by Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J. ; Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J.
In October 1941, Prime Minister Tojo personally presented an award to Ishii for his contributions to developing biological weapons and had his picture taken with him which appeared in major newspapers. Early in November 1941, Unit 731
The Japanese WMD Program
81
dispatched an airplane to spread bubonic plague at Changte, Hunan, an event verified by Dr. E. J. Bannon of the American Presbyterian Church hospital at Changte. Chinese authorities had long known that Japan had used biological warfare against them and had repeatedly appealed to the international community for help to no avail. In 1942, Ishii began field tests of germ warfare agents and used various methods of dispersion (i.e. firearms, bombs etc.) first on Chinese prisoners of war and then operationally on battlefields and against civilians in Chinese cities.
Some historians estimate that tens of thousands died as a result of exposure to these bioweapons which included bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other biological agents. His unit also conducted physiological experiments on human subjects, including vivisections, forced abortions, and simulated strokes and heart attacks. Decades later, in 1986, surviving American P.O.W.s testified before a U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee that captured Americans, along with several hundred British and Australian soldiers, were met in Mukden on November 11, 1942 by a team of Japanese medical personnel wearing masks. They sprayed liquid into the prisoners’ faces and gave them injections. One prisoner reported that after release from confinement he experienced episodes of unexplained high fever until a blood culture confirmed a diagnosis of the typhoid. Other cruel experiments included inserting glass rods to their rectum.
At Unit 731 alone, the central experimentation center, at least 3,000 people were tortured and murdered during such experiments. Similar experiments were carried out at the four regional branches of Unit 731, at the Manchuria Medical School and in military hospitals. All of these sites were under the direction of the highly decorated Lt. General Shiro Ishii. Shamelessly, Ishii produced scientific papers describing the results of his criminal experiments on prisoners. Circulated throughout the Japanese medical and scientific community, the experimental “logs” were referred to as
“monkeys” in the publications. Despite this concealing strategy, it was well known that humans were the real experimental subjects. In all, Ishii personally patented over 200 discoveries, benefiting financially from his “medical” research. From 1942
to 1945, Ishii was Chief of the Medical Section of the Japanese First Army. In 1945, in the final days of the Pacific War and in the face of imminent defeat, Japanese troops blew up the headquarters of Unit 731 in order to destroy evidence of the research done there. As part of the cover-up, Ishii ordered 150 remaining subjects killed. In all, between 3,000 and 10,000 “maruta” were murdered.
Before making their escape immediately prior to the Japanese surrender, Unit 731
set free many thousands of infected rats that caused widespread plague in 22 counties of the Heilungchiang and Kirin provinces that took more than 20,000 Chinese lives.
Ishii faked his own death in late 1945 and went into hiding. When American occupation forces learned that Ishii was still alive, they ordered the Japanese to hand him over, which they did. Investigators from Camp Detrick, the center for the study of biological weapons in the United States, questioned Ishii thoroughly. At first, Ishii denied performing any human testing but, aware that he may be handled over to the Soviets who were also very interested in “talking” to him, he relented. Ishii agreed to reveal all the details of his bio-warfare weapons program in exchange for immunity from war crimes prosecution. Anxious to learn the results of experiments that they 82
9 Made in Japan: Unethical Experiments
themselves had been unable to perform, the American military accepted Ishii’s offer. Ishii and his team were granted immunity from prosecution before the Tokyo Tribunal of War Crimes by General McArthur in 1946. This agreement was kept secret from the American people until 1993, when U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, under pressure, promised to declassify the records of the WWII experiments.
The Japanese officers and scientists who worked in the Manchurian labs during World War II re-entered civilian life unscathed. The military officers retired on respectable pensions and the civilian scientists continued their work with large chemical and medical companies in Japan. Some of them became presidents and professors at leading universities, others became prominent industrial leaders. Ishii was never prosecuted for any war crimes and the Army allowed him to keep his lieutenant general pension. Although publicly shunned because of his infamous bio-warfare reputation he continued to be visited at his home by many of his military and scientists friends. He died of throat cancer at the age of 67 in Tokyo.
It is interesting to note that in 1985 a former U.S. Army officer, Dr. Murray Sanders, claimed he persuaded General MacArthur to approve the immunity deal with members of Unit 731. Sanders was a microbiologist who served as an advisor on biowarfare at Fort Detrick and had taught at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University before joining the Army. ‘I feel terrible about it,’’
the 75-year-old Sanders told reporters shortly before his death. He said he did not know at the time that the Japanese had experimented on humans. ‘‘If we had known they used human guinea pigs, I doubt we would have given immunity,’’ he said. The released medical documentation from that period, however, seems to clearly indicate that the American authorities were aware of the extent of medical experimentation on humans.
The State War Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC), responsible for coor-dinating and overseeing the war crimes trials in Japan, supported the intelligence community’s stance in this matter and stated, “Data already obtained from Ishii and his colleagues has proven to be of great value in confirming, supplementing and complementing several phases of U.S. research in BW, and may suggest new fields for future research. This Japanese information is the only known source of data from scientifically controlled experiments showing direct effect of BW
[bacteriological warfare] agents on man. In the past, it has been necessary to evaluate effects of BW agents on man from data through animal experimentation.
Such evaluation is inconclusive and far less complete than results obtained from certain types of human experimentation…It is felt that the use of this information as a basis for war crimes evidence would be a grave detriment to Japanese cooperation with the United States occupation forces in Japan. For all practical purposes, an agreement with Ishii and his associates that information given by them on the Japanese BW program will be retained in intelligence channels is equivalent to an agreement that this Government will not prosecute any of those involved in BW activities in which war crimes were committed. Such an understanding would be of great value to the security of the American people because of the information which Ishii and his associates have already furnished and will continue to furnish.” The rather icy conclusion stated “The value to the U.S. of Basic Japanese Medical Experiments
83
Japanese BW data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from `war crimes’ prosecution. In the interests of national security, it would not be advisable to make this information available to other nations, as would be the case in the event of àwar crimes’ trial of Japanese BW experts. The BW information obtained from Japanese sources should be retained in intelligence channels and should not be employed as `war crimes’ evidence.” One must wonder how many of these people eventually worked for the CIA.
Basic Japanese Medical Experiments
Mahasira Morioka, a Japanese ethicist and professor of philosophy, categorized the criminal experiments performed by Japanese doctors into four major groups: 1. Training inexperienced military surgeons on Chinese prisoners
2. Studies of chemical and biological weapons such as plague, typhoid and cholera, on Chinese villages and towns
3. Studies of new treatments on
deliberately injured subjects, and 4. Studies on the tolerance of the human body to extremely adverse environmental conditions
Japanese Army doctors in training performed surgery without anesthesia on living and conscious prisoners. These procedures were justified by the need to mimic more accurately battle conditions where it may not be possible to anesthetize patients prior to emergency surgery. Insensitive to the pain and cries of their victims, the trainees performed various medical procedures including tracheostomies, internal organ surgery, amputations of healthy arms and legs, re-attachments of amputated limbs to the opposite sides of the body (it is not clear how this would be a wartime advantage), and repair of deliberately inflicted gunshot wounds. At the end of the procedures, the experimental subjects were all killed.
Nicholas D. Kristoff, a New York Times newspaperman who penned an article entitled “Unmasking horror – A special report: Japan confronting gruesome war atrocity” soberly described his interview with a Japanese medical professional that had assisted in the horrific medical experimentation. The interviewee is described as “ a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife, and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.” The article continued: “The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn’t struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down,” recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese Army unit in China in World War II.
“But when I picked up the scalpel, that’s when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. Then finally, he stopped. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.” At the end of the story, the old 84
9 Made in Japan: Unethical Experiments
man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection. The Chinese prisoner had been deliberately infected with the plague as part of a research project and the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man’s inside. No anesthetic was used, he said, out of concern that it might have an effect on the results. The activities of Dr. Ishii and Unit 731 have been described in detail. Other prisoners were exposed to chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas, hydrogen cyanide, acetone cyanide and potassium cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide was given extensive study because of its potential for ease of delivery into water supply. In some instances, live and conscious experimental victims were surgically opened to observe the changes caused by the chemicals.
Many prisoners were killed during clinical trials of experimental treatments including poorly developed vaccines. Other cruel experiments seemed more designed to satisfy curiosity than to advance science. One of the arguably more practical experiments involved transfusion of horse blood to prisoners to determine its suitability for administration to wounded Japanese soldiers when human blood was in short supply. Although it may have seemed a good idea at the time, we now know that the immune response to this foreign blood would result in rapid, painful death.
The ubiquitous Unit 731 performed air decompression experiments similar to those used by the Nazi concentration camp doctors. In these studies, experimental subjects were killed by lowering the air pressure in the sealed chambers causing their blood to boil. Some Japanese doctors studied the effects of injecting large syringes full of air into their patient’s bloodstream in order to induce air emboli, a condition encountered during rapid decompression. Dr. Hisato Yoshimura studied the effects of intense cold and attempted to treat intentionally inflicted severe frostbite of the arms and legs by warming them with hot water. Observations of the physiological changes occurring in prisoners exposed to freezing outdoor tempe ratures were also documented. Additional unethical experiments involved choking people who had been suspended upside down, injecting horse urine into the kidneys, starvation and water deprivation, electrocuting subjects to determine the maximal strength of an electrical current that humans can stand, bleeding prisoners to determine the amount of blood loss likely to kill, placing prisoners in centrifuges and spinning them to death, placing glass rods in their rectums, exposing subjects to lethal doses of radiation, and injecting sea water into the blood. It wasn’t always good science
– it was always lethal.
Human Target Practice and Other Atrocities
While physicians and scientists conducted many experiments independently, others were undertaken by the military with assistance from doctors. In some studies, restrained prisoners were used to test the range and destructive power of grenades positioned at various distances from their bodies. In other cases, flame throwers were discharged at living humans to document the extent of injury and survival time. Other volunteers were tied to stakes and used as targets for chemical Why Did They Do It?
85
and biological weapons as well as explosives. Autopsies were performed on prisoners who had been used as target practice to determine the extent of injuries imparted by a variety of weapons and ammunition at various ranges of fire.
Why Did They Do It?
Why did Japanese doctors become murderers during World War II? Was it possible to stop the experimental massacre, limit it or avoid participation? It would seem that in wartime, funding and equipment for research at the major universities was limited. Cooperation with the likes of Dr. Ishii could ensure an institution of a stream of experimental data and the supplies they would need to conduct their own research. In return for the assistance of the military, the professors promised to send Ishii their best disciples to staff his death factories. In addition to this mutually advantageous professional relationship, several other factors likely encouraged the participation of Japanese physicians in unethical experimentation: 1. There was a widely held belief that in wartime everything was justified for the purpose of winning the war. Japanese people believed anything was excusable if it was done for the sake of the country and “Tenno Heika” (the emperor) 2. A deep and widespread prejudice was harbored by the Japanese against the Chinese, and foreigners in general
3. The Japanese had a utilitarian approach of not wanting “to waste” suspected spies or other enemies who would be executed anyway. They would make ideal
“guinea pigs”
4. The philosophy of the leadership and sense of mission inculcated in the participants led to a collective loss of compassion and humanity toward the victims 5. Traditional Confucianism includes a high respect for authority including bound-less submission to the Emperor. If the government said this behavior was acceptable, an obedient citizen was bound to follow suit
6. The belief that honor in serving the Emperor was much more important than a person’s life and their personal morality, and
7. Human subjects could be treated worse than animals with no penalties. The participation of these unwilling volunteers allowed for studies which could rapidly advance the practice of Japanese medicine. For the aggressive, creative thinker, human experimentation could facilitate a fast track within academia.
There were other factors in play during World War II in Japan. Japanese citizens were taught that cooperation with the military should not be questioned.
Conscientious objectors or critics of the government or its policies were labeled as
“Hikokumin” (traitors). Therefore, virtually all the physicians recruited during the War accepted their fate without resistance, even when they knew they would be assigned to do unethical acts or outright atrocities. The hierarchical structure of Japanese medical schools also played a role in assuring the Japanese military of a steady stream of talented, young scientists. Traditionally, in Japanese medical schools 86
9 Made in Japan: Unethical Experiments
the head professors exercised supreme power over their staff. Usually, there was only one professor in each “Ikyoku” (dep
artment). Even after earning a doctoral degree, lower-level researchers devoted themselves totally to the Ikyoku and to its head professor hoping to be nominated as a successor in the future. Rejection of a professor’s order, including an assignment to a remote medical facility, would unfailingly result in excommunication from the Ikyoku, in effect compelling the
“Hikokumin” to abandon his academic career. Another draw to Ishii’s factories was the luxury of his well-funded facilities. For example, the annual budget of Unit 731
was 10 million yen (about 9 billion yen in modern currency). Half of this budget was for research, and the other half was for labor costs for about 3,000 employees.
The salaries were quite high compared to the academic institutions in this war-torn country and the living conditions were very good for the scientists and physicians performing the experiments.
After the War, the Japanese medical and scientific community shied away from human experimentation of any type for several years. Over the past several decades, international ethical standards applying to human experimentation have been strictly followed (probably more closely than in the United States). Professor Thakashi Tsuchiya from the Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences at Osaka City University stated that in mainstream Japan “Jintai-Jikken” (human experimentation) is often regarded as a very deviant practice performed only by evil doctors.