Papers reveal Japan’s biological warfare
Print Edition
Wartime documents have revealed evidence of Japanese biological warfare crimes and atrocities committed by Japanese Unit 731 during World War II.
The Japanese documents released by the Jilin Provincial Archives yesterday show in detail Japanese troops’ activities in building “bacteria forces” in its colonial regions and using human beings in experiments to develop biological weapons.
The documents date from 1936 to 1945 and include 81 rolls of more than 400 pieces of paper and over 70 audio-visual archives.
A document dated August 9, 1937, stipulates that “biological warfare” should be referred to as “biological prevention” or “plague prevention.”
“It explains why so few Japanese biological warfare material could be found in public documentation,” said Gao Wei, head of the archives research team.
Other documents reveal that 372 people were sent to Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit, for “Special Transfer.” They were from China, the then Soviet Union and Korea.
“Special Transfer” meant sending prisoners to bacteria forces for experiments to develop biological weapons, Gao said.
The documents also record an order to catch rats. The Japanese army gave more than 20,000 rat-traps to citizens, rewarding those who caught the most.
Gao said the rat catching was carried out to develop plague.
“We have found that once the Japanese troops occupied a region, they would send a bacteria army there,” Gao said. “Documents prove that biological warfare was the Japanese forces’ major invasion strategy.”
According to the archives, Japanese bacteria forces used biological warfare in more than 20 provinces and cities in China on 161 occasions, claiming more than 270,000 lives and causing more than 2.37 million people to be infected by plague.
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