[CTRL] Biowarfare connections between U.S. Fort (Camp) Detrick & world-war era Japan.

[Dave]

 -Caveat Lector-

Biowarfare connections between U.S. Fort (Camp) Detrick & world-war era
Japan.

Dave Hartley
http://www.Asheville-Computer.com
http://www.ioa.com/~davehart


http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~dyue/wiihist/germwar/731rev.htm

A Preliminary Review of Studies of Japanese Biological Warfare Unit 731 in
the United States
Tien-wei Wu

Table of contents


*Introduction
*I.     The origin of Unit 731
*II.   The US knowledge of the Germ War
*III. The deal between US and Unit 731 members ***** don't miss this part !
*IV.   Japanese experiments on American POWs


Intoduction.

In the midst of continuous denial by important members of the Japanese
government individually or collectively that Japan was an aggressor in World
War II, the planned exhibition of the Smithsonian Institute to commemorate
the end of WWII in Asia has turned into an unusually fervid debate, with
which an interest in discussing and writing on Japan's wartime atrocities
has been aroused. Most prominent among numerous writings on the subject is
"Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity" penned by Nicholas D. Kristof and
published inNew York Times on March 17, 1995. The article has given us a
detailed account of the most shocking, heinous, cruel crime the civilized
world has ever known: Japanese Unit 731 used human beings for vivisection in
order to develop biological weapons. Equally unbelievable is that the United
States has covered up the crime in exchange for the data on human
experiments, an act utterly ignoring international laws and human justice.
What a great irony to the lofty ideal of democracy and the so-called
"American civilization" of the 20th century!

The shock created by Kristof's article has been felt primarily in the U.S.
and a few Western countries. However, as early as 1949, the Soviet Union
held a week long trial at Khabarovsk of the Japanese war criminals for
biological warfare. Among those tried, 12 people were associated with 731,
including General Yamada Otozo, Commander-in-Chief of the Kuantung Army, Lt.
Gen. Ryuiji Kajitsuka, Chief of the Medical Administration, and Lt. Gen.
Takaatsu Takahashi, Chief of the Veterinary Division, both in the Kuantung
Army; Maj. Gen. Kiyoshi Kawashima, longtime head of Unit 731's production
department; Maj. Gen. Shunji Sato, head of Unit 731's Canton branch; and Lt.
Col. Toshihide Nishi, Major Tomio Karasawa, Maj. Maso Onoue, Lt. Zensaku
Hirazakura, Senior Sergeant Kazuo Mitomo, Corporal Norimitsu Kikuchi, and
Private Yuji Kurushima, all of Unit 731. The entire proceedings of the trial
were published under the title "The Trial of Former Servicemen of the
Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological
Weapons" by Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1950.

Since 1940, in Chinese theater, Ishii Shiro had led his Unit 731 to engage
in biological warfare by attacking Ningpo, Chinhua, Chuchou of Chechiang
province (during the Japanese-Soviet war at Nomonhan, Mongolia in the summer
of 1939, Unit 731 was dispatched to the front to make bacterial assault). To
retaliate the U.S. air raid of Tokyo led by Col. Doolittle in April 1942,
from which over 60 U.S. airmen were rescued in Chechiang area, Japan
launched a largescale mopping-up campaign, in which several hundred men from
Unit 731 and its subsidiary Unit 1644 of Nanking took part. Early in
November 1941, Unit 731 dispatched an airplane to spread bubonic plague at
Changte, Hunan, which was verified by Dr. E. J. Bannon of American
Presbyterian Church hospital at Changte. The event was well known to
American and British intelligence agencies at Chungking and besides the
Chinese government had fully informed the American and British government of
it through its ambassadors Wellington Koo at London and Hu Shih at
Washington. Chinese authorities had long learned that Japan used biological
warfare against China and had repeatedly appealed to international
communities for help. Before making their escape at the time of Japanese
surrender, Japanese in Unit 731 set free scores of thousands of infected
rats that caused widespread plague in 22 counties of Heilungchiang and Kirin
provinces that took more than 20,000 Chinese lives. As the plague was well
publicized in newspapers and periodicals, many Chinese became aware of
Japan's employing biological warfare in China during the war. While the
Korean was raging, North Korea and China accused the United States of using
biological warfare that rekindled the public interest in probing Unit 73 1.
Among thousands of Japanese prisoners of war (POW) repatriated from Siberia,
some belonged to Unit 73 1. Together with those Japanese POWs then detained
in China, they were tried in a special court at Shenyang (Mukden) in June
1956. Strikingly one of them was Ken Yuasa, the doctor mentioned in
Kristof's article in the New York Times. Some others under trial included
important members of Unit 73 1: Major Hideo Sakakihara who was in charge of
Hailar branch of Unit 731 (there were four branches under Unit 731: Hailer,
Sunwu, Linkou, and Mutanchiang), Dr. Yataro Ueda, Yukio Yoshizawa, Masauji
Hata, etc. and also police affairs chief of the Kuantung Army Mibu Saito as
well as many captains of Kempeitai (military police) who were responsible
for providing Unit 731 with victims for vivisection (their oral and written
testimonies were reprinted in a book entitled Chemical and Biological
Warfares published by Chunghua Book Company in 1989).

Both chemical and biological warfares were banned by the Geneva Convention
of 1925. Totally disregarding international laws and human morality, Japan
employed poison gas bombs in the Wusung-Shanghai campaign at the beginning
of the Second Sino-Japanese war in August 1937. But not until Japan dropped
bacterial bombs at Changte, did President Roosevelt issue a strong statement
of protest on June 5, 1942, warning against Japan by saying that if Japan
continued to use poison gases or other forms of inhuman warfare, it would
invite U.S. retaliation in full measure. It was about this time, U.S.
started its own biological warfare research with the approval of Roosevelt,
but that ever since has been kept secret from the public. Also kept from the
public is the U.S. role in suppressing all efforts to put Unit 731 on trial
in the Tokyo Trial and its subsequent cover-up. As a result, unlike hundreds
of Nazi doctors who were duly tried and sentenced in accordance with the
"crime against humanity," Ishii and members of Unit 731 have not been
brought to justice.

In the United States, the first person who uncovered serious atrocities
committed by Unit 731 and raised the issue of possible U.S. cover-up was
John W. Powell, Jr. (who took over his father's publication, The China
Weekly, at Shanghai, which was suspended in June 1953, followed by his
return to America. After his return, he had suffered from inexorable
persecution). In the October 1981 issue of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
jointly with Gomer and Rolling, he published "Japan's Biological Weapons,
1930-1945." However, a detailed, book-length account of the Japanese
biological warfare Unit 731 and U.S. cover-up had not been available until
Peter Williams and David Wallace, two British journalists, published their
book, Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1989; a translation was made by Tien-wei Wu and
published by Academia Historica, Taipei, 1992).

On the foundation of the joint work of Williams and Wallace, Professor
Sheldon Harris completed his monumental book, Factories of Death: Japanese
Biological Warfare 1932-45 and The American Cover-up (New York: Routledge,
1994). This article will try to compare Harris's work with that of Williams
and Wallace and see whether Harris has succeeded in solving those questions
first raised by Williams and Wallace and what remains for further academic
inquiries. Before making the comparison between the two works, this writer
will first report on what has been regarded as new or unheard-of in Kristof
s article. So far as atrocities committed by Unit 731 are concerned, the
most shocking revelation made by Kristof may be: (1) without giving
anesthetic to the victim, vivisection was performed by Unit 731 doctors; (2)
even three-day old baby was used for experimentation; and (3) Japan planned
to use biological warfare against the United States.

In December 1944, Japan started a balloon assault on the U.S. by sending
about 200 balloon bombs, but not germ bombs, to the west coast, each 30 feet
in diameter and 91 feet round. They caused the deaths of 7 people. The
person taking charge of the investigation of the balloons was none other
than Murry Sanders, the man who was first sent to Japan to investigate Unit
731. Forty years later, Sanders recalled:

The only explanation I had, and still have, is that Ishii wasn't ready to
deliver what he was making in Pingfang; that he hadn't worked out the
technology. If they had been, we were at Ishii's mercy.
Moreover, Tojo had been the staunch supporter of Ishii and biological
warfare. Dating back to his days as commander of Kempeitai of the Kuantung
Army, Tojo was responsible for supplying Unit 731 with live experiment
victims. Upon assumming premiereship in October 1941, Tojo personally
presented an award to Ishii for his contribution to developing biological
weapons and had a picture taken with him, which appeared in major
newspapers. Unfortunately Tojo's responsibility for making biological
weapons and using them was not charged at the Tokyo Trial. If Tojo indeed
was opposed to using biological assault on the U.S. as Kristof believes, he
did it probably not out of fear of U.S. retaliation rather than Japan's
inability to deliver biological weapons.

Finally Kristof reports that one month before Japan surrendered, it still
tried to send the "Kami kazi" suicide airplane with plague bombs carried by
a submarine to attack San Diego on the west coast. Undoubtedly this is a
piece of new information to fortify the belief that Japan on the eve of
surrender still clung to a hope that the wheel of fortune might turn to its
favor so as to escape the fate of unconditional surrender. The rest of
Kristof s report was largely borrowed from the two books in question, which
will be discussed in the ensuing pages.

I. The Origin of Unit 731

At the conclusion of World War I in 1918, the medical bureau of Japanese
army set out to study biological warfare and assigned Major Terunobu Hasebe
to head the research team, who was soon succeeded by Dr. Ito with a team of
40 scientists. This lasted a few years. However, the real beginning of
Japan's biological warfare came only with the rise of Ishii Shiro. Ishii was
graduated from the medical department of Kyoto University in 1920, and
immediately joined the army. In 1924, he returned to Kyoto University for
graduate studies, during which he married the daughter of President
Torasaburo Akira of the University. He was awarded with Ph.D. in 1927. He
rejoined the army and began to propagate biological warfare.

Harnessing the rising tide of Japanese militarism, Ishii rose to power which
was redounded to three elements. First, in the name of a military attache,
Ishii was sent to Europe in 1928. He pent the next two years in Europe and
America to survey biological research in Western countries. After his
return, he was promoted to major, and devoted himself to promoting research
and manufacturing of biological weapons buttressed up by a theory that modem
war could only be won by science and technology and that manufacturing
biological weapons is most economical, particularly suitable for a country
like Japan who is poor in natural resources. Second, Ishii found willing,
powerful supporters in the army: Col. Tetsuzan Nagata, chief of military
affairs; Col. Yoriniichi Suzuki, chief of lst tactical section of Army
General Staff Headquarters; Col. Ryuiji Kajitsuka of medical bureau of the
army; and Col. Chikahiko Koizumi, the Army's surgeon general (at the end of
the war, he served as Minister of Public Health and comniitted suicide for
fear of being prosecuted on war crimes), known as "father of Japanese
chemical warfare; and the Minister of the Army and later as Education
Minister Sadao Araki, leader of the "imperial way" faction in the Japanese
army. Third, shortly after Ishii's return from Europe, a kind of meningitis
erupted in Shikoku, for which Ishii designed his water filter which helped
stop the spread of the disease, thereby making his name known, especially in
the army where he became the most famous bacteriologist. In spite of all
this, Ishii's greatest asset to his success probably lies in his lack of
morality strongly required for a physician. He apparently excelled others in
being sycophantic to his peers, while oppressive to his subordinates.
Finally he was so lavish with money as he became a frequent, valuable
customer of geisha houses.

Less than half a year after Japan launched the September 18 Mukden Incident
in 1931, Japan occupied the whole of China's northeast or Manchuria. Ishii
and Japanese military seized the opportunity to move the center for
bacteriological research at the Army's Medical College established in 1930
to northern Manchuria for expansion with a view to making the Soviet Union
the hypothetic enemy. A special advantage for this move was that the
Kuantung Army could kill Chinese at will and provide for unlimited supply of
human experiment materials. With Chinese lives at no cost, Japan could lead
the world in biological warfare.

At the end of August, 1932, Ishii led a group of 10 scientists from the
Army's Medical College to make a tour of Manchuria and came back with the
decision to make Harbin the center biological research, while choosing a
site at Peiyin River, 20 kilometers south of Harbin. to build a factory for
human experiments. To confuse the public, Ishii's center inaugurated at the
end of 1932 was sometimes called Kamo Unit and other times Togo Unit. Then
Ishii was promoted to lieutenant colonel and the 1933 budget of Kamo Unit
was a staggering some of 200,000 yen.

The year 1936 marked the establishment of two units by order of Emperor
Hirohito: one was Ishii's unit (to the outside it was called "Epidemic
Prevention and Water purification Department of the Kuantung Army," whose
name was not changed to Unit 731 until 1941), which was to be relocated to a
new base at Pingfan, 20 kilometers southwest of Harbin. The other was the
Wakamatsu Unit (after the name of its commander Yujiro Wakamatsu, later
changed to Unit 100) to be built at Mengchiatun, near Changchun; to the
outside it was called Department of Veterinary Disease Prevention of the
Kuantung Army. In June 1938, Unit 731 moved to its new location at Pingfang
occupying an area of 32 sq. kilometers which was marked off as "no man's
land." In the meantime, Ishii had a promotion to full colonel with 3,000
Japanese working under him.

Both the joint work of Williams and Wallace and Harris's new book based
their accounts of the early history of Unit 731 upon the Fifty Year History
of the Tokyo Amy Medical College (Tokyo, 1988); Seiichi Morimura, The
Devil's Gluttony. 3 volumes (Tokyo, 1982-85); and Kei'ichi Tsuneishi's two
books, The Germ Warfare Unit That Disappeared (Tokyo, 198 1) and with Tomizo
Asano, The Bacteriological Warfare Unit and the Suicide of Two Physicians
(Tokyo 1982). Both works made a thorough use of the Khabarovsk Trial,
particularly the testimony give by Ryuiji Kajitsuka who himself was a
physician and a bacteriologist. Also both were consulted with a posthumous
work by Saburo Endo who was a colonel in the general staff of the Kuantung
Army and made an inspection tour of Unit 731 in 1933. Harris's work had even
consulted Endo's diary which was published in 1985. Both works confirm the
amount of Unit 731's 1933 budget as 200,000 yen and that Emperor Hirohito
decreed the establishment of the two biological warfare Units 731 and 100 in
Manchuria.

II. U.S. Authorities Well Aware of Japan's Using Biological Warfare in China

As mentioned earlier, at the outbreak of the Wusung-shanghai campaign on
August 13, 1937 and in front of the watching eyes of the American and
British navies and many Europeans and Americans, the Japanese army used
poison gas against Chinese troops. In the succeeding eight years of war,
Japan in 14 Chinese provinces had used poison gases for 1, 131 times.

In the book by Williams and Wallace, there is a translation of Chinese
accusation of Japan's dropping from airplane plague bacteria at Changte,
Hunan, submitted by Chinese Ambassador to London Wellington Koo to the
British government and the Conunittee for the Pacific War which reads:

On at least five occasions during the first two years the Japanese armed
forces have tried to employ bacteriological warfare in China. They have
tried to produce epidemics of plague in Free China by scattering
plague-infected materials with airplanes.
These five times are: October 4, 1940, when Japanese airplane dropped plague
bacteria at Chuhsien in Chechiang province which caused the deaths of 21
people. On the 29th of the same month, Japanese airplane spread plague
bacteria at Ningpo, Chechiang which caused the deaths of 99 people. On
November 28 of the same year, Japanese airplanes dropped a large quantity of
germs at Chinhua but no death was reported. In January 1941 Japan spread
plague germs in Suiyuan and Ninghsia provinces and again in Shansi that
caused serious epidemic outbreaks of plague in these areas.

Not that the U.S. was not aware of the fruitful research on biological
warfare the Japanese had accomplished. However, she did not take the
Japanese biological program seriously, Harris believes, simply because Japan
was far away from U.S. homeland and could not launch a massive attack on
America and also because Japanese being Asian were incapable of developing
sophisticated biological weapons without the help of white men. In the
August 1942 Rocky Mountain Medical Journal , there appeared a lengthy
article under the heading "Japanese Use the Chinese as 'Guinea Pigs' to Test
Germ Warfare."

With increasing number of Japanese prisoners of war captured in the South
Pacific, the U.S. found out that not only was Japan engaged in significant
Biological research; its program was on a far larger scale than previously
suspected. Americans then knew that Tokyo was the center for biological
experimentation and that Ishii was the forerunner of Japanese biological
warfare with his epidemic prevention and water purification headquarters at
Harbin. Also known to the Americans, mainly from Japanese naval sources,
were the size of Unit 731 and germ bombs being manufactured.

Not until September 1943, did the U.S. begin its own research on biological
weapons with Lt. Col. Murry Sanders, a young bacteriologist, heading the
program and with Camp Detrick in Maryland as its base. Although the United
States was almost four years behind England in biological warfare research,
its program grew rapidly and was capable of mass production. For instance, a
spoonful botulinus toxin multiplied to fill the vat in 72 hours, to produce
enough poison to destroy 50,000 or more men. The most successful
experimentation achieved by Detrick was the virus being freeze-dried that
could be delivered to the enemy's territory. It is natural that American
scientists wished to acquire the fruits of Unit 73 I's research.

III. The Deal Between the United States and Former Members of Unit 731

Only one week after Japan surrendered, Col. Sanders was among the first
group of Americans to land in Japan. His mission was to locate as soon as
possible the Japanese biological warfare machine and Ishii himself. In the
next three months, Sanders had interrogated many

important military leaders and Scientists of Unit 731, notably Yoshijiro
Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff and erstwhile Kuantung Army
Commander-in-Chief, Ishii's deputy Col. Tomosa Masuda, germ bomb expert
Major Jun'ichi Kaneko, but not Ishii himself.

Upon his arrival in Japan, Sanders was immediately under the deception of
his interprete Lt. Col. Ryoichi Naito. He was a student of Ishii at the
Tokyo Army Medical College. When serving as assistant professor at the
college in 1939, Naito was sent to America. His mission was to get yellow
fever strain from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New
York, which was refused. Later at Pingfang, he became the right-hand man of
Ishii. Eager to secure the experiment data of Unit 73 1, Sanders approached
General Douglas MacArthur saying: "My recommendation is that we promise
Naito that no one involved in BW will be prosecuted as war criminal." The
recommendation was readily accepted by MacArthur. By September, Sanders
discovered that Unit 731 was involved in human experiments and he took the
issue to MacArthur whose response was, "We need more evidence. We can't
simply act on that. Keep going. Ask more questions. And keep quiet about
it."

Sanders spent only ten weeks in Japan and was ordered home. The second stage
of investigation was taken over by his Detrick colleague Lt. Col. Arvo T.
Thompson, a veterinarian. After his return, Sanders was protracted to
tuberculosis and invalid for the next two years, having forever lost the
chance to come back to Japan to renew the investigation of Unit 73 1. Forty
year later, he told Williams and Wallace:

I talked to Arvo Thompson [who committed suicide in 1948] who was to carry
of the next stage of the investigations. And I remember telling "Tommy"
Thompson about the anthrax bomb and the experiments on the human beings. I
told him specifically to look the anthrax experiments and the Uji bomb.
When Col. Thompson arrived in Japan, the International Military Tribunal for
the Far East just began the trial of Japanese Class A war criminals. In the
meantime, Maj. Gen. Kitano, Commander of Unit 731 from August 1942 to March
1944, was brought back to Japan from China to face interrogation. Though
Ishii was declared dead in newspapers and a mock funeral was held in Ishii's
home town, he was available for Thompson's interrogation which was to last
from January 17 to February 25, 1946. Ishii's tactics of resistance was to
speak as little as he could and minimize the magnitude of biological warfare
research as much as possible. He admitted neither human experiments nor
Emperor Hirohito's involvement and instead took the entire responsibility
upon himself. Yet sometimes he boasted of his knowledge of biological
warfare, for which he could have written many volumes. Like Sanders before
him, Thompson was fooled. He finished his investigation report at the end of
May 1946, augmenting knowledge on manufacturing germ bombs and technique of
mass production of germs achieved by Unit 73 1.

Taking a hint from MacArthur, Chief Prosecutor of the Tokyo Trial Joseph B.
Keenan (a Democrat politician from Ohio) suppressed the Soviet accusation
against Japanese biological warfare criminals. Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby,
MacArthur's intelligence chief, was in charge of the whole affair of Unit
731, shielding its former members from any outside contact in order to avoid
any research data on biological warfare fallen into the Soviet hands.
Despite the fact that Lt. Col. Thomas H. Morrow (a lawyer from Ohio) of
International Prosecution Section of the Tokyo Trial and David N. Sutton,
head of its Document Division, made a trip to China to collect evidenc on
Japanese waging biological warfare in China, during the afternoon of August
29, 1946 no sooner was the Unit 731 case raised than it was dropped.
MacArthur was empowered "to approve, reduce or otherwise alter any sentence
imposed by "the International Military 'Tribunal the Far East." Chief
Prosecutor Keenan, though deriving his powers from the US government, handed
control of the whole International Prosecution Section to MacArthur.

Williams and Wallace have ascribed the whole deal--that Ishii and members of
Unit 731 were exonerated from being sued for war crimes in exchange for
their human experiment data, a price paid by several thousand lives, most
Chinese but some Soviets, Koreans, and Mongolians-largely to MacArthur. This
is not quite true. Harris's new book has proved that U.S. scientists, mainly
those from Detrick, were equally willing to make the deal, therefore bearing
considerable responsibility.

In April 1947, General Allen Waitt, Commander of U.S. Chemical Corps, sent
Camp Detrick bacteriologist Norbert Fell to Japan for investigation to
assess the progress and level of achievement in biological warfare. To Fell,
Ishii, Maj. Gen. Hitoshi Kikuchi, Col. Tomosada Masuda and Dr. Kan'ichiro
Kamei, particularly the last mentioned, who earned a Ph.D. from Columbia
University, had repeatedly expressed that more valuable data were
forthcoming on condition of their immunity from war crimes. They insisted
that verbal promise would not do. On May 5, 1947, MacArthur sent a radio
message to Washington making the following recommendation:

Ishii states that if guaranteed inmmunity from "war crimes" in documentary
form for himself, superiors and subordinates, he can describe program in
detail ... Complete story, to include plans and theories of Ishii and
superiors, probably can be obtained by document immunity to Ishii and
associates.
The above message put the State-War-Navy Co-ordinating Conunittee at
Washington into crucial dilemma. Its sub-committee for the Far East did not
complete its report on MacArthur's May 6 recommendation until August 1, and
in the report a comparison of Nazi scientists and doctors as war criminals
was drawn:

Experiments on human beings similar to those conducted by the Ishii group
have been condemned as war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for
the trial of major Nazi war criminals in its decision handed down at
Nuremberg on September 30, 1946. This Government is at present prosecuting
leading German Scientists and medical doctors at Nuremberg for offenses
which included experiments on human beings which resulted in the suffering
and death of most of those experimented on.
Ironically, the conclusion the Committee for the Far East reached was: "The
value to the U.S. of Japanese BW data is of such importance to national
security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war crimes'
prosecution." In spite of the State Department strongly dissenting as such a
course would be a violation of international laws and detrimental to human
morality and once revealed, it would be a source of serious embarrassment to
the United States, the SWNCC accepted MacArthur's recommendation and decided
that "the BW information obtained from Japanese sources should be retained
in 'top secret' intelligence channels and not be employed as war crimes
evidence" and not be fallen into the Soviet hands. However, the formal reply
to MacArthur's recommendation had dragged on until March 13, 1948, when the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent his cable of approval to Tokyo.

>From Sanders's first investigation in the autumn of 1945, MacArthur acceded
to granting immunity to members of Unit 731 in exchange for data of research
on biological warfare. He also inculcated on Sanders to keep silence on
"human experiments." And the belated reply from the Joint Chiefs to
MacArthur's May 6, 1947 recommendation can only be construed on broad
background. First, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began
with Winston Churchill's March 1946 speech that the "iron curtain" was
lowered in Eastern Europe, followed by Marshall's commencement speech at
Harvard University next June which promised U.S. aids for rehabilitation of
Western Europe. Then there was the Berlin blockade by the Soviet Union in
June 1948, thus having constituted nearly 40 years of Cold War. Only viewed
against this background, an we understand why the United States tried its
utmost to get ahead in the biological warfare.

The second element which is also related to the first is that the granting
of immunity from war crimes of Unit 731 fell in the province of MacArthur's
authority. Then he was virtually a "super emperor of Japan." For the
expediency of his rule in Japan or for his love for the Japanese that had
been generated, by 1947 MacArthur had lost his interest in pursuing the
issue of war criminals and in making Japan to pay war reparations to the
victimized nations, particularly China. Just as Fell once said in connection
with MacArthur Headquarter's secret funding for Unit 731: "The feeling of
several staff groups in Washington, including G-2, is that this problem is
more or less a 'family' affair in FEC [Far East Command]." Hence that
Washington respected MacArthur's opinion was rather natural.

IV. U.S. Prisoners of War Used for Experiment by Unit 731 and the Issue of
American Use of Biological Warfare in Korean War

As early as January 6, 1946, the Pacific Stars and Stripes, an official
organ of the U.S. Army, reported that Americans were among the victims of
Ishii's human experiments. A week later, similar reports was ensued in New
York Times, hence news about Allied prisoners of war to have been used as
human guinea pigs were sporadically divulged. An U.S. government document
dated August 1947 has this to say:

It should be kept in mind that there is a remote-possibility that
independent investigation conducted by the Soviets in the Mukden area may
have disclosed evidence that American prisoners of war were used for
experimental purposes of a BW nature and that they lost their lives as a
result of these experiments.
Until 1956, the Federal Bureau of Investigation continued to accept as fact
that U.S. prisoners of war were used in human experiments. In the 1960s, the
issue no longer riveted the public interest. In 1976, Japanese television
broadcast a documentary entitled "A Bruise-Terrors of the 731 corps," which
rekindled the public interest which grew apace in America in the 1980s. Out
of 1,485 Allied white prisoners of war taken to Mukden, 1, 174 were
Americans. In their first winter (1942-43) at Mukden, 430 perished, most
Americans. No matter how desperate American survivors from Mukden, like
Gregory Rodriquez of Oklahoma, tried to tell how they were used by Unit 731
for human experiments, an accusation verified by Naoji Uezono, former member
of Unit 731, U.S. Congress turned a deaf ear , thereby being irresponsible
for paying their medical benefits and compensations. A British Major Robert
Peaty kept a diary while detained in Mukden that gives sufficient evidence
of Unit 731's using Allied prisoners of war as guinea pigs. Another
Australian doctor R. J. Brennan also kept a diary, indicating that how the
prisoners of war underwent experimentation. What bothered him most was one
day 150 American prisoners were forced to march out of the camp, from which
they never returned.

For over ten years, Rodriquez's son has persistently lobbied in Washington
on behalf of his father and other survivors from Mukden. Not only does he
ask for compensations to the victims; moreover he wants that the crimes of
Japan using the prisoners of war for human experiments be known to the
world. He told this writer that there is a former Mukden prisoner now living
in Oklahoma who was taken to Pingfang, Harbin. The chapter "BW Experiments
on Prisoners of War?" of Harris's new book has given great details, but had
some discrepancies in figures. Also it is hard to accept his conclusion. He
says that death rate at Mukden Camp was about 12 percent, almost all being
Americans. Both Jack-Roberts of the royal Army Medical Corps and Frank
James, a sergeant in the U.S. signal Company, confirmed that in that first
winter, 430 men died. In the August 6, 1943 entry of Major Peaty's diary,
"there are now 208 dead"; in the November 21, 1943 entry, "there are now
over 230 dead." 430 plus 230 have made 44 percent of the Mukden POW
population. Further, how many more deaths would have been in the next two
years!

According to Harris's tally, there were only 238 POW dead at Mukden Camp and
1,617 survivors, figures which are far apart from those given by former
British and American POWs at Mukden. His conclusion is that "American POWs
may have been victims of BW tests, but there is no substantive evidence to
prove that the experiments took place at Camp Mukden."

It is unthinkable that Harris wrote only two pages on the issue of U.S.
using biological warfare in the Korean War, which he apparently did not want
to talk about; in contrast, Williams and Wallace used 51 pages, one-sixth of
the whole book dealing with the subject. China and North Korean began to
accuse the United States of using CW and BW on March 5, 1951, a campaign
which was stopped only with the conclusion of the war in 1953. Most
importantly, International Science Committee composed of renown "Leftist"
scientists sent a delegation to China and North Korea, whose investigation
lent support to the accusation. This writer would take issue with Professor
Harris for his using the term "Leftist." Could we ask: Is J. Robert
Oppenheimer, "father of atomic bomb" also labeled Leftist scientist? Does
being Leftist make one non-scientific? And then how about "Rightist"
scientist? The six that came to China and North Korea included Dr. Joseph
Needham who just died last March. Needham's studies of Chinese culture (he
had studied the history of Chinese science and technology for over fifty
years) and his concern for China had won esteem of Chinese intellectuals
both in Taiwan and the Mainland, who would not question the results of his
investigation and regard them as propaganda. Harris believes that the issue
of American use of biological warfare cannot be clarified until archives of
all countries concerned are open. Surely we hope this can be realized soon,
but at the same time should point out that the release of more archival
materials cannot overthrow a scientific investigation already made.

Also, Harris tried to water down the issue of confession given by U.S.
airmen under captivity. Col. Frank H. Schwable was the chief of the First
Marine Air Wing. After having been captured, Schwable and Major Roy Bley
made "confessions" stating that "the joint Chiefs of Staff had directed U.S.
forces to carry out planned germ warfare and that the order was part of a
directive given to General Ridgway in October 1951" (New York Times,
February 23, 1953).

At least as important as Schwable were Col. Walker F. Mahurin, World War II
fighter ace and an assistant executive to US Secretary for Air Finletter,
and Col. Andrew J. Evans, a former secretary to Air Chief of Staff
Vandenberg. Before coming to Korea, Mahurin was commander of the First
Fighter Interceptor Group in California which supplied men and equipment to
the 51st and 4th fighter wings near Seoul. After being released, Mahurin was
elected as spokesman for all POW fliers. All the 25 airmen who made
confession under captivity had repudiated their confessions and denied BW
charges. But Mahurin wrote his memoirs (Honest John published by Putnam of
New York without date) which reveals and contradicts some of his sworn
repudiation to his confession.

Any fair-minded person would not believe that the United States had tried to
unleash a large-scale biological warfare in the Korean war. Needham said in
reminiscence:

I felt then, and still feel, that attacks using toxic aerosols would have
been far more dangerous, but I think the Americans just wanted to see what
degree of success could be obtained with the essentially Japanese methods.
My judgment was never based on anything which the downed airmen had said,
but rather entirely on the circumstantial evidence.
As a matter of fact, over the issue of whether or not the United States was
engaged in biological warfare, irrefutable evidence is still lacking;
hopefully it could be resolved in the near future. Should it then prove that
the U.S. indeed used biological warfare, one would not be surprised. Let us
bear in mind that at his November 30, 1950 news conference, when asked "Does
mean that there is active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?"
President Truman said: "There has always been active consideration of its
use. I don't want to see it used. It is a terrible weapon."

V. Conclusion

The new work on Unit 731 by Harris as the joint work by Williams and Wallace
certainly reflects years of studies, traveling for collecting archival
materials which had long been closed and conducting interviews with former
members of Unit 731 and others involved who otherwise would have kept
silence on the sensitive issues of Japanese biological warfare and American
cover-up. Despite the fact that the two works have not solved all the
questions such as Japan's plan for using biological weapons to stop the
invading Soviet army north of the Yalu River and to repel the landing of
U.S. forces in Kyushu in the south, they together have given us a thorough
understanding of the developments of Japanese and American biological
warfare and how the immunity from war criminal charges granted to Ishii and
members of Unit 731 had been done. Undoubtedly the two books combined
represent a breakthrough in scholarship and have made a great contribution
to the general public.

As in any excellent work, it is easy to carp some criticism, both works have
made insufficient references to Chinese sources. Since Unit 731 caused a
terrible havoc to the Chinese people, information about which has largely
been found in Chinese materials. For instance, in the collection entitled
Selected Archival Meterials of Japanese Imperialist Aggression against
China: Biological Warfare and Poison Gas Warfare (Beijing: Chunghua Book
Company, 1989), there are testimonies given by scores of members of Unit 731
and people aasociated with it are invaluable source materials. For the
celebration of the 50th anniversary of China's victory in the War of
Resistance against Japan, a comprehensive work treating the subject of
Japanese biological warfare against China will make its appearance. Still,
crucial to our knowledge of Unit 731 are Japanese sources. Recently a few
former members of Unit 73 1, regardless of the pressure from the Japanese
government, resolutely came out and gave their witnesses to truth and
history and for their posterity. It is anticipated that what remain to be
riddles of Unit 731 will soon be revealed to the world.

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