical research and a company in Hugnam in what was then the Japanese colony of Korea supported the efforts. The project was started in 1942 under the code name F-Go and was primarily intended to replace crude oil with nuclear energy, as the situation in the Pacific War had made crude oil a precious commodity and becoming increasingly scarce. On this point it hardly differed at that time from the German nuclear program, which was started around the same time . However, the more the tide turned against the Japanese, the more intensively research into the construction of an atom bomb was advanced. Immediately after the American atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima , Naval Minister Mitsumasa Yonai was instructed to set up a commission of inquiry and to investigate the effects of the first atomic bomb explosion in the affected area. Most of the reports and artifacts brought to Tokyo were lost after the war ended. Some are now in the Yamato Museum in Kure .

literature

• Rainer Karlsch , Zbynek Zeman: Urange Secrets. The Ore Mountains in the focus of world politics 1933–1960 . Links, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-276-X .
• Keiko Nagase-Reimer: Research on the use of nuclear energy in Japan, 1938–1945 (=  Marburg Japan series . Volume 30 ). Friends of the Marburg Japan Series, Marburg 2002, ISBN 3-927607-53-3 .

Web links

• Japanese Nuclear Weapons Program. (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 荒 勝 文 策 . In: デ ジ タ ル 版 日本人 名 大 辞典 + Plus at kotobank.jp. Retrieved July 19, 2012 (Japanese). 

Commons : Bunsaku Arakatsu  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Arakatsu is the family name, Bunsaku the first name.