Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-Up

328 Pages·1995·1.77 MB·English

by  Sheldon Harris

Factories of Death

In Manchuria, before and during World War II, the Japanese army conducted
numerous, and quite horrific, biological warfare experiments upon live human
beings. After the war, the Japanese scientists who had been engaged in these
activities were granted immunity, by the US army, from investigation for war
crimes, in return for the results of their experiments.
Sheldon Harris’s book is a controversial investigation of the activities of the
Japanese scientists involved in these experiments and the subsequent US
cover-up. The author covers the sensitive areas concerning which scientists
were involved and who in the upper echelons of the army and the political
establishment knew of the activities going on inside Manchuria. Harris also
investigates the claims that allied POWs were subject to experimentation. In
the second part of the book the questions concerning why the scientists were
not prosecuted as war criminals and the nature of the deal that was struck with
the US occupation authorities are examined.
Sheldon Harris has produced a work that is backed up by rigorous fieldwork
and research in China. He has also obtained access to US and KGB archives
containing material previously unavailable to other academics. This book
should appeal to those interested in Japanese history, the ethics of scientists
and the conduct of armies in war.
Sheldon H.Harris is Emeritus Professor of History, California State
University, Northridge. In 1984 he became involved in research on Japanese
biological warfare experimentation in Manchuria. His research led him to
deliver several papers to international conferences on science and ethics and
to the publication of a number of scholarly articles that have aroused
considerable interest in the United States, Europe, Japan and China.

Factories of Death

Japanese biological warfare 1932–45
and the American cover-up

Sheldon H.Harris

London and New York
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

First published in paperback 1995

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

© 1994 Sheldon H.Harris
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-43536-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-74360-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-09105-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-13206-1 (pbk)
To my wife Sheila
and
to the thousands of Chinese martyred in the struggle
for freedom, 18 September 1931 to 4 June 1989

Contents

Plates between pages 142 and 143
Preface to the paperback edition ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Part I Death factories
Introduction 3
1 Manchuria 6
2 Major Ishii Shiro comes to Manchuria 13
3 Beiyinhe bacteria factory 22
4 Ping Fan: the first phase 31
5 Ping Fan’s version of hell 41
6 Human experiments: “secret of secrets” 57
7 Unit 100’s BW death factories in Changchun 83
8 Nanking’s BW death factory 101
9 BW experiments on prisoners of war? 113
10 Who knew? 132
Part II Cover-up
11 The United States BW program 149
12 Discovery of the “secret of secrets” 160
13 Investigations 173
14 Scientists and the cover-up 190
15 The military and the cover-up 205
16 Epilogue 224
Appendices 235
viii Contents
Notes 241
Select bibliography 285
Index 291
Preface to the paperback edition

I
Japan’s unconditional surrender to the United Nations in mid-August 1945
marked the end of active fighting in World War II. One half-century later
reverberations from the most horrific war of the twentieth century still shock
generations born in the post-war era. Former war criminals, now elderly men
living in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and elsewhere are still being
discovered and charged with executing heinous crimes against humanity. In
Germany, the nation is constantly reminded of the unspeakable horrors
committed by the Nazis during their twelve-year reign over a nation that once
produced a Beethoven, a Schiller and a Goethe.
Curiously, the Japanese, unlike the Germans, do not confront the reality of
the actions perpetrated by their militaristic leaders before and during World
War II. The horrors of the 1937 rape of Nanking, the exploitation of hundreds
of thousands of Korean and Filipino young women as “comfort women” (sex
slaves) for Japanese troops, and the use of humans by scientists in
experiments designed to develop viable chemical and biological warfare
weapons are not discussed in most Japanese circles.
Over the past half-century, Japan witnessed changes in government
leadership many times. Not one of the various prime ministers or their
spokesmen repudiated the actions of the past. Until recently, no one in power
even apologized for their country’s wartime misdeeds. The powerful and
reactionary bureaucrats who run Japan’s Ministry of Education turned these
actions into non-events. This ministry’s minions excise any mention of
Nanking, comfort women or biological warfare from texts before they are
approved for use in Japanese schools. Consequently, the average Japanese
citizen today is ignorant of his country’s past brutality.
Here and there an isolated voice attempts to rouse the nation. In the 1980s
Sei-ichi Morimura shocked the nation with his novel, The Devil’s Gluttony,
which described in realistic detail Japan’s biological warfare research on
humans. Professor Kei-ichi Tsuneishi is devoting his professional career to
outlining the history of Japanese biological warfare activities. In the early