Japanese Charged With Use Of Bacteriological Weapon Against Soviet

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27273, 27 December 1949, Page 5

Japanese Charged With Use Of Bacteriological Weapon Against Soviet

NZPA—Copyright Rec. 9.29 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 26. Tass, the official Soviet news agency, announced today that the trial of 12 former Japanese army men on charges of preparing and using bacteriological warfare opened at Khabarovsk (Siberia) yesterday before a military tribunal. The morning session was occupied with the leading of the indictment. All the accused pleaded guilty. The evening session was taken, up with the examination of the accused Kiyoshi, a former Japanese major-general. Kiyoshi was described as an active participant in the production and use of a bacteriological weapon, and, according to Tass, he testified that he took part in experiments on living people at a Japanese research centre in Manchuria, which he described as unit No. 731 of the Japanese Kwantung Army. This unit, he said, was organised in 1936 by special decre* of Emperor Hirohito.

Kiyoshi said that if a man infected

with lethal bacteria did not die he was used for repeated experiments, and this process went on until his transfer to the crematorium oven. , The Prosecutor: It means that everyone who landed in the prison of Unit 731 had to die there? Kiyoshi: Yes. In five years. about 3000 persons perished .in acute torments from forcible infection with lethal bacteria. Earlier, allegations that Soviet prisoners of war were used as human guinea pigs for experiments by Japanese units in Manchuria which were preparing to launch large-scale bacterological warfare, . were made by Moscow radio. The radio said the Japanese were prepared to release in the re'ar of their enemies “an immense quantity of cholera and black death bacteria ” to be disseminated by means of bombs dropped from aircraft, bacteria shells and agents planted behind the lines. The radio made the allegations in a broadcast announcing that Russia had indicted 12 former members of the Japanese Army, including senior officers of the medical service; on charges of organising special formations for the preparation and execution of bacteriological warfare. The charges were brought under Article I of a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, dated April 19, 1943. The radio said that five kilograms of fleas infected with bubonic plague were used to infest a battle area in Central China in 1940. Officers who went with this expedition reported “ positive results.” One of the accused, Karasawa Tomio, said he supervised the preparation of 130 kilograms of the bacteria of paratyphoid and anthrax before the central expedition of 1942. A former Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Kwantung Army, General Yamada, said the entry of the Soviet into the;war and'the swift advance of the Red Army into Manchuria deprived Japan of the possibility of using the bacteriological weapon against Russia and other countries. On the eve of the surrender, Japan destroyed the buildings, equipment and documents of the bacteriological units. The Soviet indictment said that Hirazakura Jensaku, who was a veterinary lieutenant in 1942-44, repeatedly took- part im reconnaissance against the Soviet to find the most effective means for the use of the bacteriological weapon against the Soviet.