Japanese Biological Warfare Research Articles

Human experiment study of Unit 731, Japan: take the report "The Research Report on Epidemic Prevention of Army Medical School Ⅱ: Vol.1, No.36 " as an example

"The Research Report on Epidemic Prevention of Army Medical School Ⅱ: Vol.1, No.36" , the report named "various symptoms and serological responses of human body after receiving ultrasonic cholera vaccine" is one of the declassified materials of Japanese biological warfare. The author is M. D. Watanabe Be. Through detailed analysis of its contents, such as institute of report, test method, test results, and so forth, conclusion is reached that Unit 731 did conduct scientific research based on human-subject experiment to launch biological warfare on human beings. The report mentioned above is one of the most important evidence of crime that Japan conducts biological warfare which violates international convention and contempt bottom line of human basic morals and ethics.

The price of alliance: Anglo-American intelligence cooperation and Imperial Japan’s criminal biological warfare programme, 1944–1947

ABSTRACT From 1932 to 1945, Imperial Japan secretly developed the largest state biological warfare (BW) programme of its time, which was unique in its use of biological weapons in warfare and in its inhumane experiments on captive Chinese civilians. After Japan’s surrender, US military intelligence teams searched for any evidence of BW activities, whilst sharing all it could find with its close partner, the UK. Despite the UK offering little intelligence material in return, it secured detailed US intelligence reports on Japanese BW war crimes, and colluded with the United States to keep these Japanese war crimes a secret.

Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics

With four editors, eleven authors (from China, Japan, the United States, New Zealand, Europe, and Russia), eleven chapters, an annotated bibliography, and two appendices, Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities attempts and largely succeeds in covering a range of history, science, and ethical issues related to the human medical and biological warfare experiments of the notorious Unit 731 led by Dr. (and Lt. General in the Japanese Army) Ishii Shiro that resulted in the deaths of approximately three thousand Chinese. After an excellent introduction surveying many of the issues to be covered in more detail later in the book, the three chapters in Part 1 examine the history of Unit 731 (engaged in human experimentation with anthrax, cholera, plague, tuberculosis, etc.) and medicine-related war crimes trials. With the exception of a few Japanese who murdered American airmen and were subsequently caught and tried by the U.S. Navy, only the Soviet Union's Khabarovsk Trial tried and convicted any Japanese officers involved in medical atrocities of war crimes. These Japanese officers were caught during the Soviet Union's invasion of Manchuria in 1945, the location of Unit 731 and other Japanese biological warfare facilities. Meanwhile, the United States decided not to prosecute Dr. Ishii and his colleagues in their custody after a secret report—known as the Hill and Victor Report of December 1947—concluded: “Information had accrued with respect to human susceptibility to those diseases as indicated by specific infectious doses of bacteria. Such information could not be obtained in our own laboratories because of scruples attached to human experimentation” (30–31). The U.S. government actually paid Dr. Ishii and his colleagues money for his medical information gained by human experimentation and did not prosecute him at the Tokyo War Crimes trials.

Wolfgang U Eckart (ed.), Man, medicine, and the state: the human body as an object of government sponsored medical research in the 20th century, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, Band 2, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 2006, pp. 297, €43.00 (paperback 978-3-515-08794-0).

After Useful bodies (2003, edited by Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott and Lara Marks) and Twentieth century ethics of human subjects research (2004, edited by Volker Roelcke and Giovanni Maio), the present volume is the third collection of essays in a short time that explores the “dark side” of human experimentation in the past century through a range of case studies. As in Useful bodies, the focus is on the social and political contexts that facilitated unethical trials on human subjects, and as in the Roelcke/Maio volume, historical and ethical assessments are often coupled (cf. my reviews in Med. Hist. 2005, 49: 221–2; 2006, 50: 254–5). However, Eckart's collection provides more than just an extension of current knowledge about twentieth-century abuses in human research. Arising from a Heidelberg conference in 2003 as part of a larger project on the history of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) between 1920 and 1970, this book contains several contributions that investigate in detail the dynamics created by state funding for certain areas of medical research, especially during the period of National Socialism. This applies in particular to Volker Roelcke's paper on the psychiatric genetics of Ernst Rudin, Karl Heinz Roth's essay on German aviation medicine, Marion Hulverscheidt's account of malaria research, Alexander Neumann's discussion of nutritional physiology and Gabriele Moser's article on Kurt Blome and cancer research in the Third Reich. Moreover, the DFG's role in redefining and reconstituting anthropology and human genetics as academic disciplines in Germany after the Second World War is analysed by Anne Cottebrune. Revealing as these discussions are regarding the funding drive behind those research fields and its ethical implications, they would have been more useful to a broader readership if the volume had included a background contribution on the institutional development of the German Research Foundation in the relevant period. Also, the English of some of the papers by German authors would have benefited from more careful copy-editing. Other papers add details of the medical atrocities committed in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, for example of the experiments in Natzweiler with chemical warfare agents and of the notorious hypothermia experiments in Dachau. This is complemented by a contribution on Japanese biological warfare research on Chinese prisoners in Harbin during the Second World War. Till Barnighausen, author of this latter paper, examines for the Japanese experiments the ethical question that has been discussed in the late 1980s and early 1990s with regard to the Nazi concentration camp trials: whether the immorally obtained data from those experiments may ever be used for scientific purposes. The international dimension of human subject research and abuse in the twentieth century is further highlighted by contributions on vaccination experiments on Sengalese infantrymen in the French army between 1916 and 1933 (Christian Bonah), on metamphetamine tests in the German Wehrmacht (Peter Steinkamp), on the Tuskegee syphilis study (James H Jones), and on American cold war research on flash burn in preparation for a feared nuclear attack (Susan Lederer). The general conclusion that arises from all these papers is obvious: war, racism, and scientific opportunism were the key factors that led, often in combination, to exploitation of human subjects and disregard for consent (even where and when official guidelines on information and consent requirements had been issued, as in the German Reich in 1931). Beyond this insight, what can the future historiography of human experimentation contribute? Paul Weindling's essay, focusing on the victims of Nazi medical experimentation, rightly complains that most of the historical research in this area has been perpetrator-oriented so far. His call for more attention to be paid to the fate of human subjects mirrors, perhaps unwittingly, recent trends in philosophy towards a patient- or victim-centred conception of ethics. Finally, David Rothman, reflecting on the debate of the 1990s about the standards of human trials on AIDS treatment and prevention in developing countries, makes clear that the achievements of ethical codes, such as those of Nuremberg and Helsinki, are under threat in contexts of socio-economic hardship. Historical analysis, one may conclude, may well warn against an ethical relativism that is prepared to compromise on standards of human subject research in situations of poverty and medical need. Eckart's volume has made a significant contribution to this historical enterprise.

The history of biological warfare: Human experimentation, modern nightmares and lone madmen in the twentieth century

The history of biological warfare: Human experimentation, modern nightmares and lone madmen in the twentieth century

War responsibility and Japanese civilian victims of Japanese biological warfare in China

This article focuses on the narrative of Aizawa Yoshi, a former teacher at the Harbin Higher School for Japanese Women during the Manchukuo era (1932-45). In 1940, Yoshi lost twenty-two of her students and colleagues to a typhoid epidemic that spread throughout the city of Harbin. Today, she believes that they were the victims of Japanese biological warfare. However, as a Japanese civilian, she finds it extremely difficult to express her belief in public. How can we hear the voices of civilians victimized at the hands of their own military? This article attempts to answer this question by untangling the complex relationship between Yoshi's narrative and the larger discourse of war responsibility in contemporary Japan.

The Japanese Analogue

Book reviewed in this article: Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–1945 and the American Cover-Up. By Sheldon H. Harris.

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews of Books

Reviews of Books

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up

ABSTRACT The Nazi medical crimes against humanity are familiar. Much less familiar are the medical crimes inflicted by Japanese army physicians in Manchuria during much of this same period—crimes that match, both in scope and brutality, anything performed by the Nazi physicians in Europe.In Factories of Death, Sheldon Harris, emeritus professor of history at California State University at Northridge, provides the most comprehensive account to date of the Japanese medical experiments, an impressive piece of scholarship that tells how doctors abused human bodies to test biowarfare agents and how US government authorities after the war refused to prosecute, choosing instead to exploit the information gathered for the American biowarfare effort at Fort Detrick.The story begins in 1932, when the Japanese army gave 200 000 yen and a command of 300 men to Ishii Shiro, a young professor of immunology with the rank of major in the medical corps, to

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover Up (review)

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover Up. By Sheldon H. Harris. London: Routledge, 1994. Pp. xii + 296. $18.95.

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up. Sheldon H. Harris

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsFactories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up. Sheldon H. Harris Susan E. LedererSusan E. Lederer Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 86, Number 4Dec., 1995 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/357391 Views: 6Total views on this site Copyright 1995 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover Up Sheldon H. Harris

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover Up Sheldon H. Harris

Book Reviews

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Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up.

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up.

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover Up. By Sheldon H. Harris. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. xii, 297 pp. $25.00

Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover Up. By Sheldon H. Harris. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. xii, 297 pp. $25.00

Factories of death: Japanese biological warfare, 1932-45 and the American cover-up

Preface Acknowledgements The Pacific Theatre, World War II Introduction Part I. Japanese Factories of Death 1. Manchuria 2. Ishii Shiro 3. The Beiyinhe Bacteria Factory 4. Phase 1. Building Ping Fan 5. Phase 2. Hell in Ping Fan 6. The Secret of Secrets: Human Experiments 7. The Death Factory in Changchun 8. The Death Factory in Nanking 9. Experiments on prisoners of War 10. Who Knew? Part II. American Cover-Up The American Biological Warfare Program 12. Discovery of the Secret of Secrets 13. Investigations 14. Scientists and the Cover-Up 15. The Military and the Cover-Up 16. Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Index

Japanese biological warfare research on humans: a case study of microbiology and ethics.

Japanese biological warfare research on humans: a case study of microbiology and ethics.

Japanese biological warfare experiments and other atrocities in Manchuria, 1932?1945, and the subsequent United States cover up: a preliminary assessment

Japanese microbiologists and other scientists, as early as the 1930s, used humans for test purposes in their quest for a viable offensive biological warfare system. Thousands of men, women and children were tested with a host of pathogens to determine the appropriate dose required to kill. Those who survived the initial tests were subjected to other experiments. No one left the test sites alive. They were either killed in the experiments, or they were “sacrificed” when they outlived their usefulness. Field tests in China unleashed plagues that killed tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands. American intelligence in early 1942 discovered that Japan had a large biological warfare enterprise in Manchuria and China. By the end of the war, Intelligence was in possession of a comprehensive outline of Japanese operations. American scientists at Fort Detrick, Md., home of the American biological warfare program, learned of the Japanese research. They sent emissaries to Japan to negotiate with those scientists who escaped from Manchuria and returned home. After two years of negotiations, a deal was made. The Japanese would turn over to the Americans their research data. The Americans would not prosecute the scientists as war criminals. Not one Japanese scientist under American jurisdiction was ever prosecuted, but, instead, was permitted to live a normal life in post-war Japan.