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Japanese World War II biological expertise

Japan developed new methods of biological warfare (BW) which was used on a large scale during World War II in China.^[5] Unit 731, Japan's infamous biological warfare unit led by Lt. General Shirō Ishii, used plague-infected fleas and flies covered with cholera to infect the population in China.^[5] The Japanese military dispersed the insects by spraying them from low-flying airplanes and dropping bombs they had developed that were filled with a mixture of insects and diseases of humans, animals, and crops.^[6] Localized and deadly epidemics resulted and nearly 500,000 Chinese died of disease.^[5][7]

Alleged assistance of Japanese World War II Biological Warfare experts in U.S. and Korea

During World War II, of the Japanese Army's ten numbered institutes, only the 9th Army Technical Research Laboratory came under the covert operations section of the Army General Staff's Second Bureau (Intelligence). Engineer Major Shigeo Ban, a technician at the Japanese Army's 9th Technical Research Institute in Noborito, left a rare and valuable account of the activities of Noborito Research Institute that was published in Rikugun Noborito Kenkyujo no shinjitsu or The Truth About the Army Noborito Institute which is available only in the Japanese language.^[8] On the sensitive issue of Japanese biological warfare, Ban did not shrink from including an account of his own trip to Nanking in 1941 to participate in the testing of poisons on Chinese prisoners under Unit 1644. One of his book's contributions is to further tie the biomedical research of Noborito Institute to the atrocities of the Japanese Army's wartime medical experiments on prisoners of war and biological and entomological warfare on Chinese civilians.^[8]

Former U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Murray Sanders, who as part of the initial U.S. research into Japan's BW program in WWII, had traveled from United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp Detrick to Japan shortly after the Japanese surrender and claimed in the mid-1980s, that both Ishii and Naito at about that time were also flown to the United States to give lectures on biological warfare which included detailed information on human testing of infectious diseases.^[9] The Soviet naval newspaper, Red Fleet, reported that General MacArthur dispatched eighteen Japanese BW specialists to the United States in 1946. They were reportedly sent there to "carry out experiments in numerous laboratories and institutes of America."^[9] The U.S. Army quietly enlisted certain members of Noborito in its efforts against the communist camp in the early years of the Cold War.^[8] Shirō Ishii of Unit 731, having never been charged as a war criminal, continued his work to consult with American authorities, especially during the height of the Cold War, though died in 1959 of throat cancer.^[10]

North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. The war became stalemated until 1953, when both sides signed an uneasy ceasefire. Communist China raised the issue that the United States was engaging in CW and BW in Korea as early as 5 March 1951 and October 1951.^[9] A few months later, North Korea and the People's Republic of China launched a full-blown campaign of BW and CW accusations against the United States in early 1952. The media operation was conducted throughout the world, with the assistance of many "left wing" and "pacifist" organizations, and lasted until the fighting ceased in 1953.^[9]

In February 1953, the Communist Chinese and North Korea produced two captured U.S. Marine Corps pilots who under duress, alleged they had been given details of American BW operations in the Korean campaigns. Colonel Frank H. Schwable was reported to have stated that "The basic objective was at that time to get under field conditions various elements of bacteriological warfare and possibly expand field tests at a later date into an element of regular combat operations."^[9] Schwable disclosed in his press statement that World War II's famed B-29s, flew BW missions to Korea from airfields in American-occupied Okinawa starting in November 1951.^[11][12] Other captured Americans such as Colonel Walker Mahurin, were prevailed upon by their captors and coerced to make similar reports.^[9] Mahurin was in fact associated with the biological weapons research facility at Fort Detrick.^[13]

The names of former Unit 731 commanders Shirō Ishii, Masaji Kitano, or subordinates such as Ryoichi Naito, and biological warfare experts connected with other units were to be included in the Korean BW charges.^[9] Former members of Unit 731 were linked, initially, by a Communist news agency, to a freighter that allegedly carried them and all equipment necessary to mount a BW campaign to Korea in 1951.^[9] The International Scientific commission in its August 31, 1952 news conference, and in its lengthy final report that October, placed credence in allegations that Ishii made two visits to South Korea in early 1952, and another one in March 1953.^[9] The American authorities denied all allegations or the use of BW in Korea. They denied, as well, the charges of postwar Japanese-United States cooperation in BW developments.^[9] General Matthew Ridgway, United Nations Commander in Korea, denounced the initial charges as early as May 1951. He accused the communists of spreading "deliberate lies." A few days later, Vice Admiral Charles Turner Joy repeated the denials.^[9] To quiet the BW charges, in June 1952 The United States proposed to the United Nations Security Council that the Council request the International Red Cross investigate the allegations. The Soviet Union vetoed the American resolution, and, along with its allies, continued to insist on the veracity of the BW accusations.^[9]

A United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) review of the book The Truth About the Army Noborito Institute notes near the end of the book that Shigeo Ban led the "chemical section" of a U.S. clandestine unit hidden within Yokosuka Naval Base during the Korean War, and then worked on unspecified projects inside the United States from 1955 to 1959, before returning to Japan to enter the private sector.^[8] In 1989 a British study of Unit 731 strongly supported the theory of United States-Japanese BW culpability in Korea.^[9] "Chinese experts insist today that BW weapons created in an American-Ishii-and-coterie collaboration were used in the Korean episode. American experts are equally adamant in denying that BW was used in Korea, or that Ishii and his colleagues assisted the United States' BW program after 1950."^[9] The admission by Japanese participants in both the Japanese Army programs during World War II and the covert CBW activities of the U.S. during the Cold War as revealed in The Truth about the Army Noborito Institute is highly problematic for the position put forth by the United States that the Japanese WWII BW scientists did not assist America's Cold War biowarfare program after 1950.^[8]

Culpability

The Japanese biological warfare information provided after World War II remained a secret and was eventually returned to Japan.^[14] In August 2002 and only four days before Harris' death, a Japanese court ended decades of official denials and acknowledged, for the first time, that Japan had used germ warfare in occupied China in the 1930s and 1940s.^[14] The court acknowledged the existence of Japan's biological warfare program but rejected the plaintiffs' demands for compensation, saying the issue was covered under postwar treaties.^[14] Following the court decision, Japanese officials announced that their government would send a delegation to China to excavate and remove hundreds of abandoned chemical weapons, including bombs, shells, and containers of mustard gas and other toxins leftover from the Second World War.^[14]