JAPAN EYED BOMB, FAVORED USING IT

Japan hoped to use atomic weapons against the United States in World War II, but Americans built theirs first.

Tatsusaburo Suzuki, a Japanese physicist, says with more financial support, his 50-man team could have built a bomb within one year. Unlike many US scientists who opposed using the bomb, Mr. Suzuki says his colleagues were not troubled by it. But later, after seeing suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he concluded ''they should never be used again.''

''No one ever contemplated how terrible it would be,'' Suzuki says. He says the most likely targets for Japanese A-bombs were US airbases in the Pacific being used against Japan.