A secret Japanese army unit, dubbed Unit 371, sprayed Chinese villages with bacteria, spiked their wells with disease and laced their food with germs, perhaps killing up to a million Chinese in World War II, a new book says.
"There could be over 700,000 or even 1 million" lives lost to Japan's biowarfare program, Daniel Barenblatt, author of A Plague Upon Humanity, said in a recent interview.
The book, published in the US by HarperCollins, tracks Japan's development of biological weaponry from 1931 to 1945 and its use of these weapons -- bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera -- on civilians, many of them in China.
The biowarfare weapons were sprayed by airplanes on villages, or distributed in food, or passed through bacteria put in water wells. Some early weaponry involved dropping ceramic-shelled bombs filled with live flies and jellied cholera emulsion.
"Japan's biological warfare program in China was, as far as we know, the first use of scientifically organized germ warfare in history," said Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking, the acclaimed book about the brutal Japanese occupation of the eastern Chinese city in the late 1930s.
Barenblatt says the number of lives lost to biological warfare has been difficult to determine because the victims and their families, many of whom lived in remote villages in China, did not know why they became ill after being exposed to biological weapons unleashed by the Japanese army.
"These are poor people who are for the first time telling their stories. They, at first, thought it [their illnesses] was an act of nature. Many had no idea what was happening to them," said Barenblatt.
In addition to those who died as a direct result of diseases unleashed by Japanese scientists and the military, others suffered physical disfiguration and prolonged health problems.
Many of the biological weapons were used in an attempt to sap China's resistance to the Japanese invasion during the 1930s and 1940s, according to Barenblatt's book, which tells of World War II prisoners of war from Britain, the US and Australia who were also test subjects.
According to Barenblatt, the plague bacteria released then still lingers on in some animal populations today. "As far as I know there have not been major plague outbreaks in China in recent years. [But] It is still there ... rodents still test positive for antibodies to the bubonic plague," he said.
One of the largest promoters of Japan's biological warfare efforts was Shiro Ishii, a physician with a doctorate in microbiology from Kyoto Imperial University, according to Barenblatt.
An inventor of a water-purification system, Ishii eventually involved many Japanese universities in biowar research and much of this research was spearheaded by a Japanese army biowar unit known as Unit 731.
Initially based in Harbin, in China, Unit 731's main research center was moved southeast to a more remote locale in Beiyinhe, where the village of 300 homes and shops was burned down to make room for the confidential complex.
The biowar effort -- founded with explicit approval by Japan's Emperor Hirohito, himself a trained biologist -- involved testing on civilians. The elaborate prison facilities allowed scientists to closely track the progression of disease on humans, and live dissections allowed Japanese doctors to study how certain organs were affected.
Barenblatt's book also says the Japanese military considered targeting the US with bioweapons at the end of World War II. It tells of a plan in which a plane from a specially equipped submarine would spray San Diego and saboteurs were to land secretly to poison California's water supply.
Although the US was considered a target and US servicemen were tested on by Japanese scientists, many involved with development of the biowar program were not later convicted of war crimes.
Barenblatt notes that former US General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of post-war Japan, said the research uncovered by the Japanese scientists could be useful.
"Request for exemption [from prosecution] of Unit 731 members. Information about vivisection useful," MacArthur explained in a 1947 radio message to a combined military-State Department group in Washington that supervised Japan occupation policy.
"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 an e-mail exchange.
Said Barenblatt, "What the US did in making the deal with top doctors is unconscionable. As far as we know, no one in the US government raised any more objection to it."
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
William Liu (劉家君) moved to Kaohsiung from Nantou to live with his boyfriend Reg Hong (洪嘉佑). “In Nantou, people do not support gay rights at all and never even talk about it. Living here made me optimistic and made me realize how much I can express myself,” Liu tells the Taipei Times. Hong and his friend Cony Hsieh (謝昀希) are both active in several LGBT groups and organizations in Kaohsiung. They were among the people behind the city’s 16th Pride event in November last year, which gathered over 35,000 people. Along with others, they clearly see Kaohsiung as the nexus of LGBT rights.
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) famous return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been overshadowed by the astonishing news of the latest arrests of senior military figures for “corruption,” but it is an interesting piece of news in its own right, though more for what Ai does not understand than for what he does. Ai simply lacks the reflective understanding that the loneliness and isolation he imagines are “European” are simply the joys of life as an expat. That goes both ways: “I love Taiwan!” say many still wet-behind-the-ears expats here, not realizing what they love is being an
RSS