STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Japan’s War Crimes Still Torture China

Twenty years ago when I uncovered the atrocities of Japan’s infamous biological warfare Unit 731  and how it developed biological weapons consisting of anthrax, bubonic plague, vivisection, weapons which were tested on live innocent Chinese civilians, Koreans, Russians and American, British, and Dutch Soldiers, I used the information to build the basic story of one of my first novels—Blood Heat. To my surprise, that book was banned by Japan for the past two decades and still remains on the list of  forbidden readings by the Japanese Government. But now that I witness an incident that is occurring between China and Japan over three islands called the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands off the coast of China, I am compelled to  write my first blog about the real underlying causes of the Chinese /Japanese crises that has nothing to do with geography. 

It is a sad, tragic tale of a human atrocity committed by the Japanese Unit 731 under the direct supervision of General Shiro Ishii , chief medical officer of the Japanese Army and the protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki. Unit 731 killed over 400,000 innocent Chinese children, women, men –primarily civilians—by inoculating these people all over China with diseases disguised as vaccinations. These diseases, as I describe in detail in Blood Heat, included the Bubonic Plague, Tularemia, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, all in the name of medical experimentation. Unit731 as well as Unit 1644 and Unit 100 were expanded into an official division of the Kwantung Army,  officially known as Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department under the direct authorization of the self-described biologist Emperor Hirohito whom history described as ‘interested in butterflies’. 

In 1936,  the nefarious Emperor Hirohito  personally  decreed the creation of the aforementioned unit to be part of the Kwantung Army located in all parts of China including: Pingfang, Harbin, Ningbo, Chande, and other cities in Hunan Province as  well as the Fujan Province.  

 I found out through documents that the following Japanese officials were implicated in this buried massive atrocity: Directly implicated in these war crimes  were Emperor Hirohito, Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii, Lieutenant Colonel Ryocihi Naito, founder of the pharmaceutical company Green Cross, Yoshio Shinozuka, and Yasuj Kaneko as well as 1000 other Japanese Medical Officers who were subsequently transferred into major Japanese pharmaceutical companies like Essai. 

But to my surprise, not one of the was  convicted like the Nazis had been in a Nuremberg Court Trial for crimes committed against humanity. Why? 

I could not find the answer until  I discovered the fact that the truth was purposefully hidden by the US and Allied Countries for reasons that you will soon find out.  

Some declassified documents and Russian war trial transcripts revealed that General Douglas Mac Arthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, had transmitted through what it is known as ‘back channel’ intelligence communication that  ‘additional data’ from Ishii could be useful for US Army efforts at developing biological warfare. And so, as I portrayed in my novel , Blood Heat, where most of the action takes place, Fort Detrick located presently in  Frederick , Maryland was founded for the study of ‘defensive biological weapons’ of war.  In turn, Ishii was brought to America and he and the 1000 war criminals , including Emperor Hirohito, received complete immunity by the illegal actions of the General Douglas MacArthur and the US Military and the evidence of “War Crimes’ was never employed to indict any war criminals as the Nazis had been.  The action of granting complete immunity to everyone involved in ‘biological warfare, vivisection, torture, and other experiments’  was completed by 1948. The medical professionals of Unit 731  went on to become prominent Japanese politicians, academics,  businessmen  medical university professors, and founders and leaders of Japanese pharmaceutical companies. 

So the immoral conclusion of an amoral act has gone back to haunt the Japanese, the Chinese, as well as  the woefully incompetent  American civilian and military leaders trying to mediate a conflict to which  they were the collusive descendants and partners, having hidden the truth from their own people and the world, for over half a century. 

Until the day that the Emperor of Japan will arouse his courage and sense of morality to personally visit China and  all the other countries whose prisoners were tortured by Unit 731 [including South East Asian countries,  America, Britain, Canada, Holland, Australia, Russia, etc] and personally as a representative of the people of Japan and his inglorious ancestor, Emperor Hirohito, and ask for forgiveness and apologize to those victims and the families of those victims, will there be no peace for Japan. It will be doomed forever as a country of infamy. And all of our misplaced good intentions and past hypocrisies will compound the tragedy of the past into a unyielding conundrum for the future, never to be resolved by warships, diplomats, or ‘spheres of influence’. The truth must be revealed on all sides and then will there be a chance for peace in that region of the world. There is no other alternative. For continued silence will break into the cacophony of riots and civil disobedience. Only truth can relieve the forbearance of chaos.