CDR: WWII biowarfare

[anonymous at openpgp.net]

Soldier Testifies on Germ Warfare 

                                                   By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer


                                                        TOKYO--Yoshio Shinozuka is still haunted by the ghoulish experiments he
                                                   helped carry out on captured Chinese civilians and soldiers as part of Japans
                                                   top-secret biological warfare program during World War II. 
                                                        The Japanese military performed vivisections without anesthesia in northern
                                                   China, casually referring to the people as "logs," the veteran recalled Wednesday
                                                   in Tokyo District Court. 
                                                        "I remember using the word as we compared how many logs we cut that day
                                                   with other unit members," he said. 
                                                        Though Shinozuka, 77, has spoken out before about his role, his testimony
                                                   makes him the first member of the notorious Unit 731 to detail Japans biological
                                                   warfare activities for the legal record. He was called as a witness for nearly 180
                                                   Chinese suing the Japanese government for compensation and an apology for the
                                                   deaths of family members allegedly killed by the unit. 
                                                        Shinozuka testified about participating in the mass production of cholera,
                                                   dysentery and typhoid germs at the units base in the city of Harbin in the early
                                                   1940s. He said he was often told to help out departments that needed to boost
                                                   germ production for upcoming deployments, including the 1939 Nomonhan clash
                                                   with Soviet troops near Mongolia and several other germ bombing attacks in
                                                   southern China in the 1940s. 
                                                        He said that just before the Nomonhan attack, he was responsible for
                                                   transferring dysentery and typhoid germs from test tubes to bigger jars, packing
                                                   them into barrels, sealing them and taking them to a night train for the attack.
                                                   Several unit members died after contracting typhoid. 
                                                        Shinozuka said he is still bothered by the vivisections, or surgical experiments
                                                   on living people. 
                                                        "I committed all these war crimes because I was ordered to do so," he said.
                                                   "The government should try to learn about the victims. I really think its time for
                                                   Japan to face this issue with humanitarian consideration." 
                                                        Shinozuka said the unit members were prohibited from disclosing to outsiders
                                                   what happened inside the unit. Notes and other written instructions were all
                                                   collected afterward. 
                                                        Former Unit 731 pilot Shoichi Matsumoto told the court later Wednesday that
                                                   he spread plague-infected fleas from an airplane over Hangzhou in 1940 and
                                                   Nanjing in 1941. 
                                                        Matsumoto told the court he carried healthy rats from a Tokyo suburb to
                                                   Harbin to get them infected with bubonic plague. He also flew to Singapore and
                                                   Java with the rats. 
                                                        The two veterans were testifying in the case, filed in 1997, that say at least
                                                   2,100 people were killed in the experiments. The trial is expected to continue for
                                                   several more months. 
                                                        Although some Japanese veterans such as Shinozuka have come forward in
                                                   recent years and confessed to war crimes, the Japanese government has resisted
                                                   making official apologies to China. 
                                                        Several years ago -after decades of denial -Tokyo finally acknowledged that
                                                   Unit 731 existed. But it has refused to confirm the extent of its activities. 
                                                        Japanese textbooks too often present only brief, perfunctory accounts of the
                                                   nations aggression in East Asia from the mid-1930s until the wars end in 1945. 
                                                        Shinozuka said one of his reasons for testifying was disappointment with the
                                                   governments efforts to come clean about the war, and said he was deeply sorry
                                                   for his actions. 
                                                        "What I have done was something that nobody should have done as a human
                                                   being," he said. "I cannot escape that responsibility." 

http://www.latimes.com/wires/20001115/tCB00V0223.html