Pro Trump caravan, escorted by police, tried to intimidate voters in Ft. Worth.

[ProfessorGAC]

36. I Read Them

They do not fully support your contention.
Were they working on a nuke? Obviously, yes. They had plans & blueprints.
Did they have a small lump of uranium? Yes. Was it enough for a device in those days? No.
Were they building an enrichment centrifuge? Yes. One, not yet finished when they needed 15 or 20 dozen.
On many prior readings on this subject, their plan was a gun barrel U-235 based device like Little Boy. Little Boy had 140+ pounds of 98.7% enriched U-235. The cube mentioned in one of the cites would have weigh roughly a pound. The technology didn't exist then to get 1 pound to critical mass.
As to the economic infrastructure, the Manhattan Project cost about 0.7% of the entire expenditure for WW2. Japan only had a GDP of about $24 billion. They were already spending 75% of GDP on the war.
They didn't have another 8% to do what the US had.
They also lacked the electrical infrastructure to process all that uranium due to the bombing campaigns.
Lastly, raw material was a gigantic problem. It requires 140# of high quality ore to get 1# of 90% or higher fissile product.
They did not have access to a ton of quality ore. It's very rare in Japan, and they didn't have control, after 1942, of any region with reasonable ore deposits.
Your cites clearly confirm they had a plan, understood the science, and were actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.
They don't cover feasibility or probability of success.
If they had the money, they were at least 3 years away (likely closer to 5), and they didn't have the economic resources.
They were not even close.