Ground-zero of Imperial Japan's germ war
By Peter J Brown
In 1989, a mass grave was unearthed at the construction site for a National
Institute of Health facility in the Shinjuku section of Tokyo.
Flash forward 21 years to another site a short distance from where the remains
were discovered in 1989. Excavation work will soon commence at this second
site, one of three identified in 2006 by a former nurse who worked at the
Imperial Japanese Army Medical College in Shinjuku, and who pinpointed possible
locations where human remains were hastily buried.
These were all probably the unfortunate victims of a string of medical
experiments performed on living subjects in Japan as well
as in Manchuria and China by the Imperial Japanese Army.
The nurse reported that she and other medical workers were ordered to bury
these complete and partial remains after Japan surrendered to the US in August,
1945.
The Imperial Japanese Army Medical College's Research Institute for Preventive
Medicine once occupied this site. The infamous Unit 731 created in 1932 - aka
the "Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department" or simply
the "Manchuria 731st Unit" - was also headquartered there.
"If the bones are actually there, they are likely related to Unit 731 itself,
because the facility that used to stand in that part of the compound was
closely linked to the unit," Professor Tsuneishi Keiichi of Kanagawa
University, one of Japan's top biological warfare (BW) experts, told the Taipei
Times newspaper in 2006. [1]
Today, a soon-to-be demolished government-funded residential complex is located
at the Tokyo compound.
"From a procedural standpoint, the government had to wait for the government
building built over the site to be obsolete enough to be torn down," said Yukie
Yoshikawa, a senior research fellow at the Edwin O Reischauer Center for East
Asian Studies in Washington DC. "But my sense is that in 1989 [when the first
bodies were discovered in Shinjuku] many of the people involved in this issue
were still alive, and wanted the truth not to be uncovered."
Ishii Shiro, the director of Unit 731 who died in the 1950s, was once described
as the "Japanese Mengele", a reference to Josef Mengele, the German SS officer
and a physician in Nazi concentration camps who was also known as the "Angel of
Death". Unit 731's operations in China included a large contingent in Harbin,
along with one in Singapore.
Shinjuku was the source of BW agents that infected thousands of people in
China. Estimates of the total death toll in China range from anywhere between
250,000 and 1 million. The BW experiments conducted in Shinjuku and elsewhere
which Ishii supervised killed more than an estimated 3,000 people, including
many Chinese.
Many of the army officers and personnel responsible for these horrific acts who
were captured by the Russians were imprisoned. But in Japan after the war, the
US turned a blind eye and allowed them to simply walk away. The perpetrators
were never prosecuted or punished in any way.
According to Koga Kei, a 2009-2010 Vasey Fellow from Japan at the Pacific Forum
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Honolulu and a PhD
candidate in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University, the upcoming excavation in Shinjuku is tied to
the broader joint effort recently undertaken by Japan and China to jointly
explore historical issues often divisive and painful in an attempt to gain a
better understanding of each other's different perspective, among other things.
"The issue relating Unit 731 is a point of contention. The research group
provided its reports both in Japanese and Chinese last January, and the
descriptions in these Japanese and Chinese reports differ," said Koga.
"Regarding the issue of biological weapons, the Japanese report did not
directly mention Unit 731, while the Chinese version explicitly described that
biological and chemical warfare was committed by the Japanese, and that Unit
731 carried out experiments on Chinese subjects."
Koga remains concerned that given the sensitivity of the subject at hand, "if
exaggerated information about this issue is disseminated, this might instigate
anti-Japanese sentiment in China".
"This should be understood as a voluntary movement by the Japanese without any
foreign and especially American pressure to recognize the dark side of Japan's
past, in contrast with the recent 'comfort women' issue," said Yoshikawa. "It
often takes time in Japan, but wait in patience, and things will move."
Thanks in great part to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the concerted
pressure exerted by a particularly persistent and unyielding Japanese civic
organization - the Association Demanding Investigation on Human Bones
Discovered from the Site of the Army Medical College - Japan's Ministry of
Health, Labor and Welfare approved the excavation in Shinjuku.
"The health minister under the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
cabinet of Junichiro Koizumi promised in June 2006 to continue investigations
of human remains at the old army medical college originally found in 1989. He
was, in fact, responding to questions from a representative of the DPJ," said
Professor Frederick Dickinson of the University of Pennsylvania.
"A proper accounting of this issue has, in other words, been DPJ policy since
at least 2006 and, it is safe to say, with the DPJ now in power since last
September, it makes sense for the party to move on the investigation. Funds for
the new excavation were approved in the latest budget approval in the
parliament at the beginning of March."
In effect, this issue is one of many others including a friendlier relationship
with China, and a harder line on the US - Japan security treaty that the DPJ
has used to distinguish itself from the LDP and that it is now trying to
capitalize on.
"Now that the DPJ has completely backtracked on its hardline stance vis-a-vis
the US, it needs to maintain some semblance of its identity of being the
'reform' party. The medical college site issue, although a very small one
compared to the US-Japan security alliance, is one small way of doing so," said
Dickinson.
While there has been a long history of revelations in Japan about wartime
Japanese atrocities and while some might argue that the Japanese are very aware
of them, many view Japan as moving ahead too slowly and still dragging its
feet.
"There has been insufficient Japanese scholarly or governmental investigation
of these episodes and this new investigation is long overdue. A large part of
Japan's difficulty addressing these issues was that the conservative LDP had in
its DNA ties to the pre-war leadership, while the left in Japan had a political
agenda that went beyond truth and reconciliation and was therefore suspect from
the beginning," said Michael Green, senior adviser and Japan chair at CSIS in
Washington, DC.
With the rapid recent rise of the DPJ, more space has perhaps emerged for less
politically motivated inquiries that can enjoy broader political support.
"This is not the same Japan," said Green. "And coming at a time of sagging
confidence among Japanese citizens about the future, it will be important for
the emerging generation of leaders to expose and learn from this tragic history
while also instilling pride and confidence in Japan's role in the world."
Japan must prepare for what will surely be an extremely sensitive and perhaps
painful episode.
"Japan's biological warfare program in China was, as far as we know, the first
use of scientifically organized germ warfare in history," Iris Chang told the
Shanghai Star in March, 2004 just a few months before she took her own life.
Chang, a noted Chinese-American historian, is best remembered for her book The
Rape of Nanking, about the atrocities committed there by Japanese
occupation forces in 1937.
A close friend and former instructor of Chang informed this writer in 2008 that
she was unaware that Chang was engaged in any in-depth research focused on
Japan's BW program before and during World War II. Still, Chang appeared to
know quite a lot about what transpired. She must have known that Unit 1644
established a forward base in Nanjing. Unit 1644 specialized in BW like Unit
731 and conducted extensive BW field operations in China, especially from late
1940 until 1942. China conducted a formal inquiry into one of this unit's BW
attacks - on Ningbo in October 1940 - for example.
"Details from this period were suppressed during the Cold War. The US
government cut a secret deal with these Japanese doctors, giving them immunity
from prosecution in exchange for their medical data," said Chang in 2004. [2]
Decisions made years ago by the Japanese government to undertake
government-funded construction projects at these troubling sites are seen by
many as no mere coincidence.
"According to the former nurse, the public housing for government officials was
constructed immediately after the war so that no one could dig up the human
subjects buried there," Tsuneishi, who represents the Association Demanding
Investigation, was quoted as saying by the Mainichi Daily News. "The search may
uncover the facts that the government had sought to conceal." [3]
Asia Times Online's attempts to contact Tsuneishi were unsuccessful.
Tsuneishi gave a speech at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian
Studies last March in Philadelphia entitled, "The Purchase of the Data of
'experiments' conducted in the Japanese BW Program by the US in 1947."
The truth about the role of Unit 731 in so many BW-related deaths in China and
the US government's deliberate attempt to cover up this war crime really did
not emerge until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Japanese and American
researchers pursued every shred of evidence.
Professor Sheldon Harris at California State University at Northridge stood out
early on in this regard.
However, while Harris and others helped to expose the fact that the US secretly
decided to overlook the criminal acts perpetrated by members of Unit 731 and
not prosecute them as war criminals once the US had obtained the data derived
from countless human experiments performed by the Japanese, the fact that the
US actually paid Ishii and other members of Unit 731 an enormous sum in order
to obtain this data only recently came to light, due to Tsuneishi's diligent
research.
There was no mention of any payment from a secret US fund in this 1947
memorandum to US General Douglas MacArthur, for example.
"For all practical purposes, an agreement with Ishii and his associates that
information given by them on the Japanese BW program will be retained in
intelligence channels is equivalent to an agreement that this [US] government
will not prosecute any of those involved in BW activities in which war crimes
were committed. Such an understanding would be of great value to the security
of the American people because of the information which Ishii and his
associates have already furnished and will continue to furnish." [4]
In Philadelphia, according to one person who was in the audience, Tsuneishi
spoke about the many errors that can be found in English publications and books
about Unit 731, and he criticized authors for not doing thorough research on
this topic. However, while historical inaccuracies and distortions are
unwelcome and distracting, this does not excuse the conduct of the Japanese
government which bears much if not all of the responsibility for concealing the
truth about Shinjuku.
Among other things, the Japanese Health Ministry has repeatedly denied Chinese
requests for DNA tests. [5]
According to Koga, one Japanese Health Ministry official said during the 164th
Diet (parliament) session in 2006 that although several DNA investigations were
undertaken, sampling was difficult and because a substance known as hormaline
might be present in the human bones in question, it would be difficult to reach
definitive conclusions. There is no firm indication of any substantive DNA work
done prior to 2006 on any remains recovered in Shinjuku.
In late 2010, there might be a change of heart in Tokyo.
"The DNA technology may be what makes a more objective and scientific study
possible," said Green.
While analyzing DNA evidence might reopen the door to another dark dimension of
this chapter in Japanese history, it must be done.
"As for DNA analysis, yes, it will be very useful to have concrete proof of
Japanese, Chinese, perhaps victims of other nationalities at this site," said
Dickinson.
What about the American prisoners of war in Shinjuku? Is this file now closed?
After all, a quick scan of state and local prisoner of war (POW) accounts from
the Pacific theater, for example, has revealed that hundreds of American POWs
were held at a POW camp(s) in Shinjuku during World War II for varying lengths
of time, and it would have been very easy for the Japanese to conceal their
fate.
''It is significant that these are probably the skeletons of non-Japanese,''
said Tsuneishi a short time after the mass grave was discovered in 1989. ''The
Health and Welfare Ministry has been very eager to collect bones in the South
Pacific islands for decades. I just wish they had that enthusiasm for the
mysterious bones here in Tokyo.'' [6]
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