HIDDEN ATROCITIES: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial | By Jeanne Guillemin
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Warren I. Cohen Books on American-East Asian Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xix, 460 pp. (Maps.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-18352-9.
In the past few years, the contested memorialization of Japan’s aggression towards its East Asian neighbours has exacerbated tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Geopolitics, the rise of populist leaders and new bouts of antagonistic identity politics feeding on action/reaction dynamics have soured interstate relations in East Asia, especially among Japan, China, and South Korea. Not by chance, the 70th year anniversary since the abrupt end of Japan’s imperial expansionism and the new-found political relevance of its brutal legacy have kindled renewed scholarly interest in the topic and recent English-language scholarship has shed light on the first, foundational “history issue”: the post-war adjudication of Japanese war crimes and the interplay of the many country-specific trials with juridical, judicial, ethical and—especially—political considerations.
Based on a wide range of American primary sources, Jeanne Guillemin’s study looks at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and at the role played by the US government in extracting and covering up information on Japan’s biological and chemical experiments on living captives and its engagement with biological warfare. Guillemin covers new historical ground. Her lucid and detailed account on the jockeying among and within the prosecutorial team, the international judges, and the occupation authorities is intricate and engaging. The above-mentioned dimensions of international adjudication are reflected in the author’s careful portraits of the leading personalities involved in the Tokyo Trials, especially from the US prosecutorial team. Yet, the book underlines how the growing clout of the General Headquarters’ military intelligence section (G-2)—led by General Charles Willoughby, a staunch anti-communist—steered US policy towards obfuscation of those war crimes already by 1946; national security interests dominated all other dimensions ahead of the Cold War.
The author—a leading expert on biological weapons—never loses sight of the international environment. In her introductory and closing chapters she provides a useful overview of the development of biological and chemical weapons in the modern era and of the international regimes that are meant to curb their production and adoption. Within this context, however, the author makes clear that Japan’s use of and inhumane experimentation with biological weapons was outstanding. Wanton medical atrocities notwithstanding, Nazi Germany neither performed systematic bacteriological experiments nor did it acquire noteworthy germ weapons capabilities because Hitler—a notorious germophobe—was against research on biological weapons. For this very reason, the medical findings of the Kwantung Army’s infamous Unit 731—based in the outskirts of Harbin and with satellite units in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, and employing about 5000 officers and soldiers—were unique and, in the context of the incipient Cold War, of special interest to the US Army’s secret chemical and biological warfare programs.
The book offers an impressive amount of details on the trials and tribulations of the IMTFE. In particular, Guillemin’s account follows the work of the Virginian David Nelson Sutton, the stalwart of the International Prosecution Section, where he was associate prosecutor and assistant to the Chinese Division. Through Sutton’s accounts and diaries, we get to know about Sutton’s painstaking work to collect evidence and affidavits in China ahead of the trial and about his inability to obtain evidence of substance on Japan’s chemical and biological warfare programs. In exchange for information on medical results, the G-2 section granted protection and gifts to the Head of the Unit 731, Lt. General Shiro Ishii, and his associates. The book provides a vivid account on how US occupation authorities defused the Soviet prosecutors’ case against Japanese inhumane experiments at the Tokyo Trial. Yet, that would come back with a vengeance: based on testimonies obtained by officers and rank-and-file Japanese soldiers caught during the Soviet advancement into Manchuria, the Soviet Union set up the Khabarovsk Trial, which—for the first time—detailed Unit 731’s operations to world public opinion. Interestingly, the Khabarovsk Trial did not achieve its intended propaganda objectives as the US and Japanese governments effectively met its findings with silence and denigration as mere disinformation campaigns.
Guillemin’s account is a perfect companion to the classic study by Sheldon Harris (Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1941, and the American Cover-up, Routledge, 1993), which is mostly devoted to the crimes rather than America’s obstruction of justice during the IMTFE. This book deserves a wide readership because it’s on an insufficiently researched aspect of an important topic. To conclude, while no compensation is in sight to the families of Unit 731, the Japanese government’s belated recognition of Unit 731’s existence has been an important step forward. A recent 2017 documentary by authoritative public broadcaster NHK has highlighted the proactive engagement of Japanese medical luminaries in the development of bacteriological warfare and oversight of experiments on living captives: this documentary, available in both Japanese and English, is significant because it highlights the proactive engagement of civilians in Japan’s imperial endeavours, pointing at the grassroots embrace of Japan’s imperial adventurism, including its darkest pages.
Giulio Pugliese
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
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