There's a very infamous and at times factual film called "The Men Behind The Sun" which is about Unit 731 and the horrors they took part in. Only for those with a very strong stomach, though, there's some pretty grotesque scenes. They don't pull punches about showing you things very much in line with what the real-life counterpart actually did.
The Japanese government remains very quiet about that to date.............. with the Americans using these war criminals for their own gain. Winner takes it all, eluding justice.
@domen kavčič l could be wrong but my understanding is that for a video to be counted as watched, and thus credit for payment, it has to play until the end and it stops itself.
What an incredible story. Dr.Felton keeps coming up with these gems to educate and fascinate us! He is to be congratulated for his efforts. Many thanks!
The I-400 submarines so impressed the American that they made sure to prevent the Russians from gaining any knowledge of them and scuttled all those captured once they had been examined. While nothing remains of the I-400s, one of the Seiran floatplanes is preserved at the Udvar-Hazy Centre in the US.
I have been to the area where the Japanese attempted to start the forest fires mentioned at 6:19 There is a memorial there (Brookings OR). Also not far away a farm house and barn that were actually radar and I believe anti aircraft gun emplacement. Thank You for the video!
Nobua Fujita returned to the small town in Oregon after the war and gave them his family sword...hard to hate a man who honors his surrender...I think this story alone is worth a movie...the town welcomed him with open arms...after horrible wars forgiveness of honorable enemies is essential to moving forward.
@8866panda nobody owes an apology to Japan for dropping two atom bombs and thus ending the war...Japanese imperialism started it, killed over 20 million in China and used Bacterial bombs, chemical and biological warfare on the Chinese as early as 1941...the Flying Tigers in Kunming experience biological warfare dropped on nearby cities The US like the Russians took Nazi scientists and Japanese scientists to further their weapons in the wake of a war that killed 60 million that the US tried like hell to stay out of the idea the US owes anybody an apology is the biggest most ignorant assumption I have ever seen.....not only do we not need to show remorse we need to understand after Saipan, Iwo , and Okinawa an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost millions of Japanese civilians lives...plus the fact the Soviets invaded with veteran blooded troops whom already committed mass rapes and atrocities on Berlin civilians it would have been a blood bath in the millions the Atom Bombs saved my grandfathers life as well as millions of Japanese lives nobody needs to show remorse except those that started WW2 Japan and Germany has Japan offered reparations to China and the 20 million innocents they killed?
You cannot argue with the success of the long term goal of establishing a stable, capitalist, democratic Japanese state whose foreign policy would align with the Western Allies. From a moralistic perspective though, I can't help but think there should have been a much more robust Nuremberg-style reckoning in the immediate postwar years.
You get the feeling that if Japan had gone ahead with a chemical attack at that point in the war the US would have never stopped at just two nuclear bombs.
Or would have shifted the targets to Tokyo and Osaka to decapitate the military, rather than the relatively unscathed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to better demonstrate the efficacy of the new weapons.
The American biological weapons program was far larger than the Japanese one The US military was mass-producing anthrax and the United States had huge supplies of mustard gas and 500,000 tons of captured German nerve gas Japan would do one biological attack and get hit with 100
They tried to ignite a fire in the Temperate Rain Forest! Lewis and Clark complained how the continuous rain drove them crazy and all their cured leather tack and harness MOLDED!!
They technically DID attack and invade the US, look up the Aleutian Islands campaign in Alaska and the Japanese occupation of Guam as well (they were absolutely HORRIFIC to the native Chamorros, 10% of the entire tribal population died from mistreatment by the time U.S. Marines liberated the island in 1944). The battle with Japan wasn't merely to the aid of honorable nations, it was personal in so many ways.
Japan would have still lost, all it would have ensured is that we would have had not one ounce of sympathy for hand-wringing about using the atomic bomb.
@@360Nomad What if Germany instead of building big capital ships had made another 100 or more subs they no doubt would have been able to blockade England into surrender. They almost did it at one time they had England down to one week of supplies, that with only 56 subs half of which where not suitable for Atlantic operations!! If that had happened and as long as the Japanese did not mess with us they could have done as they wished.
It would be really nice if you could add a "recently added" Playlist for the most recent week or two of videos so we could autoplay and catch up on the most recent uploads. Thanks!
🤔 here we've got someone that apparently spends way too much time watching cartoons, comes 14 hours after the original conversation and says (no people are not stupid they didn't witness first hand what happened). 🤯🤯 you don't have to see first hand what happened you meathead. Its written down for you. You learn about what happened by reading history. You're the perfect example of why I said (people are so stupid). Maybe if you shut off the cartoons and pay attention you wouldn't be so clueless right now.
@@thomasriggle6371 Learning what happened and experiencing for yourself is two very different matter. You can read all the history book you want but it will not be the same with you actually getting in that situation. That is human nature. We learned mistakes from experience. But i guess i wont argue further since i am talking with a person that are using more emojis than my younger sister on a pretty serious conversation. Your inherent discrimination towards someone interest does not help this conversation going either.
@@nogisonoko5409 if a warning sticker on a lawnmower says not to stick your hands into moving blades I guess by your logic you're going to do it because (its human nature). You apparently can't learn a lesson from reading. If using emojis in your logic is considered childish because your little sister uses them what age group would you consider her older brother is when he watches cartoons. Funny though how you through your sister under the bus so fast.
Listening to this while laying on the beach in San Francisco. I’m looking toward the Golden Gate Bridge and imagining that it must of been a Japanese target at one point
Met Dr Frank Culbertson once, dating his daughter, he flew Wildcats/Hellcats in WW2. He flew under the Golden Gate Bridge when he came back from the Pacific. His son, Frank Culbertson Jr, was a commander on the space shuttle.
We would have retaliated with a combination of chemical weapons and extra atomic weapons most likely. The US kept chemical weapons in reserve as an early form of deterrence (there were plans to use them in an invasion of the Japanese mainland if I recall correctly though).
In other words you'll eat up anything he tells you unless he admits he's lying. Don't worry bud, most sheep do the same thing. That's why you see all of the ass kissing going on in the comment section.
The I-400s were all captured by the Americans at the end of WWII. They scuttled one in Japan and the other 2 went to Hawaii for study. In order to not have to give one to Russia as war reparations the US Navy scuttled the last 2 I-400s off Hawaii. There is only one Aichi M6A1 Seiran bomber / torpedo aircraft left in the world as they were purpose built for the I-400s and the Japanese destroyed all but one that was being repaired on land. That last example is restored and on display at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Center in Chantilly, VA.
I read excerpts from the notebooks of scientists on the planes which dropped the atom bomb. Some were very annoyed that radiation prevented them from observing its effect on the human “test subjects” below. I consider myself to have a scientific mind but have never allowed it to destroy the ethical standards which govern my behavior. Scientists who don’t make that decision disturb me to my bones.
Imagine if Richard Sorge had not been betrayed. Just the possible intel he may have been able to release to a cold eared Stalin. Thanks for sharing Dr Felton!
One of the most interesting books I have ever read was "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. Being an engineer, I was looking forward to a technical book. Instead, I found a story of social and political pressures that molded the environment of the '30s and '40s in which the A Bomb was developed and deployed. Not an easy read, but I am glad I read it. (And it did contain a wealth of technical info.)
I believe the name of the submarine-lunched aircraft was not "seran" or "saran" but SEIRAN. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a rightwing faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party called the "Seiran-kai" or "storm from the sky association," which included an MP who later became prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone. He was an imperial naval veteran and might have had some role in Operation PX. Nakasone was famous for his close relationship to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. How cynical history is!
@@petewood2350, we got lucky considering the types of pandemics we've had to face before, this is a pandemic with training wheels on. Just imagine how bad things would get with a more lethal virus, that is easily transmitted, say like an airborne ebola. You know, the crap Russia was playing around with in their bioweapon program, or what China plays around with now.
I did know about Unit 731 and its activities. This was a great review of those times and actions. I cannot conceive a scenario in which if the Japanese were successful the American public would not have demanded complete atomic destruction of the entirety of the Japanese home islands. Thank God neither happened.
You need to check this out. Unit 731 is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered in my WWII studies. Joseph Mengele was an amateur in comparison.
The west coast forest fire strategy only failed because it was eighty years too early. If it had been now, they could just pointed a magnifying glass out the plane window.
My Uncle was US Navy Submariner in WW2. He was part of a crew who sailed I-401 back to Pearl Harbor after the war. I have a plaque from the torpedo room. We sank all the Japanese super-subs as target practice off Hawaii - didn't want to share the technology with Stalin. Tragically my uncle was killed in a car accident right after returning from the Pacific. Robert Wynn McGrew, RIP.
No snorkeling sub has ever been able to do 18 knots due to vibrations set up. The WW2 German snorkel MIGHT have managed - which was crude compared to later developments - MIGHT have been able to do 10 in very favorable conditions
The Brits also wanted to get their hands on Ishii's research, and did so. IIRC there were British military officers in the audience when Ishii visited the US Army germ warfare establishment at Fort Dietrick, Maryland, after the war.
I have heard some suggest that this is the reason Truman dropped the bombs, he knew Japan had to be destroyed for the war to end or they would keep trying to do stuff like this.
well researched and well presented historical accounts - history keeps unravelling new formerly hidden information each day - watching this gives a balanced view of each countries will to conquer the other with whatever it takes - the inventions we celebrate as human innovation often arise from reasons to dominate a foe
I once had a teacher say that the problem with invading Russia is that you always wind up getting caught in their winter. Well, the problem with trying to start a forest fire along the Oregon coast is that you alway wind up getting caught in the rain! However, if any of those planes had managed to cross the Cascade range that would be a different story! As for setting off a bubonic plague epidemic in California, I think the Japanese government must have got the idea from the Spermophillous genus of ground squirrels because they managed to do it twice, once in 1900 in San Francisco and in 1924 in Los Angeles.
I think a video on this or your other channel about the british use of balloon bombs could be very interesting, comparing it to the later Japanese use.
Japan only considered Japanese peoples worthy of honor. Everyone else were seen as inferior, even sub-human. Funny how reoccurring that theme is in warfare, from all sides
My father related as how as a surveyor in an US Army Engineer Battalion in a mine in North Korea when the US Army was north of the 38th parallel they had to map and survey an entire mine facility. The only damage to equipment and buildings was from small arms. There were immense prestressed concrete building shells, some equipped with inches thick glass windows. The mine equipment, overhead cable tramway and electric motors and controls were all of German manufacture. Their officers made observations that this was not normal mine construction. All their survey notes and photographs had to be turned over to members of Army Intelligence on site. They were forbidden to bring personal cameras or to retain any writing material, and were sworn to secrecy. Decades later he suspected it was an atomic research facility.
Holy cow! Sometimes the comments are greater than the shows! I wonder why they kept it under wraps? Might explain how the communists got the Bomb. Seems an FOIA request is in order. Surely the N. Koreans know about it.
The fact that these people were simply not killed after the war shows who Americans are. Americans did not condemn to death not only people like thiese Japanese who murdered people by the hundreds of thousands, but also the Germans who murdered millions. They had no problem protecting many "scientist-criminals" and made many of them American heroes. Like, for example, the entire team of Werner Braun. Previously, these people murdered civilians en masse, and after the war ? They became rich and respected Americans.... When Poland in 1945-50 pursued many true German butchers who were hiding in Western Europe, and Poland wanted the Americans to hand them over to us, the Americans said "nope". And these people peacefully lived until normal death by age...
Wow I kind of thought the gun emplacements, barriers put on West Coast beaches to prevent their being used as landing strips, blackouts, etc. were kind of needless measures but it looks like they had their use.
It's interesting the i400 program was started in April 42, I can't help but think the Dolittle raid inspired that effort. Never discount your enemy's capacity to engineer a way to strike.
This is something that seldom gets mentioned when people discuss whether the atomic bombs were the reason for Japan's surrender. This would appear to add to the case against. Japan knew what the bombs were, knew how to build them, knew how hard it was to produce weapons grade material, knew the US could not have a large nuclear arsenal at that time. Japan also had its own, probably more terrifying, WMD program ready to go. What it didn't have, largely due to the Soviet advance, was the security of industrial and military capacity needed to implement operation PX effectively. And while it might have been an effective deterrent against the US the Soviet Union would be much less vulnerable to that form of attack.
Most of the Japanese hardly knew atomic weapons, only the higher ups know the exact detail of such weapon. Japanese could only estimate the amount of US nuclear arsenal since they have no way of confirming it. It could be 10,100 or maybe only 3.
@@nogisonoko5409 It was the higher ups making the decision whether or not to surrender. Japan had 2 nuclear programs, one army, one navy. Some believe Japan tested a bomb in Nth Korea. The problem for Japan was obtaining and enriching enough material to produce 1 bomb, let alone an arsenal. If I recall correctly Japan eventually turned to Germany and a submarine carrying uranium was intercepted by the Canadian navy. So even though the US had access to greater natural resources Japan would have known there was no way they could have 10,100 in 1945. It required a well developed nuclear industry infrastructure and the US did not reach 50 nukes till 1948, something they achieved without the impediment of hot war or secrecy.
@@theosphilusthistler712 I knew Army is developing nuclear weapons but Navy? what do they even benefit on such weapon on naval fleet? 10,100 atomic bombs are just too much. 50-100 atomic bombs is a realistic estimate given the industrial capacity of US.
@@nogisonoko5409 In the fall of 1940 the Japanese army began a nuclear bomb program under Yoshio Nishina, called "Rikken" (at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research). In 1942 the navy started its own program called "F-Go" (F for fission) in Kyoto under the direction of Bansaku Arakatsu. Why these branches of service were not co-operating on a single, better, project I have no idea but no doubt that's an interesting story and one Mark Felton would do a great job of telling. Your name sounds Japanese. Is that correct? And is the fact that you seem to know slightly less about this indicative of the way WWII history is now taught in Japan? That would be very unfortunate. Good or bad, we should all know our past.
@@theosphilusthistler712 The reason why Navy and Army have 2 nuclear program is simple, they just dislike each other. While it is true that this name is a Japanese name, it is unfortunate that i am not a Japanese. I am an Asian though. My country have dark history with the Japanese.
Outstanding report. 1st I've heard about any of this. There's just not any info on this subject that I have been able to locate. Not knowing about certain things, one has no idea where to look for such. Thank you Mark. Yes, those were remarkable submarines. Quite bizarre but could've worked.
I read a book about Unit 731. Called "A Plague Upon Humanity." Which I highly recommend.
@@briancooper2112 i guess all those barbaric experiments did actually yield to some medical use, tough times
I also recommend "Factories of Death".
There's a very infamous and at times factual film called "The Men Behind The Sun" which is about Unit 731 and the horrors they took part in. Only for those with a very strong stomach, though, there's some pretty grotesque scenes. They don't pull punches about showing you things very much in line with what the real-life counterpart actually did.
@@dyveira Is it, by any chance, available on DVD in the United States?
The Japanese government remains very quiet about that to date.............. with the Americans using these war criminals for their own gain.
Winner takes it all, eluding justice.
Don't forget to like. It's the least you can do.
And be sure to let the video play until it stops. The "watch" isn't credited if one leaves early.
@domen kavčič l could be wrong but my understanding is that for a video to be counted as watched, and thus credit for payment, it has to play until the end and it stops itself.
No. I don't like clickbait.
Leaving a comment/engaging in chat doesn't hurt either!
And comment a lot.
What an incredible story. Dr.Felton keeps coming up with these gems to educate and fascinate us! He is to be congratulated for his efforts. Many thanks!
All that was agenst rothshild banking kartel.
@@milanzdunic1940 Evidence and sources?
The I-400 submarines so impressed the American that they made sure to prevent the Russians from gaining any knowledge of them and scuttled all those captured once they had been examined. While nothing remains of the I-400s, one of the Seiran floatplanes is preserved at the Udvar-Hazy Centre in the US.
Dr Felton history lesson assault on the TH-cam mainland. Love it. Thank you.
This had me on the edge of my seat; thanks for another lesson Dr. Felton!
I have been to the area where the Japanese attempted to start the forest fires mentioned at 6:19 There is a memorial there (Brookings OR). Also not far away a farm house and barn that were actually radar and I believe anti aircraft gun emplacement. Thank You for the video!
Eating and Listening to Mark .
Best combination..
Some of us are doing it for over a year.. lol
Nobua Fujita returned to the small town in Oregon after the war and gave them his family sword...hard to hate a man who honors his surrender...I think this story alone is worth a movie...the town welcomed him with open arms...after horrible wars forgiveness of honorable enemies is essential to moving forward.
The city is where I live called Bookings. He is honorary citizen, his sword is in city hall on display and he is buried here as well. Good man.
@@loveofmangos001 I love this story...A little bit of reconciliation after the darkest period of World history...I had no idea he was buried there...
@8866panda nobody owes an apology to Japan for dropping two atom bombs and thus ending the war...Japanese imperialism started it, killed over 20 million in China and used Bacterial bombs, chemical and biological warfare on the Chinese as early as 1941...the Flying Tigers in Kunming experience biological warfare dropped on nearby cities
The US like the Russians took Nazi scientists and Japanese scientists to further their weapons in the wake of a war that killed 60 million that the US tried like hell to stay out of
the idea the US owes anybody an apology is the biggest most ignorant assumption I have ever seen.....not only do we not need to show remorse we need to understand after Saipan, Iwo , and Okinawa an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost millions of Japanese civilians lives...plus the fact the Soviets invaded with veteran blooded troops whom already committed mass rapes and atrocities on Berlin civilians
it would have been a blood bath in the millions
the Atom Bombs saved my grandfathers life as well as millions of Japanese lives
nobody needs to show remorse except those that started WW2 Japan and Germany
has Japan offered reparations to China and the 20 million innocents they killed?
There are lots of great TH-cam videos about the man and his family and the family still visits the town on a regular basis to this day.
I learn something by watching all of your videos. I won't miss them.
You cannot argue with the success of the long term goal of establishing a stable, capitalist, democratic Japanese state whose foreign policy would align with the Western Allies. From a moralistic perspective though, I can't help but think there should have been a much more robust Nuremberg-style reckoning in the immediate postwar years.
The entire staff of Unit 731 should have been tried, for one thing.
The US wanted the dirty little secrets that came from inhuman experiments and felt they needed those despicable "scientists" alive.
@@scockery Well the medical science learned from this experiment was very valuable so there's one reason.
The Chinese haven’t forgotten anything.
The Japanese got off easy at the end of the war...they had an active nuke as well as a bio-chem program! No sympathy for them
You get the feeling that if Japan had gone ahead with a chemical attack at that point in the war the US would have never stopped at just two nuclear bombs.
Or would have shifted the targets to Tokyo and Osaka to decapitate the military, rather than the relatively unscathed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to better demonstrate the efficacy of the new weapons.
We only had 3 at the time.
It would have open the door for us to use chemical weapons
@@herbertsusmann986 Agreed
The American biological weapons program was far larger than the Japanese one
The US military was mass-producing anthrax and the United States had huge supplies of mustard gas and 500,000 tons of captured German nerve gas
Japan would do one biological attack and get hit with 100
First time I heard about this was on Douglas Dietrich transmissions, he was the first to speak about this five years ago.
Best documentary voice 😎🤙🤙☝️👍😎
They tried to ignite a fire in the Temperate Rain Forest! Lewis and Clark complained how the continuous rain drove them crazy and all their cured leather tack and harness MOLDED!!
Such a nice way to spend my Monday night in my bed listening to another of the incredible and to me unknown stories that share with us Dr. Felton!!!
I had no idea the Japanese were this close to attracting the US, Mark. This is scary stuff and we are damn lucky. Very interesting, much obliged.
Technically speaking, they held U.S. soil until 1945 because the Philippines had not yet gained independence.
They technically DID attack and invade the US, look up the Aleutian Islands campaign in Alaska and the Japanese occupation of Guam as well (they were absolutely HORRIFIC to the native Chamorros, 10% of the entire tribal population died from mistreatment by the time U.S. Marines liberated the island in 1944). The battle with Japan wasn't merely to the aid of honorable nations, it was personal in so many ways.
You had me totally enthralled in the beginning, I was saying to myself how I couldn’t believe I had never heard of a chemical attack on San Francisco
This level of quality beats many big productions we see on tv
Can't say that professor Murray was the first westerner to underestimate Japan's capabilities.
Another great episode. Eagerly awaiting the next episode of this series.
It is crazy to think about how many things could have just gone a tiny bit different during World War II and the entire War could have shifted...
Japan would have still lost, all it would have ensured is that we would have had not one ounce of sympathy for hand-wringing about using the atomic bomb.
@@360Nomad What if Germany instead of building big capital ships had made another 100 or more subs they no doubt would have been able to blockade England into surrender. They almost did it at one time they had England down to one week of supplies, that with only 56 subs half of which where not suitable for Atlantic operations!! If that had happened and as long as the Japanese did not mess with us they could have done as they wished.
@@lambastepirate That still wouldn't solve their oil crisis.
@@360Nomad The dutch east indies had all the oil they needed and being allies with germany the oil would have been no problem!
@@lambastepirate Except you have to ship it across two oceans which are mostly controlled by the Allied Powers.
It would be really nice if you could add a "recently added" Playlist for the most recent week or two of videos so we could autoplay and catch up on the most recent uploads. Thanks!
Thank you Dr Felton. Appreciate your efforts, always enjoyable and informative 👍🏻👍🏻
Amazing history Mark, one of the most important TH-cam channels!
Those who learn from history, generally won't repeat it.
Key word here is (generally). People are so stupid that they got a nasty habit of shooting themselves in the foot time and time again.
@@thomasriggle6371
They are not stupid. They were just didnt witness first hand what happened there.
🤔 here we've got someone that apparently spends way too much time watching cartoons, comes 14 hours after the original conversation and says (no people are not stupid they didn't witness first hand what happened). 🤯🤯 you don't have to see first hand what happened you meathead. Its written down for you. You learn about what happened by reading history. You're the perfect example of why I said (people are so stupid). Maybe if you shut off the cartoons and pay attention you wouldn't be so clueless right now.
@@thomasriggle6371
Learning what happened and experiencing for yourself is two very different matter. You can read all the history book you want but it will not be the same with you actually getting in that situation. That is human nature. We learned mistakes from experience.
But i guess i wont argue further since i am talking with a person that are using more emojis than my younger sister on a pretty serious conversation. Your inherent discrimination towards someone interest does not help this conversation going either.
@@nogisonoko5409 if a warning sticker on a lawnmower says not to stick your hands into moving blades I guess by your logic you're going to do it because (its human nature). You apparently can't learn a lesson from reading.
If using emojis in your logic is considered childish because your little sister uses them what age group would you consider her older brother is when he watches cartoons.
Funny though how you through your sister under the bus so fast.
Listening to this while laying on the beach in San Francisco. I’m looking toward the Golden Gate Bridge and imagining that it must of been a Japanese target at one point
The shipyards at Hunters Point would have been a major target too.
Met Dr Frank Culbertson once, dating his daughter, he flew Wildcats/Hellcats in WW2. He flew under the Golden Gate Bridge when he came back from the Pacific. His son, Frank Culbertson Jr, was a commander on the space shuttle.
this is a story that needed to be told...well done Mark.
Bubonic plague yes I remember reading about this.
Thanks Mark
This was one of the first model airplanes I ever built. Thanks.
I play Mark Felton videos at 1x speed because it is not just information but entertaining
How did I miss this in my feed ? Good work doc.
The most implausible thing about this is "clear blue sky" over San Francisco.
I'm interested to see how it works out for the Japanese... Seems like they might be able to turn it around.....
We would have retaliated with a combination of chemical weapons and extra atomic weapons most likely. The US kept chemical weapons in reserve as an early form of deterrence (there were plans to use them in an invasion of the Japanese mainland if I recall correctly though).
Incendiary bombs were the real killer
I'm so used to listening to fantastic stories researched by Mr. Felton that I have to admit to being hoodwinked at first.
Me too! Mark's taught me so much about buried historical events that I thought it was just another story they didn't teach on school 🤣
In other words you'll eat up anything he tells you unless he admits he's lying. Don't worry bud, most sheep do the same thing. That's why you see all of the ass kissing going on in the comment section.
Found the Brit
There are probably still several things from WWII that we still haven’t been told about.
Hater in the house!!
Scary stuff Mark, Thanks once again for the history class.
Just coincidentally opened this channel to see a fresh new upload, first comment, and first viewer, HELL FUCKING YEAH MARK
Banzai!
Banzai!!
*¡BAN F$&@#*G ZAI!*
Don't worry because after a couple years you will be disappointed.
The I-400s were all captured by the Americans at the end of WWII. They scuttled one in Japan and the other 2 went to Hawaii for study. In order to not have to give one to Russia as war reparations the US Navy scuttled the last 2 I-400s off Hawaii. There is only one Aichi M6A1 Seiran bomber / torpedo aircraft left in the world as they were purpose built for the I-400s and the Japanese destroyed all but one that was being repaired on land. That last example is restored and on display at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Center in Chantilly, VA.
Superb per Expected, Dr.Felton❕👏🏻👍🏻👍🏻
This is gonna be interesting
Great presentation professor!! Thanks so much.
I read excerpts from the notebooks of scientists on the planes which dropped the atom bomb. Some were very annoyed that radiation prevented them from observing its effect on the human “test subjects” below. I consider myself to have a scientific mind but have never allowed it to destroy the ethical standards which govern my behavior. Scientists who don’t make that decision disturb me to my bones.
With good reason too
My father was a little boy in San Francisco during the war. Hits close to home.
How close?? Like on his street or in his neighbor’s yard?
@@seangannon6081
He grew up in Mt. Davidson. My great grandparents live on Beulah Street in the Haight.
Yes, i remember your father when he was a kid.
@@jesuschrist872
Thanks Jesus, you're the best!
And again mark " the legend" Felton tells me something about ww2 I never knew ✌️😅👍
In before 10, have to admit i haven't watched it yet but i know its going to be good, love your work
Absofreakinglutely amazing information. Would never have known about this threat had it not been for Dr. Felton. Incredible.
Thank you Dr Felton.
I would guess you've never been to San Francisco. The biggest bit of fiction in your intro was a "clear and warm day".
Ohh boy- this one is going to be chilling...
Imagine if Richard Sorge had not been betrayed. Just the possible intel he may have been able to release to a cold eared Stalin. Thanks for sharing Dr Felton!
Stalin probably wouldn't have listened, he started to believe in his own cult of personality propaganda.
Another great story from the Felton stable🤔🤔🧐🧐
Oh yeah, good thing we’re such good friends now.
I see Felton I click run those jewls professor Felton run those jewls .👉👊
Gave me a love! Now if I find out Felton is into RTJ I think I might be in love? My type of historical gangster proffeser!!! 👉👊
Great work. I knew of the Seiran but not of the bio weapon aspect. Fascinating.
It comes as no surprise that Dr. Ishii was not prosecuted.
Not in the slightest, something about redacted items and paperclips.....
And only Japan decided to use bio warfare.If the Japanese had had access to nuclear weapons,they would have used them in a heartbeat
One of the most interesting books I have ever read was "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.
Being an engineer, I was looking forward to a technical book. Instead, I found a story of social and political pressures that molded the environment of the '30s and '40s in which the A Bomb was developed and deployed. Not an easy read, but I am glad I read it. (And it did contain a wealth of technical info.)
I believe the name of the submarine-lunched aircraft was not "seran" or "saran" but SEIRAN. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a rightwing faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party called the "Seiran-kai" or "storm from the sky association," which included an MP who later became prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone. He was an imperial naval veteran and might have had some role in Operation PX. Nakasone was famous for his close relationship to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. How cynical history is!
I never knew of this! Nice one Dr!
That's all we've got time for this week Basil !
The Japanese seemed to have skill at designing larger than normal ships. But their lack of resources kept them from building very many of them.
To be fair, we wanted all of our battleships to be able to fit through the Panama Canal, or we likely would have build some larger than we did.
Too bad focusing on large destroyers quickly became outdated.
@@garretth8224 I wonder how well an average destroyer would have done trying to sink an I-400 class sub.
I had no idea about this. Thanks again Mark!
Imagine this actually succeding, the world would not only be still ravaged by war but have to contend with a new worldwide plague aswell.
Yeah, and asswelling would be painful for everyone.
Not really, Japan let plenty of bioweapons loose in China, and while they caused a serious amount of damage, they recovered.
And how Covid has changed the World, in just over one year.
@@petewood2350, we got lucky considering the types of pandemics we've had to face before, this is a pandemic with training wheels on. Just imagine how bad things would get with a more lethal virus, that is easily transmitted, say like an airborne ebola. You know, the crap Russia was playing around with in their bioweapon program, or what China plays around with now.
What would have happened if Japan had succeeded with that attack?
To find out I suggest you Google anthrax bomb.
I did know about Unit 731 and its activities. This was a great review of those times and actions. I cannot conceive a scenario in which if the Japanese were successful the American public would not have demanded complete atomic destruction of the entirety of the Japanese home islands. Thank God neither happened.
You need to check this out. Unit 731 is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered in my WWII studies. Joseph Mengele was an amateur in comparison.
@@billd.iniowa2263
Yes they are but they were able to escape their trials since US really want their results from such cruel human research.
As always, excellent content.
The west coast forest fire strategy only failed because it was eighty years too early. If it had been now, they could just pointed a magnifying glass out the plane window.
My Uncle was US Navy Submariner in WW2. He was part of a crew who sailed I-401 back to Pearl Harbor after the war. I have a plaque from the torpedo room. We sank all the Japanese super-subs as target practice off Hawaii - didn't want to share the technology with Stalin. Tragically my uncle was killed in a car accident right after returning from the Pacific. Robert Wynn McGrew, RIP.
Very interesting and informative, also something I’d not heard of.
Fantastic episode.
No snorkeling sub has ever been able to do 18 knots due to vibrations set up. The WW2 German snorkel MIGHT have managed - which was crude compared to later developments - MIGHT have been able to do 10 in very favorable conditions
I recognised the Seiran in the thumbnail, so I knew the I-400 submarine would also make an apperance in the video ;)
I had no idea those balloon bombs 💣 actually killed anyone.
Mark talks about that in his video on the balloon bombs.
Unit 731 played an interesting and important fictional roll in TV program X Files.
The Brits also wanted to get their hands on Ishii's research, and did so. IIRC there were British military officers in the audience when Ishii visited the US Army germ warfare establishment at Fort Dietrick, Maryland, after the war.
I have heard some suggest that this is the reason Truman dropped the bombs, he knew Japan had to be destroyed for the war to end or they would keep trying to do stuff like this.
Mark told two fibs at the beginning. This is not an audio only video :)
well researched and well presented historical accounts - history keeps unravelling new formerly hidden information each day - watching this gives a balanced view of each countries will to conquer the other with whatever it takes - the inventions we celebrate as human innovation often arise from reasons to dominate a foe
I once had a teacher say that the problem with invading Russia is that you always wind up getting caught in their winter. Well, the problem with trying to start a forest fire along the Oregon coast is that you alway wind up getting caught in the rain! However, if any of those planes had managed to cross the Cascade range that would be a different story! As for setting off a bubonic plague epidemic in California, I think the Japanese government must have got the idea from the Spermophillous genus of ground squirrels because they managed to do it twice, once in 1900 in San Francisco and in 1924 in Los Angeles.
I just recently watched a video on the I-400 class subs which was really good. Thanks for more about this awesome machine.
I think a video on this or your other channel about the british use of balloon bombs could be very interesting, comparing it to the later Japanese use.
I recall I-400s were rumoured to have had a unique coating layer with acoustic dampening properties. Supposedly never tested by the US after capture.
They scrapped all the Sentoku class since they were afraid Soviet will copy the design.
I find it a bit ironic that for a people so motivated by honour, they were dead set on winning the war in the most dishonourable way possible.
Kind of reminds you of another country that did its best to rack up the number of civilian dead.
This would have been just one more set of war crimes they would have committed.
They convinced themselves they weren't fighting other people.
Japan only considered Japanese peoples worthy of honor. Everyone else were seen as inferior, even sub-human. Funny how reoccurring that theme is in warfare, from all sides
@@Milkmans_Son Except those they considered not to be people were giving them an extreme beat down at the time.
And, I'm in the middle of watching _The Stand_ series...
M.A.D. - it did work even in WW2
My father related as how as a surveyor in an US Army Engineer Battalion in a mine in North Korea when the US Army was north of the 38th parallel they had to map and survey an entire mine facility.
The only damage to equipment and buildings was from small arms. There were immense prestressed concrete building shells, some equipped with inches thick glass windows.
The mine equipment, overhead cable tramway and electric motors and controls were all of German manufacture.
Their officers made observations that this was not normal mine construction.
All their survey notes and photographs had to be turned over to members of Army Intelligence on site. They were forbidden to bring personal cameras or to retain any writing material, and were sworn to secrecy.
Decades later he suspected it was an atomic research facility.
Holy cow! Sometimes the comments are greater than the shows! I wonder why they kept it under wraps? Might explain how the communists got the Bomb. Seems an FOIA request is in order. Surely the N. Koreans know about it.
The beginning sounds like a Clive Cussler book
Facinating and all new to me-other than the specific submarines and aircraft type
The fact that these people were simply not killed after the war shows who Americans are. Americans did not condemn to death not only people like thiese Japanese who murdered people by the hundreds of thousands, but also the Germans who murdered millions. They had no problem protecting many "scientist-criminals" and made many of them American heroes. Like, for example, the entire team of Werner Braun. Previously, these people murdered civilians en masse, and after the war ? They became rich and respected Americans.... When Poland in 1945-50 pursued many true German butchers who were hiding in Western Europe, and Poland wanted the Americans to hand them over to us, the Americans said "nope". And these people peacefully lived until normal death by age...
Change yo pfp.
Wow I kind of thought the gun emplacements, barriers put on West Coast beaches to prevent their being used as landing strips, blackouts, etc. were kind of needless measures but it looks like they had their use.
People really be questioning why the allies dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan.
very interesting! all I've ever heard about is the Panama canal attack
WOW.....I knew nothing about this!!!!
Thank you...surprised Germany did not use these on a large scale.
It's interesting the i400 program was started in April 42, I can't help but think the Dolittle raid inspired that effort. Never discount your enemy's capacity to engineer a way to strike.
The Seiran was one beautiful looking aircraft.
This is something that seldom gets mentioned when people discuss whether the atomic bombs were the reason for Japan's surrender.
This would appear to add to the case against. Japan knew what the bombs were, knew how to build them, knew how hard it was to produce weapons grade material, knew the US could not have a large nuclear arsenal at that time. Japan also had its own, probably more terrifying, WMD program ready to go.
What it didn't have, largely due to the Soviet advance, was the security of industrial and military capacity needed to implement operation PX effectively. And while it might have been an effective deterrent against the US the Soviet Union would be much less vulnerable to that form of attack.
Most of the Japanese hardly knew atomic weapons, only the higher ups know the exact detail of such weapon.
Japanese could only estimate the amount of US nuclear arsenal since they have no way of confirming it. It could be 10,100 or maybe only 3.
@@nogisonoko5409 It was the higher ups making the decision whether or not to surrender. Japan had 2 nuclear programs, one army, one navy. Some believe Japan tested a bomb in Nth Korea. The problem for Japan was obtaining and enriching enough material to produce 1 bomb, let alone an arsenal. If I recall correctly Japan eventually turned to Germany and a submarine carrying uranium was intercepted by the Canadian navy. So even though the US had access to greater natural resources Japan would have known there was no way they could have 10,100 in 1945. It required a well developed nuclear industry infrastructure and the US did not reach 50 nukes till 1948, something they achieved without the impediment of hot war or secrecy.
@@theosphilusthistler712
I knew Army is developing nuclear weapons but Navy? what do they even benefit on such weapon on naval fleet?
10,100 atomic bombs are just too much. 50-100 atomic bombs is a realistic estimate given the industrial capacity of US.
@@nogisonoko5409 In the fall of 1940 the Japanese army began a nuclear bomb program under Yoshio Nishina, called "Rikken" (at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research). In 1942 the navy started its own program called "F-Go" (F for fission) in Kyoto under the direction of Bansaku Arakatsu. Why these branches of service were not co-operating on a single, better, project I have no idea but no doubt that's an interesting story and one Mark Felton would do a great job of telling.
Your name sounds Japanese. Is that correct? And is the fact that you seem to know slightly less about this indicative of the way WWII history is now taught in Japan? That would be very unfortunate. Good or bad, we should all know our past.
@@theosphilusthistler712
The reason why Navy and Army have 2 nuclear program is simple, they just dislike each other.
While it is true that this name is a Japanese name, it is unfortunate that i am not a Japanese. I am an Asian though. My country have dark history with the Japanese.
Now these huge, and seemingly silly submarines make sense. An ingenious and evil plan.
Outstanding report. 1st I've heard about any of this. There's just not any info on this subject that I have been able to locate. Not knowing about certain things, one has no idea where to look for such. Thank you Mark. Yes, those were remarkable submarines. Quite bizarre but could've worked.
Omg omg omg .... Can't wait till next time!
we love you mark keep up the good work
Excellent...Thanks...!