Thousands died in Japanese germ warfare experiments

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 15

Thousands died in Japanese germ warfare experiments

By

JOYCE EGGINTON

from New York

Thousands of prisoners-of-war died agonising deaths as guinea-pigs in Japanese germ warfare research, but the killers were never brought to justice. Instead, they were given protection by the United States Department of War.

According to long-secret documents which have jus* been made public in the United States, Japanese Army officers who were responsible for the experiments were promised immunity from prosecution in return for giving United States military authorities exclusive possession of Japan's expertise in biological warfare. Extreme precautions were taken to keep any evidence of Japan's germ warfare technology — which was then far ahead of any other nation’s — out of the Tokyo war crimes trials, lest it fall into the hands of the Soviets.

Most of the germ warfare guinea pigs were Chinese but some were “Anglo-Saxon.” Disclosure of this shocking episode is the result of four years of research by an American writer, John W. Powell, who, after suspecting it for more than 30 years, was eventually able to obtain classified documents from the Second World War under the post-Watergate Freedom of Information Act.

In a fully documented report. published in the current issue of the prestigious

"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." Powell states

that 3000 P.O.W.s (a conservative estimate) died as a result of germ warfare experiments at “Unit 731,” Japan’s largest biological warfare laboratory, which was a few miles outside Harbin, in Manchuria. Powell’s research revealed that the Japanese also ran experimental stations in Nanking, Peking, and central and southern China, as well as two in Japan, all performing human experiments. Fragmentary knowledge about these facilities has existed over the past decade as the result of post-war revelations by some of the Japanese involved. The startling new facts which Powell has uncovered are that experiments were carried out on Americcan prisoners, all of whom were apparently killed in the process, and that American military authorities took a calculated decision to protect the perpetrators.

Although most victims seem to have been Chinese prisoners, the Japanese use of Americans stemmed — according to one document — from their interest in studying “the immunity of Anglo-Saxons to infectious diseases.”

The phrase “Anglo-Saxons" is not normally used of white Americans since these include other ethnic groups. It has led Powell to speculate that British prisoners of war under the Japanese, some of whom were held in Manchu-

ria. may also have been among the guinea pigs. The experiments involved giving prisoners massive doses of lethal diseases, including bubonic plague, typhus, anthrax, smallpox, gas gangrene, and cholera, with some being slaughtered at various stages of illness so that Japanese researchers could check on the progress of the disease.

The man who led the project, according to the United States documents, was a Japanese army surgeon, Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro, who died not long ago in old age, never having been prosecuted. Shortly after Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 he persuaded his superiors that microbes could be developed as a cheap offensive weapon, capable of producing enormous casualties. Ishii was encouraged to build Unit 731, which Powell describes as a “Targe self-contained installation with sophisticated germ- and insect-breeding facilities, a prison for the human experimentees, testing grounds, an arsenal for making germ bombs, an airfield, its own special planes, and a crematorium for the human victims."

All this was hurriedly dismantled in the last days of

the Second World War as Soviet tanks crossed the Si-berian-Manchurian border shortly before the Japanese surrender. After killing and cremating the remaining prisoners, most of the Japanese staff escaped through South Korea, taking with them the laboratory records of many years of experiments.

This was the basis of material which General Ishii traded to the United States military authorities in 1947. A top-secret cable sent to the War Department in Washington from the United States military headquarters in Tokyo promised that a guarantee of immunity from war crimes prosecutions "will result in exploiting 20 years experience of the director, former General Ishii, who can assure complete cooperation of his former subordinates."

Two United States Army doctors visited Tokyo to check Ishii's information. From the documents obtained by Powell they appear to have been overwhelmed by the extent of Japanese germ warfare research and urged their superiors to go ahead with the deal with Ishii. They argued that "such information could not be obtained in our laboratories

because of scruples attached to human experimentation." "I found that phrase particularly chilling," Powell says. He also uncovered a State Department memorandum which stated: “The value to the United States of Japanese biological weapons data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war crimes prosecutions."

In his article. Powell states: "It is perhaps not surprising that it has taken so long for the full story to be revealed. Over the years fragments have occasionally leaked out, but each time they were met with denials, initially by the Japanese and later by the United States.”

Uncovering the story was a personal mission for him. For many years he lived in Shanghai where he edited the “China Weekly Review,” a Left-wing English language journal established by his father. It went out of business during the revolution and Powell returned to the United States in 1953 only to become a target of an investigation by Senator McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee.

Powell was charged with sedition, stemming from his editorial opposition to American involvement in the Korean war and from his reports about the developr

ment of Japanese germ warfare against the Chinese. The charges were eventually dismissed but years later, with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, Powell was still determined to clear his name. He now lives in San Francisco.

Upon receiving his report “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” employed a number of distinguished scientists and historians to verify it. An editorial comment which precedes the article states: “When this story first reached the Bulletin.' our reaction was horrified disbelief. All of us hoped it was not true. Unfortunately, subsequent research shows that it is all too true.”

Powell’s report is followed by a comment from Bert Rolling of the Netherlands, who was a judge at the Tokyo war crimes trials. Confirming that there was no mention there of Japanese germ warfare experiments, he states:

“It was kept secret from the world. The immunity granted to Japanese war criminals covered not only deadly research on living persons, but also the use of biological weapons against the Chinese. And all this so that the United States could obtain exclusive access to the information, gained at the cost of thousands of human lives.”