Japan's General Staff Office Knew About Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombing in Advance and Did Nothing, According to 2011 NHK Documentary[/b]
There is an NHK documentary that was aired two years ago on August 6, 2011, on the anniversary day of Hiroshima atomic bombing. I was unaware of this documentary until I saw a tweet a few days ago that had the link to a blogpost by Councilman Koichi Ohyama of Minamisoma City, Fukushima on September 25, 2012.
Mr. Ohyama's post from one year ago quotes the NHK documentary's announcement from two years ago, which says that the top officers of Japanese imperial army knew in advance the impending US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and did not do anything.
Atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been described (at least in Japan) as "beyond expectation" (just like the Fukushima nuclear accident) and "surprise attacks" with no pre-warning by the US, who used to dump leaflets in Japanese from the planes to warn civilians of impending attacks.
But NHK says the top military officers in imperial Japan knew, and did nothing. The military essentially was the government during the war.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/08/special-post-for-august-15-part-2.htmlAugust 6, 1945. The Imperial Army's special intelligence unit picked up the call sign in V600s at 3AM - one of the "special task planes". It was accompanied by a short-wave message to Washington, then followed by a wireless voice communication to the base in Saipan: "Approaching the target".
Major Eizo Hori (see Part 1), head of the Division 2 of the General Staff Office that oversees the special intelligence unit, reported to his superiors that the weather reconnaissance plane was followed by the "special task plane" coming to Hiroshima. The General Staff Office sat on the information and did not share it with the regional headquarter in Hiroshima. The bomb was detonated 5 hours later at 8:15AM over unsuspecting residents of Hiroshima. There was no air raid siren. "Enola Gay" and the accompanying B29s were uncontested all the way to the target.
Three days later on August 9, again 5 hours before the atomic bomb explosion over Nagasaki, the intelligence unit picked up the same call sign in V600 again, and this time the B29 was heading for Kyushu. In light of what had happened in Hiroshima, the information was again immediately delivered all the way to the head of the General Staff Office. The cabinet ministers [more than half of whom were either current or former high-ranking military officers] were in a meeting in the Imperial Palace to discuss what to do in light of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima that practically wiped out the city in an instant. They couldn't come to any conclusion, but the Chief of Staff Umezu assured them there would be no second atomic bombing.
Maybe it's because I'm a History Geekasoid Life-Form, but I found this two-part article fascinating. I think the NHK documentary goes a bit farther than the evidence supports on a few points.
Basically, before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped the Japanese Army (IJA) knew the US had been trying to create an atomic bomb, and
something was up regarding the B-29s based in the Marianas. The IJA started an unsuccessful atomic bomb program - too little, too late - and on ending it concluded the US could not be successful, either. Perhaps they believed it, perhaps it was sour-grapes self-delusion. The documentary concludes the latter was the case, and the IJA was basically hiding their collective head in the sand.
WRT the B-29 squadrons, through basic low-level signal intelligence, the IJA found that the squadrons on each island had a call-sign unique to that island. Though the IJA could not read the coded messages, the call-signs were in the clear, so the IJA could tell what raids came from what islands, and approximate numbers. Suddenly, in June, 1945 a new call sign popped up that was used by just 10-15 planes, rather than by hundreds. They inferred that this was a small special purpose group, though what its purpose was, the IJA did not know. The IJA also knew, through the call-signs, that that group of planes did not participate in raids on Japan.
Fast-forwarding to August 6, a single plane from that group suddenly showed up as a probable weather scout for the Hiroshima area. And then another single plane from that group announced that it was nearing the target area. So on August 6, the IJA knew something was up and Hiroshima was the target, but they did not know what. And Hiroshima was not warned to take to shelters, nor were fighters scrambled.
On August 9, the US did the same routine: one weather scout; one plane with a bomb. The IJA saw that pattern, and again did nothing - no warning, no fighters. One can argue about how much could be inferred based on what the IJA knew on August 6, whether the IJA should have known what was about to be dropped on Hiroshima. But I think excuses for not doing differently with Nagasaki can only be weak.
Finally, it's reasonable to ask how effective the available fighters could have been. The sky is a big place, and finding one plane - as opposed to a formation of hundreds - would be very difficult without radar and directions from a ground controller. And while the N1K2-J fighters could engage B-29s above 30K feet, their slow climb rate and impaired high altitude performance would have made actually engaging Enola Gay or Bock's Car difficult, with uncertain outcome. Those caveats pointed out, on August 9 at the least, it should have been tried.
