A Japanese expert has found a series of documents about the
Japanese aggressive army's Unit 731 that carried out the brutal
germ warfare in China during World War II, causing deaths of many
Chinese people, the Tokyo News reported Wednesday.
The two declassified documents were found in the US National
Archives by Keiichi Tsuneishi, professor at Kanagawa University and
an expert on biological and chemical weapons, the newspaper
said.
One of the top-secret documents was a report on bacteriological
warfare for the chief of staff of the Far Eastern Commission, dated
July 17, 1947, compiled by Brig. Gen. Charles Willoughby, head of
the "G2" intelligence unit of the US-led postwar occupation forces
in Japan.
The other was a letter dated July 22 the same year that
Willoughby sent to Maj. Gen. S. J. Chamberlin, director of
intelligence of the US War Department General Staff, to illustrate
the need for continued use of confidential funds without
restrictions to obtain such intelligence.
In the documents, Willoughby described the achievements of his
unit's investigations, saying the "information procured will have
the greatest value in future development of the US BW
(bacteriological warfare) program."
Citing a US War Department specialist in charge of the
investigation, Willoughby wrote in the report that "data on human
experiments may prove invaluable" and said the information was
"only obtainable through the skillful, psychological approach to
top-flight pathologists" involved in Unit 731 experiments.
According to Tokyo News, besides the two documents from
US archives, Tsuneishi also found a secret book in Japan's national
congressional library -- Reports of Epidemic Prevention
Development for Medical Academy of Land Forces.
The reports in the book reveal that Unit 731, established by the
Imperial Japanese Army in 1936, developed many biological weapons
using plague, anthrax and other bacteria, and conducted related
human experiments during the war, the daily said.
Headquartered in the suburbs of Harbin in northeast China's
Heilongjiang Province, the unit conducted germ warfare in various
places in China and used Chinese as subjects in human experiments,
resulting in deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of
people.
The documents also indicated that the biological weapons of Unit
731 originally targeted the Soviet Union, the newspaper noted.
(Xinhua News Agency August 18, 2005)