Court Admits Germ Use by Japanese Troops in WWII

A court in Japan acknowledged Tuesday for the first time that the nation used biological weapons before and during World War II, but it rejected demands for compensation by 180 Chinese who claimed they were victims of the germ-warfare program.

The Tokyo District Court ruled that, under international law, foreign citizens cannot seek compensation directly from the Japanese government. Judge Koji Iwata said compensation issues had already been settled under postwar treaties between Japan and China.

However, the court acknowledged that Japan’s germ-warfare program existed and that testimony from the Chinese victims was “reasonable” enough to believe. It was the first time a Japanese court has recognized Japan’s use of biological weapons.

Koken Tsuchiya, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, said acknowledgment was a step in the right direction. He said he would appeal.

“Because the district court has accepted, as fact, testimony about Japan’s biological warfare program, it cannot be refuted by the higher courts,” Tsuchiya said. “This is equivalent to an admission of wrongdoing by the national government.”

The plaintiffs had demanded that Japan pay them $83,430 each and apologize for the activities of biological warfare units such as the infamous Unit 731, a Japanese army unit based in northern China.

The plaintiffs claimed that at least 2,100 Chinese died in outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, anthrax and typhoid that allegedly were mass-produced by Unit 731, based outside the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, in the 1930s and ‘40s. Germ warfare was already illegal under international law at the time.

“A lot of people in my hometown were waiting for good news. Now I feel sorry for them,” said plaintiff Chen Zhifa, who was 9 when his father and older brother died in a 1941 plague outbreak allegedly caused by microbes Japanese troops dumped in his village.

The case has been closely followed in Japan because it has unearthed details about the country’s biological warfare program that the government and U.S. occupation forces kept secret after the war. Some Japanese veterans had testified that they mass-produced cholera, dysentery, anthrax and typhoid in Harbin in the early 1940s.

Japan has refused to confirm those accounts. After decades of denial, Tokyo confirmed the existence of Unit 731 several years ago, but it has yet to disclose specifics about the unit’s activities.

Meanwhile Tuesday, a government official said Japan will send a delegation to China next month to excavate wartime chemical weapons, including mustard gas and lewisite, a fluid that emits highly toxic vapors.

The abandoned arms include bombs, shells and lethal chemicals. About 700,000 chemical weapons remain, Cabinet spokesman Osamu Watakai said.

Specialists from the Foreign Ministry, the Cabinet and the Defense Agency will try to recover 500 of those weapons during their Sept. 5-27 expedition in Heilongjiang province in northeastern China, Watakai said. Outside experts will take part in those efforts.