Tokyo TV Tells How WWII Germ War Unit Escaped Prosecution

Japan’s public television network has unearthed new evidence from Russian and U.S. archives on how key members of the army’s secret germ warfare unit escaped prosecution as war criminals after World War II.

The documents detailed experiments carried out by the Japanese on prisoners of war in Asia, such as deliberately infecting a prisoner with anthrax and conducting surgical examination of a prisoner’s organs while he was still alive, NHK television said.

The evidence showed that the U.S. military obtained data from the tests in exchange for shielding the perpetrators from prosecution at the 1946-48 Tokyo war crimes tribunal, the program said.

NHK aired the documentary evidence--and testimony by scores of Russians, Americans, Japanese and Chinese--on successive evenings this week in its series “Modern History Scoop.”

The Japanese public, shielded by successive modern governments from unpalatable details about the Japanese army’s World War II activities in occupied Asia, did not learn of the existence of the germ warfare unit until 1981.

It was then that author Seiichi Morimura, in his book “Devil’s Gluttony,” revealed details of the suffering inflicted on prisoners of war at a secret camp outside Harbin, in northeast China.

Later, historians concluded that Unit 731, as it was called, conducted research for biological and chemical warfare between the mid-1930s and 1945, killing about 3,000 Russian, Chinese and Korean prisoners in experiments.

“The Japanese government has never formally investigated the unit nor apologized publicly for the crime,” said historian Keichi Tsuneishi, an expert on the affair. “Their argument was based on lack of evidence, but that is gone with the NHK program.”

It had been widely known that Gen. Shiro Ishii, 731’s commander and a top specialist in germ warfare, and other key members of the unit acquired immunity from prosecution by Allied occupation authorities. What was unclear was who they traded with and what they handed over in exchange.

The NHK programs showed color diagrams and detailed descriptions of about 400 experiments, such as one in which a prisoner was infected by a strain of anthrax bacteria that was then tracked as it spread throughout his body.

Diagrams showed the results of “autopsy” examinations of various organs, conducted while prisoners were still alive.

The documents, found at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, were English-language translations of Unit 731’s original reports.

The originals have never been located. It was the first time such diagrams had been made public.

NHK obtained records and testimony on how U.S. intelligence officers contacted Unit 731 commanders, including Gen. Ishii, after the war and gave them immunity in exchange for data on the experiments.

The network showed official records of the only Soviet military tribunal to hear evidence on the unit. Sitting in Khabarovsk in Siberia in 1949, it convicted 12 low-ranking officers, but its findings were dismissed in the West as propaganda.