U.S.-Japan: Germ Warfare

December, 1949 twelve former members the Japanese Army, Unit 731 stood trial in Khabarovsk, Russia accused by the Soviets of manufacturing and using bacteriological weapons and conducting human experiments. The indictment charged these twelve men with “intend[ing] to employ on a wide scale for the accomplishment of their aims, and in part did employ, a criminal means of mass extermination of human-beings-the weapon of bacteriological warfare” and that “Japan had grossly violated laws that violated laws and customs of war,” though their “brutal and inhuman treatment” of “war prisoners and civilian in habitants of the occupied territories.”1 After all twelve defendants plead and were found guilty, the Soviets published and disseminated the trial’s results, that included testimony from the accused providing detailed information about Japanese war crimes and crimes against humanity. The United States was quick to deny the authenticity of the Khabarovsk Trial as communist propaganda and denied that the Japanese Kwantung Army had conducted any human experiments. These denials were just one part of an elaborate effort of behalf of the United States’ Government to cover-up atrocities related to Biological Warfare (BW) in order to obtain information for the U.S.‘s own BW program, while at the same time keeping this information out of Soviet hands.

In 1936 “Detachment 731 was formed...by a secret decree of Emperor Hirohito of Japan” under the guise of “Water Purification Unit 731” in Manchuria, China.2 However, Unit 731 was not purify water, instead it was created for “devising and producing bacteriological weapons intended for the wholesale extermination of human beings.”3 Beginning in 1927 General Shiro Ishii began lobbying the...

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... nor his associates are included among major Japanese war criminals awaiting trial” official Government documents began to officially protect Ishii and others from any judicial proceeding or punishments.25 On June 6, 1947 CINFE’s legal section determined that “reports and files. . .on Ishii and his coworkers [were] based on anonymous letters, hearsay affidavits, and rumors. . .” and that allegations were brought by “the Japanese Communist Party” and therefore unreliable.26 In turn CINFE forwarded this information to the War Department. The memorandum states that there was not “sufficient evidence to support war crimes charges” against Ishii and his co-workers” and that evidence of bacteriological warfare “should not be produced” at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial.27 And in fact no evidence of BW or human experiments was presented by the U.S or its allies. SUTTON>>>>