biological warfare

biological warfare (BW) was employed only by Japan during the China incident and, on a minuscule scale, by the Polish Home Army (see Poland, 4) which in 1943 killed a few hundred German soldiers and Gestapo agents with typhoid-fever microbes and lice.

During the 1930s the Japanese formed two BW units, both of which had various branches. Unit 100 was created to develop and employ BW for sabotage purposes while Unit 731, or Ishii Detachment—named after its commanding officer, Lt-Colonel (later lt-general) Ishii Shiro, an army physician—was formed to develop and wage BW on a much larger scale. It was established in Manchukuo in 1936 under the command of the Kwantung Army, and, using a cover name, the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit, it developed such weapons as a porcelain bomb which could deliver plague fleas unharmed to their target; the Ha bomb, to spread anthrax or tetanus on the battlefield, its anti-personnel shrapnel creating wounds infected with these bacteria; and the Uji bomb, for use against civilians and feeding herds. To develop these fearful weapons hundreds, perhaps thousands, of petty criminals and Chinese prisoners-of-war were used in fatal experiments, but that Allied service personnel were also used as guinea pigs has not so far been substantiated. When the Soviet Army invaded Manchukuo in August 1945 the Japanese destroyed the buildings of Unit 731, obliterated all evidence of BW research, and evacuated the staff.

Though there is no conclusive evidence, a Japanese suicide squad from the unit probably contaminated the River Khalka with typhus, paratyphus, and cholera during the fighting with Soviet troops there in August 1939 (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns); and cholera, typhus, and plague were disseminated in and around the Chinese port of Ningpo in October 1940 and plague-infested fleas and grain were dropped on to Changteh city in 1941, causing several epidemics.

A more lethal employment of BW by the Japanese occurred in the China Incident when the germs of cholera, dysentery, typhoid, plague, anthrax, and paratyphoid were used against Chiang Kai-shek's forces during Japanese advances into Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces in 1942, causing not only ‘inestimable’ casualties to the Chinese but accidentally infecting 10,000 Japanese troops as well. During the same campaign 3,000 Chinese prisoners-of-war were allegedly given food injected with typhoid and paratyphoid before being returned to their own lines. Plans were also made to attack US forces with plague fleas after they had captured Saipan, but the ship with the team sent to accomplish this was sunk.

The Allies did not employ BW but they were certainly preparing to do so if they had to. The UK had ratified the Geneva Convention protocol barring biological weapons, but experiments with anthrax were started in Britain during the 1930s—the Scottish island of Gruinard was not declared decontaminated until 1986—and a programme of producing cattle-feed filled with anthrax, for dropping over Germany, was begun in December 1941. A small anthrax bomb was also developed, which was passed to the Americans for production. They had started research on botulin and anthrax in 1942—the USA had signed the protocol but not ratified it—and by 1944 had reached an advanced stage. By the end of that year the US Chemical Warfare Service had a factory poised to produce 500,000 4 lb. (1.8 kg.) anthrax bombs a month and a method of delivering a botulin solution over a short range had also been devised. Work was in progress, too, on other agents like brucellosis and glanders as well as on chemicals against plants (also developed in the UK), classified at the time as a form of biological, not chemical, warfare.

In February 1944 Lord Cherwell (see Lindemann) recommended that Churchill should request anthrax bombs from the Americans, and later that year, when the V-1 (see V-weapons) caused heavy civilian casualties, the Chiefs of Staff committee assessed the possibility of employing them in 1945 when it was thought they would be available in sufficient quantities. But though it was agreed to share development, production, and intelligence information, British requests for a joint policy on the use of BW—as had been agreed with chemical warfare—were rejected by the USA which, presumably, wanted a free hand to use BW against Japan if the need arose.

When the V-1 became known to the British it was greatly feared that it might be a BW weapon—the normal detonation of the first one was received with relief—and before the Normandy landings in June 1944 (see OVERLORD) an effort was made to deter the Germans from employing BW. Disinformation was leaked to them that self-inoculating syringes containing botulin antidote were being distributed to 100,000 troops participating in the landings, thereby giving the impression that the Allies not only possessed methods of countering BW but were perhaps capable of employing it offensively. However, unlike the UK and USA, and probably the USSR, Germany did not attempt to develop offensive BW weapons, and such development, despite the threat that the Allies might employ it, was expressly forbidden by Hitler though Himmler did attempt to circumvent this ban.

In 1949, at Khabarovsk in eastern Siberia, the USSR tried twelve Japanese connected with developing and employing BW for war crimes. They were all sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, but though the chief medical officer at Mukden prison camp was hanged and its commandant imprisoned, no member of Unit 731 in American hands, including Ishii, was prosecuted. All were given immunity in exchange for the unit's scientific data which were then employed to improve America's own capacity for BW. Details of this deal did not emerge until the 1980s.

Bibliography

Harris, R., and and Paxman, J. , A Higher Form of Killing (London, 1982).
Harris, S. H. , Factories of Death (London, 1994).