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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (5336)	8/14/2005 7:31:34 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

[The US hypocricy at its high play!]--U.S. paid Unit 731 members for germ warfare experiment data Send to a friendPrint Monday, August 15, 2005 at 07:33 JST WASHINGTON — The United States paid sums of money and other benefits to former members of a Japanese germ warfare unit two years after the end of World War II to obtain data on human experiments the unit conducted in China, Kyodo News learned Sunday from two declassified U.S. government documents. It has been known that the U.S.-led Allied Powers that occupied Japan offered to waive war crime charges at the war tribunal for officers of Unit 731 set up by the Imperial Japanese Army in exchange for experiment data. But the latest findings reveal Washington's eagerness to obtain such data even by providing monetary rewards, despite the awful nature of Unit 731's activities, in an apparent attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the arms development race. Historians believe that some 3,000 people died in the human experiments conducted in China by the unit led by military doctor Shiro Ishii before and during the war. The total amount paid to unnamed former members of the infamous unit was somewhere between 150,000-200,000 yen. An amount of 200,000 yen at that time is the equivalent of 20 million-40 million yen, based on an initial salary comparison for central government employees now and then. The two declassified documents were found in the U.S. National Archives by Keiichi Tsuneishi, professor at Kanagawa University and an expert on biological and chemical weapons. One of the top-secret documents was a "report on bacteriological warfare" for the chief of staff of the Far Eastern Commission, dated July 17, 1947, compiled by Brig Gen Charles Willoughby, head of the "G2" intelligence unit of the U.S.-led postwar occupation forces in Japan. The other was a letter dated July 22 the same year that Willoughby sent to Maj Gen SJ Chamberlin, director of intelligence of the U.S. War Department General Staff, to illustrate the need for continued use of confidential funds without restrictions to obtain such intelligence. In the documents, Willoughby described the achievements of his unit's investigations, saying the "information procured will have the greatest value in future development of the U.S. BW (bacteriological warfare) program." Citing a U.S. War Department specialist in charge of the investigation, Willoughby wrote in the report that "data on human experiments may prove invaluable" and said the information was "only obtainable through the skillful, psychological approach to top-flight pathologists" involved in Unit 731 experiments. The U.S. side provided money, food, gifts, entertainment and other kinds of rewards to the former Unit 731 members, according to the report. "All of these actions did not amount to more than 150,000-200,000 yen, netting the United States the fruit of 20 years' laboratory tests and research," the report says. [My note: at > half million of Chinese lives!] Willoughby described the cost as a "mere pittance" in his letter to Chamberlin. "I contend that with new restrictions on the use of confidential funds we shall find it successively more difficult to induce these people to disclose information," Willoughby wrote. Kanagawa University professor Tsuneishi said it had been thought that the United States had gathered the information high-handedly by making unit members choose between cooperating and facing war crime charges, "but it has become clear that this was done by winning unit members' hearts with money and rewards." The documents reveal that the two sides — the United States which had initially overlooked the existence of the human experiments and Japan which had been trying to hide the truth — "ended up trading information through monetary benefits without any regard for their behavior," Tsuneishi said. Another U.S. military document in late 1947 showed that 250,000 yen was used, revealing the possibility that the secret operations had continued after the July documents. The Imperial Japanese Army established Unit 731 in 1936 to develop biological weapons using plague, anthrax and other bacteria. Headquartered in the suburbs of Harbin in China's Heilongjiang Province, the unit conducted germ warfare in various places in China and used Chinese, Russians and others as subjects in human experiments. The General Headquarters (GHQ) of the U.S.-led occupation forces started interrogating senior officers of Unit 731 soon after the end of war but the members denied having conducted human experiments. The truth did not come to light until the latter half of 1946 when senior Japanese army officers detained in the Soviet Union confessed about the experiments. In 1947, the GHQ moved to gather experiment data but because war crime charges against the Unit 731 officers had been waived by then, the GHQ was apparently forced to offer even monetary rewards to have them cough up the information. (Kyodo News) japantoday.com