Confessions reveal Japan’s bacteria warfare in China
Print Edition
A WRITTEN confession from a Japanese officer in World War II made public yesterday confirmed that the Japanese army used typhoid and cholera and bacteria on civilians during their invasion of China.
A confession from Giichi Sumioka, who served in the Japanese army in China from 1939 to 1945, was posted on the website of the State Archives Administration.
In mid-February 1942, Sumioka and his platoon escorted about 10 military surgeons from the headquarters dispensary of the battalion to spread typhoid and cholera bacteria in five or six villages in north China’s Shanxi Province, according to the document.
“We covered the medical staff as they smeared bacteria on bowls, chopsticks, kitchen knives, rolling pins, cutting boards and tables in villagers’ houses and threw bacteria into their water vats, wells and rivers nearby,” Sumioka wrote in the document in May 1955.
Sumioka, born in Osaka, Japan in 1917, joined the army and invaded east China’s Anhui Province in 1939. He was stationed in China until Japan’s defeat in 1945. He then took refuge among the troops of a Chinese warlord named Yan Xishan in north China’s Shanxi Province and was arrested in 1948.
He also confessed to rape and using captives as targets.
And in a 56-page confession, Hideo Sakakibara, former head of the Linkou Branch of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Detachment of the Kwantung Army, recounts how in April 1945 he took part in a “killing experiment” in Heilongjiang Province.
Four Chinese people were tied to poles buried in the ground before a bomber dropped containers of anthrax nearby.
These are the latest in a series of 45 Japanese war criminal confessions the SAA plans to publish. China has earlier published the full texts of confessions by 13 convicted Japanese war criminals.
Scans, along with abstracts in Chinese and English, are available on the website of the State Archives Administration.
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