Science on the International Stage: Hayakawa

In September 1945, the young physicist Satio Hayakawa joined a group headed by Osamu Minakawa (Central Meteorological Bureau) and Ryōkichi Sagane (Tokyo University) to inspect the impact of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. Hayakawa’s job was to measure radioactivity.1 The American physicist Richard P. Feynman whom he would later befriend, had worked on the Manhattan Project that ultimately led to the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ironically, Feynman and other American physicists sought to help Japanese physicists rejoin the international community of science

Mobilizing Science in World War II: Yoshio Nishina

We saw, in chapter 1, how the Japanese physicist was shaped by both social and cultural factors. Indeed, the samurai “spirit” can be considered a cultural resource, a construct, which Japanese used in both peacetime and in war. World War II provides a useful window to how physicists negotiated their multiple identities and sometimes conflicting loyalties. In this chapter, we focus on Yoshio Nishina, who effectively mentored a whole generation of physicists. He is also considered the father of the Japanese atomic bomb. Although Nishina’s lab lacked equipment and materials to pursue the study of the artificial disintegration of the elements, he wrote we cannot help to be tempted to do this sort of experiments, because there are so many problems which are awaiting their solution. It is quite possible that we come too late, but that does not matter, it is the way to their solution which interests us