The horrors of Unit 731 revisited
A Plague Upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program
by Daniel Barenblatt
Reviewed by Victor Fic
What do people - even well-informed ones - think when they hear the term "Unit
731"? Some may assert that it is the name of an apartment block. Or they might
respond that it is a swank disco in
Manhattan, the successor to the famed Studio 54. "Which stars dance there these
days?" they might grinningly query.
The grins will surely turn to grimaces when such people learn that "Unit 731"
is convenient shorthand for one of history's most diabolical and repulsive
policies, namely imperial Japan's secretive, concerted attempt to develop
biowar weapons using human guinea pigs in experiments.
American journalist Daniel Barenblatt, a Harvard graduate, says he decided to
write at length on this harrowing topic because, as he stated in an exclusive
interview to Asia Times Online recently in Beijing (with e-mail follow ups), he
thinks that something is fundamentally wrong with the world. This is especially
true with the decisions of destructive politicians. Unit 731 is a blood-soaked
example of what he detests.
For Barenblatt, who describes himself as "extremely sensitive", conducting this
path-breaking research was like striding forward with a thorn in his foot. As
he fathomed ugly truths, he was in "non-stop pain" emotionally.
His self-torturing efforts may have paid off, for Barenblatt's book appears to
break new information presented in dynamic prose that neither trivializes nor
hypes the topic. The work could become a leader in its field.
For instance, in 1994, American historian Sheldon Harris wrote the then
touchstone work on the subject, Factories of Death, with an update in
2001. While Barenblatt lionizes Harris, he has added "genocide" in his subtitle
to underscore the fact that Japan's perfidy killed a stunning 580,000 people, a
higher number than Harris cited. He derives the figure from the collective
opinions of experts and scholars attending a December 2002 conference in
Changde, Hunan province, China.
Barenblatt's portrait of Japanese doctor Shiro Ishii, the evil mastermind
behind the biowar program, is outstanding, in contrast to Harris's more
academic prose. Here, Ishii is described in colorful and gripping passages as
brilliant, charming, intimidating, embezzling, stone-hearted - and prone to
satisfying his huge sex drive with girls no older than 16. Barenblatt adroitly
summarizes that Ishii was "a brash and flamboyantly corrupt man who considered
himself a visionary" beyond scruples, driven to break new scientific ground and
to help Japan defeat its foes.
What did this awful man do? At "medical" facilities such as Unit 731 in
Pingfan, Manchuria, starting in 1936 - building upon earlier efforts - Ishii
and his cohorts carried out experiments that included injecting viruses or
pathogens for cholera, anthrax, bubonic plague and many other diseases into
living prisoners; the bacteria or germs would incubate in their bodies.
Then the victim would be strapped down to an operating table. Some screamed in
a non-human way when they realized their fate: Unit 731 "doctors" would cut
them open to observe the progress of the germs incubating within them or to
harvest organs that had enough germs to weaponize or spread on nearby
During one anthrax operation, the doctors noted the progress of the pathogen
organ by organ. The victim's suffering was unspeakable, with "his organs
swelling, bleeding and disintegrating". In a poignant summary of the horror,
Barenblatt says that the doctors in the biowar program turned life - biology -
Other experiments were not related to germ warfare per se, but transpired so
that the doctors could learn more about how humans live and die. These included
studies of dehydration, starvation, frostbite, air pressure - some inmates had
their eyes blown out - transfusions of animal blood to humans and others. Even
children and babies were destroyed this way. Other ghoulish experiments
included cutting off a prisoner's hands and sewing them back on to the opposite
arms to gauge what happened.
According to Barenblatt, the Japanese also carried out experiments on other
Japanese in the home islands akin to Nazi efforts on the mentally handicapped.
The victims were Japanese prisoners of the Soviets; when released, they
returned to Japan. It was the gravest shame to have the inferior Russians -
further stigmatized as communists - capture a Japanese. The ordeal ended in the
death of the Japanese subjects.
One of the most stirring passages comes when Barenblatt refines a tale that
Harris first related of a Chinese hero known only as Li. He organized an escape
from Unit 731's precursor human-experiment compound at Beiyinhe. Apparently, Li
knocked a guard over the head though his cell bars and snatched his keys. Then
he unfastened his leg irons and released other prisoners too.
Next Li led the prisoners to the compound wall, forming a human chain to try to
get the group of 30 men up and over. Guards killed Li before he could escape,
but a dozen men did get out, making Li a true champion. "I was able to pin it
down as 1934," says Barenblatt of the escape's date.
Barenblatt courts controversy when he implicitly condemns the US for agreeing
not to prosecute Unit 731 miscreants after the war in return for their
research. The United States' usual alibi is that the Americans feared that the
data would fall into Soviet hands. According to Barenblatt, the Russians had
long obtained information on the experiments, making the US "denial" strategy
However, American Cold Warriors might counter-argue that, because of ethical
constraints, it would be entirely impossible for them to replicate a single
immoral experiment to gather even an iota of data. As long as the Americans
feared that the Kremlin could obtain more biowarfare information from the
doctors - just when its nuclear inferiority made such data ever more valuable -
the West had to act maximally to protect itself. Perhaps it is safest to assert
that the bargain will remain a controversy.
Barenblatt also reveals that the US had a biowar program of its own at Camp
Detrick, Maryland, where it conducted research for offensive and defensive
reasons. "I have a great deal of new, declassified material from Camp Detrick
and the US military," he boasts. It remains to be seen whether experts in the
area buttress or scotch his ideas on the scope and aims of the US efforts.
Barenblatt will surely raise hackles for backing an old charge that China, the
USSR and North Korea first leveled against the US during the Korean War, namely
that it was employing biowar weapons based on data procured from the Japanese.
He even argues that it is "disturbingly plausible" that Washington brought
Ishii, living near Tokyo after the war, to Korea to assist its efforts.
Strangely, while Barenblatt cites a 1952 report that castigates the US, he does
not mention the recent work of Canadian scholars Steven Endicott and Edward
Hagerman. Their book, The United States and Biological Warfare, drew
upon newly opened Chinese archives to declare the United States guilty. The
hurdle for all the various accusers, however, is this: crack historians Kathryn
Weathersby and Milton Leitenberg have examined different documents and
concluded that the idea of US biowar attacks during the Korean War was a
Chinese propaganda hoax.
Those who strenuously argue that it was a profound miscarriage of justice that
Ishii the medical Moloch escaped justice might take heart, for Mother Nature
meted out punishment of sorts. In 1959, Ishii the pseudo-doctor - he had
murdered thousands of people through the deliberate use of various disease -
died of throat cancer.
A Plague Upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program
by Daniel Barenblatt. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. ISBN:
0060933879; preface plus 260 pages. Price US$14.95.
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