AMERICANS USED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27274, 28 December 1949, Page 5

AMERICANS USED

LETHAL GERM TESTS JAPANESE ARMY UNIT TESTIMONY BEFORE SOVIET TRIBUNAL NZPA —Copyright Rec. 8.45 p.m.. LONDON, Dec. 27. Moscow radio, reporting Russia’s bacteria war trials in Khabarovsk (Siberia), today said it was alleged that Unit 731 of the Japanese Kwantung Army used American war prisoners for lethal germ tests. A germ expert, Major-general Karasawa, who is the second of the 12'’ former Japanese Army men to testify in the trial, told the prosecutor that the use of bacteriological weapons against America was envisaged. Karasawa testified that his section of Unit 731 produced lethal germs in a boiler system with a capacity of eight 'tons of “ nutritive material.” It was alleged that the germs he produced were used for experimenting on human beings and in germ warfare against the Chinese. Karasawa said a scientific worker of Unit 731 told him at the beginning of 1943 that the immunity of American war prisoners to infectious disease was being studied in Mukden. _ , , , , , Karasawa admitted that he took part in anthrax tests in Manchuria and also helped to organise an experiment with a plague weapon near the Chinese town of Nimpo in September, 1940. Plague broke out in Nimpo, Karasawa S3 The third defendant to testify-was Otozo Yamada, commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army from July, 1944, until his surrender to the Russians at the end of the war. Yamada said he inspected the production capacity of the unit and became convinced that it. was sufficient to produce and use bacteriological weapons on a big scale. Yamada said the bacteriological weapon was designed for use chiefly against Russia and China, but also against America and Britain. According to Moscow radio, another of the accused, Toshidide Nishi, said that, as chief of the training department of Unit 731, he designed a special walking stick in which plague-carry-ing fleas were concealed. Nishi described the experiments he conducted on the effects of frostbite on living P e °P le - , ' The subjects were led into the open under Arctic conditions, with their feet and hands in chains. An artificial wind was then created to hasten the freezing of their limbs. Members of his unit made them plunge their frostbitten hands into warm water and then “studied the results of this procedure.” he said. No Evidence Found

Mr Joseph Keenan, United States prosecutor at the Tokio war, crimes trial, said in Washington last night that his investigators had found no evidence that American prisoners of war were used by the Japanese in germ warfare experiments. Mr Keenan said his investigators spent three years in Japan looking into all phases of the Japanese war effort.