Dr Rostov wrote:
I was reading about the "Broken Arrow" incidents the United States has experienced, I'm also working on a small story and I was wondering.
What would happen if one American nuclear bomb accidentally goes off in Okinawa?
And what is needed for that to occur?
Answering the last question first: What would be needed to cause an American Nuclear bomb to accidentally go off in Okinawa?
A ‘miracle’? The warhead cannot even be fully armed unless the missile is launched. Comparisons to the Goldsboro bomb are difficult and uncertain because the arming and firing mechanisms are different. Further even in that case the ‘assumptions’ involved in actually getting any “nuclear” yield are numerous and not that easy to logically. Despite what some have written, as you mention, the ‘single’ components that prevented full arming were never in fact in a position to BE armed which itself precluded any nuclear detonation let alone a fully thermonuclear one.
The cruise missile warheads are even harder to get a nuclear ‘detonation’ from by accident. You may see the ‘conventional’ explosives go off during an intense fire which would spread some plutonium and uranium debris around but it wouldn’t travel far or wide.
You also have to keep in mind that as far as the Japanese Civilian and Official was concerned until 1975, “Okinawa” was in fact not part of Japan at the time. There’s a specific legal reason why Okinawa was under US control till that point and not after. As part of the agreement to end the occupation Japan initially wanted the US to promise to neither store or operate nuclear capable delivery systems from ‘Japanese Soil” which the US was hesitant to do since the ‘plan’ for nuclear war against the USSR and China required forward bases that US nuclear bombers could operate from. As a compromise the US was allowed to “keep” control of Okinawa to be that base of operations. This is why the photographs of nuclear armed cruise missiles were always publically available since ‘technically’ they were not in Japan itself.
I was thinking that perhaps a nuclear accident would give the Japanese left a huge boost of popularity, would it be that way or would the LDP stay strong? If the Left gains strength, would there be a chance to take the government?
Keep in mind while Japan is nominally against nuclear weapons they have always had great interest in nuclear power and so has had its own share of nuclear related accidents. A nuclear weapons detonation of course will be vastly different but by the mid-50s Japan’s ability to concentrate on economics rather than defense spending was a well understood benefit of having the US presence and later nuclear weapons in Okinawa. Most all factions of the Japanese government were some level of ‘anti-nuclear’ when it came to weapons. I would suspect the amount of ‘boost’ would be predicated on how it happened, what happened and what the in-power government response was and how effective it was.
And also I was wondering, which place would be the best to be "nuked"?[For story purposes like: Damaging USA-Japan relations, boosting the Left BUT without causing too much damage to Japan as a whole or Japanese relations with the US.
Depends on what you want to accomplish, when and how it happens. We’ve had some serious weapons related situations happen before such as the Lucky Dragon No. 5 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Fukuryū_Maru) and the whole Castle Bravo fiasco. (
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/castle-bravo)
And some other questions... with Japan-USA relations going a bit cold after that kind of accident and IF the Left manages to take the government...
1) Would they approach the Soviet Union?
2) A neutral stance?
3) Would they have better relations with South Korea?
4) Would they recognize the awful actions the country did in WW2?
(1) No. The Japanese “Left” was no more interested in being a puppet of the USSR than it was of the US an in fact they had good reason to believe that had they ‘cozied up’ to the USSR before the Sino/Soviet split was public that the USSR would bring China into the relationship which would be ‘bad’ all around for Japan.
(2) Less ‘neutral’ than reluctant ally of the US which they were off-and-on throughout the Cold War anyway. The main problem with serious deterioration of US/Japan relations and Japan has to begin looking to its own defense which for most of the Cold War was mainly a US effort due specifically to US imposed limitations on the JSDF. During the Cold War any money spent by the Japanese on their own defense forces was money that could not be spent on economic recovery and pushing into Western and Asian markets
(3) Probably not as South Korea retained a long grudge vis-à-vis Japanese occupation and control
(4) A ‘souring’ of US/Japanese relations whenever it happens, (and it’s happened several times over the Cold War for various reasons) tends to find a growing support base for ‘rationalizing’ and “explaining away” that behavior as being either ‘over-blown’ by the supposed ‘victims’ or due to a faction of the Imperial government that no longer exists so it is not the ‘fault’ of the current Japanese people, government or culture. Or at least that is usually the main government line at any rate. Oddly enough should general public anger or concern over American actions or issues relating to Japan get too big it seems that for some reason more people are allowed to ‘compare’ current American actions with those of the Japanese military in WWII and with a LOT more ‘support’ and far less government resistance.
Actually no, the US had nuclear cruise missiles in Okinawa which if you look at the map here:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/O...9569ed04c06a967c!8m2!3d26.501301!4d127.945404
Okinawa is about as close to Japan as it is China and Taiwan and as noted above till 1975 it wasn’t ‘officially’ Japan at the time

So getting an ‘accident’ that effect Japan itself is going to be tough. Which was in fact the whole reason the only nuclear weapons were on that island (Kadena specifically) instead of in Japan itself. The US initially had an air base capable of handling a suitably modified B-29/B50 capable of hauling and dropping an atomic weapon. But none were stored there for use until the MACE squadrons arrived in the early 60s. While we can assume that some B-52s were flying around Japan with nukes at various times while ‘airborne alert’ was a thing I don’t think they would fly CLOSE to Japan since they could only land in an emergency and would likely divert to Okinawa.
Randy