In 1989 an appalling discovery swept across Tokyo. A construction crew working st Shinjuku found beneath a pavement, a massive cache of human remains. The horrific news spread quickly around Tokyo and the Japanese government decided to make a statement which would lead to the revelation of the most terrible secret of World War II. Some meters away from the construction site lay the wartime laboratory of Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii, father of Japan's top-secret biological warfare program; Unit 731.
Unit 731 was acquiring human guinea pigs from the Manchuria base to Tokyo. After the end of WWII, the bodies were disposed in a massive grave and Unit 731' s activities remained Japan's most closely guarded secret.
Unit 731 would be unknown today to the mass public unless in 1984 a student, had not made a weird discovery in a second-hand bookshop; notes by a military officer. The officer was stationed in Unit 731 and his notes were concisely detailed and described the biological experiments which he clearly points out that they were using humans for the purposes of Shiro Ihii and his team.
Shiro Ishii was an intelligent Army microbiologist whose flamboyant personality soon attracted attention from his senior officers. He was clearly aligned with the unltra-nationalists in the War Ministry and lobbied for biological weapons development. Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 gave Ishii the opportunity to begin his horrific expreriments on human subjects. His first command, code named "Tongo Unit" was enforced by a large budget and 300 men.
The Unit 731 facility was built by Chinese forced labour and was locally known as the Zhong Ma Prison . In the facility, there were more than 500 people (mostly criminals and suspicious persons) detained in the Zhong Ma Castle and were called marutas. All the prisoners were well-fed and exercised regularly as healthy specimens were vital for good scientific results.
When Ishii wanted a human brain, the soldiers would get a prisoners, open his skull with an axe and get the human organ as soon as possible to the inhumane scientist. Ishii's first bio-warfare experiments were concentrated on diseases such as anthrax and the plague. In one test, Chinese guerrillas were injected with plague bacteria and twelve day later the infected prisoners would have temperatures of 40°C. Miraculously, one infected victim survived for 19 days before he was dissected alive.
Prisoners were poisoned with phosgene gas while others were injected with potassium cyanide. Some subjects were exposed to 20,000 volts of electricity. The death of all subjects was closely documented and observe by staff of Unit 731. Those who survived were later disposed of by lethal injections or dissected while alive.
Ishii's work ensured a growing empire and by 1939 he was able to relocate a massive, dedicated facility to new headquarters at Pingfan, Manchuria which rivalled in size Nazi Germany's Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The new facility was comprised of administrative buildings, laboratories, barracks, a prison, an autopsy-dissecting building and three giant furnaces which handled the disposal of bodies.
One important part of experimentation was testing frostbite for military purposes. Similar experiments were conducted by the Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi who placed naked prisoners in sub-freezing temperatures and have their limbs beaten with sticks so that they would understand when the freezing process was over. Later, the bodies were defrosted using a wide range of experimental techniques.
Sheldon Harris (California State University history professor) in his book Factories of Death, details many other experiments including suspending subjects upside d own to determine how long it took for them to choke to death. Others had air injected into them to test for the onset of embolisms and others had horse urine injected into their kidneys.
Ishii, at the time, produced scientific papers giving the results of his ghoulish experiments to the Japanese medical and scientific community. Still, the papers claimed that the experiments were carried out on monkeys.
The end of WWII found Ishii at the rank of Lieutenant General and he took the precaution to bound his subordinates to an oath of secrecy. The sites were destroyed and everybody working at them returned home in obscurity. The ghoulish experiments which took place in Unit 731 remained hidden from public scrutiny, but the military and intelligence community forgets nothing.
Allied Intelligence had conclusive files on the leading Japanese microbiologists and the US believed that the Japanese were much more advanced in biological warfare and strategists appreciated the tactical benefits of biological agents introduced covertly into a war zone. In fact, Ishii had done this on a number of occasions in China and elsewhere. The Allies were interested in the acquisition of detailed record on human experimentation and wanted to get hold of the expertise and know-how of Ishii's research.
The US feared that the Soviet Union might acquire Ishii's expertise and records and thus discussed a secret deal. Allied POWs had a lot of stories to tell about biological experimentation on humans. The US government successfully covered-up this and had the Allied POWs sworn to secrecy. Furthermore, prosecutors at the Tokyo War Crimes trials were warned not to investigate the specific crimes and by 1948 all Unit 731 members were offered immunity in exchange for data and co-operation.
The discovery of the bodies beneath Tokyo , broke a cover-up which lasted for more than four decades and Allied servicemen started telling about their ordeals. Joseph Gozzo, a former aviation engineer, had glass rods inserted in his rectum during his internment. He said "Damn right I remember; I can't believe our government let them get away with it".
Ex-POW, Frank James, shared his memories with a US House of Representatives sub-committee in 1986: "We were just pawns. We Always knew there was a cover-up". The House of Representatives hearing lasted just half a day and only one of 200 US survivors was permitted to testify and the chief archivist for the US Army. The latter said that files provided by Ishii were returned to Japan in the 1950s and copies had not been made.
Initially, the US and Japanese governments denied that atrocities had occurred but a body of official information was made public. A file from General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters states that the investigation of Unit 731 was "under direct Joint Chiefs of Staff order.......the utmost secrecy is essential in order to protect the interests of the United States and to guard against embarrassment." Finally, in 1993, US Defence Secretary William Perry promised to declassify record of WWII biological experiments so as to calm down the intense public pressure.
The key figures in Unit 731 became rather successful after the war. A number held senior university posts in the field of medicine. One headed up a leading Japanese pharmaceutical company while others gained positions such as President of the Japan Medical Association or Vice President if the Green Cross Corporation.
Shiro Ishii died unrepentant in 1959.
Opium, Heroin, Morphia - Inhuman WMD Drug Warfare
This WMD Drug Warfare is definitely the worst and only known war crime case of systematic massive drug doping of civilian against Humanity committed by a country in our Human History.
During the war, Japan made arrangement between the Yakuza (Japanese organized criminal organization), industrialists (including household names such as Mitsui and Suzuki) and the military produced the profitable Opium Monopoly Bureau, a legalized dope peddling business between the military government and the hoods. Japan used opiates to weaken Chinese resistance, and deliberately fostered drug addiction in the occupied areas of China.
Japan was aware of the social destruction that drugs cause, as well as the devastating role that British Opium had brought onto China. Therefore, following British Opium footstep, the Japanese distributed Opium, heroin and cocaine along the Chinese coast when they took control of Manchuria in 1931.
Japan transformed Manchuria into a vast poppy field. Mitsui then processed Manchurian opium into heroin. Japan was by far the largest Opium producer throughout the first half of the 20th century, initially in Korea and then in Manchuria.
By 1937, Japan and its gangster operated world's largest drug trafficking system and were responsible for 90 % of the world's illicit narcotics.
The WMD Drug Warefare earned Japan $300 million (equivalent of $3.5 billion in 2001) per year from the bankrupt China with its Drug strategy of nation against nation.
To encourage addiction and further enslave the Chinese people in the occupied area, Japanese wartime occupation authorities distributed as much Opium, heroin, and cocaine as possible. Japanese routinely used narcotics as payment for the labor. Heroin cigarettes were offered to children as young as ten. History professor Minser Searle Bates concluded that in Nanjing alone has about 50,000 drug addicted people, 1/8 of city population were using Opium and heroin.
Japan reinstated poppy farms. Koreans were put in charge of the illegal drug operations to ensure that no Japanese agents risked addiction.
During Japanese 36 years of brutal colonial governance of Korea, the Korean farmers were forced to grow opium for Japan's opium operations in China.
Since 1773, British Opium had brought onto China More than a century of devastating social destruction and economic disasters, contributed to the ruin of a once-great nation.
In the early 18th century, Britain was pushing Opium into China at an ever-increasing rate. By the early 19th century, Opium infected China so badly that addicts were found among the king's court, and by 1832 even the military was partially debilitated by Opium addiction. One city of Soochow alone had already 100,000 addicts.
In 1793, China's silver reserve was estimated at 70 million taels of silver (approximately 2.6 million kilograms), but by 1820 this had been reduced to only about 10 million taels.
Alarmed, Emperor of China declares war on Drugs. Emperor appointed Lin Tse-Hsu to suppress the Opium traffic. Twice Lin wrote Letter to Queen Victoria to seek her intercession, but to no avail. Finally resulted in 2 Opium Wars with Britain.
It was the First 2 Wars on drugs in our Human Histroy.
Weakened and corrupted by Opium, China was no match and defeated. China was forced to legalize the importation and sale of Opium by Britain.
For details, refer to History of the Opium Trade in China
Immediately, other Western countries, e.g. American and French traders followed to grab their share of fortune.
Nearly All American company followed to push Opium into China.
Writing home, an American named Warren Delano of Russell & Company, said he could not pretend to justify the opium trade on moral grounds, "but as a merchant I insist it has been fair, honorable and legitimate".
Warren Delano returned to America rich. He gave his daughter Sara in marriage to a wellborn neighbor, James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin Roosevelt.
To preserve the Truth of History, the U.S. President's biographer Geoffrey Ward rejects efforts of the Delano family to minimize Warren's Opium dark secret.
According to Gabriel G. Nahas "The Decline of Drugged Nations" By 1900, China had 90 Million addicts caused by British Opium.
China had become known as the "Sickman of the East".
17 Millions Chinese addicts died directly as a result of the British Opium.
In 1905, with the creation of lagest drug case in Human History, British finally realized that their More than a century India-China Opium Traffic is morally indefensible and proposed to control it. The Chinese unhesitatingly accepted. "It is hereby commanded," the emperial edict ran, "that within a period of ten years the evils arising from foreign and native opium be equally and completely eradicated."
In 1909, an International Conference was convened in Shanghai. All the major countries were invited. 13 states agreed to control the traffic in opium and its derivatives, particularly morphine. In 1911, they met again at the Hague. In 1920, the League of Nations had been established. In 1931, at the Geneva Convention, the Opium Advisory Committee also tried to regulate all production of dangerous drugs.
However, gradually it became clear, it was the great depression that had drastically reduced opium demand; and pushed down the price; and many governments were restricting the production of narcotics mainly in the hope of keeping the drug prices from falling further. When the drug traffic began to recover, the Convention was of little help in controlling it due to the huge profit from the illegal drugs.
Opium of illegal trade by the Britain, U.S., Japan and other Western countries, became one of the world's most valuable commodity at the expense of China.
The eminent Harvard historian J.K Fairbank described it as "The most long continued and systematic International Crime of modern times" - 150 years of crime against China.
With Mussolini leaving the League, Hitler ignoring it, the Japanese defied it by occupying northern China in 1931 and declared Manchuria was to be independent from China as "Manchukuo" puppet state in 1932, then set up its Manchukuo Opium Monopoly only to follow the British Opium pattern.
Although Japan is a signatory to the agreement which forbids the import into China of morphia or of any appliances used in its manufacture or application. Since Morphia no longer can be purchased in Europe, the seat of industry has been transferred to Japan, and morphia is now manufactured by the Japanese themselves. Literally, tens of millions of yen are transferred annually from China to Japan for the payment of Japanese morphia.
Through Dairen, morphia circulates throughout Manchuria and the province adjoining; through Tsingtao, morphia is distributed over Shantung province, Anhui, and Kiangsu, while from Taiwan morphia is carried with opium and other contraband by motor-driven fishing boats to some point on the mainland China, from which it is distributed throughout the province of Fukien and the north of Kuangtung. Everywhere it is sold by Japanese under the extra-territorial protection."
For details, refer to Japan's Opium Monopoly - Japan as an Opium Distributor in China.
In 1935, Peter Fleming visited Manchukuo for The Times to determine the question, "Is the monopoly a crusade or a racket ?". On the evidence, he decided, it was clearly a racket. In Manchukuo, Japanese open the "Opium Dens" or "Opium Divans" to all, even teenagers; consumption was increasing; and the monopoly was already making huge profits as the Japanese authorities cynically acknowledged, by imprinting a flowering poppy on their Manchukuo coins.
The WMD Opium Warfare was conducted with full approval from Tokyo as a state policy, under the directives of an official Japanese umbrella organization, the China Affairs Board, run by Prince Konoye.
The huge profit from the addictive WMD Drug Warfare were used to finance Japanese war machine with the creation of millions of Chinese drug addicts.
>>>>The key figures in Unit 731 became rather successful after the war. A number held senior university posts in the field of medicine. One headed up a leading Japanese pharmaceutical company while others gained positions such as President of the Japan Medical Association or Vice President if the Green Cross Corporation.<<<<
Green Cross Corporation
(株式会社ミドリ十字; Kabushiki Gaisha Midori Jūji) was one of the premire pharmaceutical companies in Japan. The company merged into Yoshitomi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
(吉富製薬株式会社) on April 1, 1998, and renamed to Welfide Corporation (ウェルファイド株式会社) on April 1, 2000. Finally Welfide Corp. and Mitsubishi-Tokyo Pharmaceutical Inc.
(三菱東京製薬株式会社) were mereged to form Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation (三菱ウェルファーマ株式会社) on October 1, 2001.
Green Cross was founded in 1950 as Japan's first commercial blood bank and became a diversified international pharmaceutical company producing ethical drugs for delivery or administration by doctors and healthcare workers. It included war criminals such as Kitano Masaji who performed human experimentation in Unit 731 of the Japanese military during World War II.
Its products were extensively used in the treatments of a wide range of ailments. As well as supplying whole blood for transfusions, Green Cross was also active in developing blood derivative products such as coagulation factors, immunoglobulin and albumin. In the mid 1960's, it expanded into the non-plasma sector. Cardiovascular agents, coagulation/fibrinolytic agents, immunological agents, anti-inflammatory agents, albumin-based agents, blood plasma components and parenteral nutrition accounted for 71% of fiscal 1998 unconsolidated revenues; wholesale of diagnostic reagents, 14% and other, 15%. Unconsolidated revenues accounted for 59.5% of fiscal 1998 consolidated revenues. The company had eleven consolidated subsidiaries, three each in the United States and Japan, and one each in Germany, the United Kingdom, Barbados, China and Hong Kong. Overseas sales accounted for 41.9% of fiscal 1998 consolidated revenues.
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HIV-tainted blood scandal (Japan)
Japan's HIV-tainted blood scandal, known in Japanese as 薬害エイズ事件 (yakugai eizu jiken) refers between one and two thousand cases in the 1980s in which Japanese patients with haemophilia contracted HIV via tainted blood products. Controversy centers on the continued use of non-heat-treated blood products after the development of heat-treatments that prevent the spread of infection.
Early years
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, is a communicable disease caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV. AIDS is currently considered incurable. The first reported cases of AIDS occurred in Los Angeles is 1981. See full article at AIDS.
It was not until 1985 that the first cases of AIDS were officially reported in Japan. As early as 1983, however, Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare was notified by Baxter Travenol Laboratries (BTL) that it was manufacturing a new blood product, licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was heat-treated to kill the HIV virus. BTL was interested in licensing this new product in Japan. Japan's own Green Cross Corporation, the main Japanese provider of blood products protested that this would constitute unfair competition, as it was "not prepared to make heat-treated agents itself" [Leflar]. The Ministry of Health responded by ordering screening of untreated blood products, clinical trials of heat-treatments, and a campaign to increase domestic blood donations. Green Cross meanwhile distributed letters of "safety assurance of unheated blood roducts" to patients, many of whom suffered from haemophilia [Miyamoto].
"AIDS Year One"
On January 17, 1987, Japan's AIDS Surveillance Committee reported that "for the first time" a Japanese woman had contracted AIDS. Described as a "habitual prostitute," the woman had reportedly had sexual intercourse with "a hundred men," including "non-Japanese," and had lived in Kobe with a "non-Japanese" sailor from whom the Committee concluded she had contracted HIV. On January 18, Shiokawa Yuichi, chair of the government comission in charge of AIDS policy, announced that the disease was now a threat to "ordinary people living ordinary lives." He proclaimed 1987 Japan's "AIDS Year One" [Treat].
Kobe exploded in panic. Thousands of people went in for testing and visited health centres, and "armies of reporters" tracked the woman down like a "criminal," publishing her photograph, real name, and address in newspapers. Much later it was admitted, after the woman's family filed a lawsuit, that she had never been a prostitute [Ikeda].
AIDS was seen as a foreign disease; some began to refer to it as a kurobune, literally a "black ship," a reference to the American invasion by Commodore Perry in 1853. "No Foreigners Allowed" signs began to appear at businesses throughout Japan; Japanese people were warned not to have sex with foreigners and to be wary of those who had. A government-produced pamphlet showed an image of the Statue of Liberty holding a book on AIDS and towering over a trembling Mount Fuji. Hospitals began advertising that they had no HIV-positive patients, and the Diet introduced a bill to ban HIV-positive foreigners from entering Japan. [Treat].
The tainted blood scandal exposed
In May and October of 1989, HIV-infected haemophiliacs in Osaka and Tokyo filed lawsuits against the Ministry of Health and Welfare and five Japanese drug companies. In 1994 two charges of attempted murder were filed against Dr. Abe Takeshi, who had headed the Health Ministry's AIDS research team in 1983; he was found not guilty in 2005. Abe resigned as vice-president of Teikyo University.
In January of 1996, Kan Naoto was appointed Health Minister. He assembled a team to investigate the scandal, and within a month nine files of documents related to the scandal were uncovered, despite the Ministry of Health's claims that no such documents existed. As Minster, Kan promptly admitted the Ministry's legal responsibility and formally apologised to the plaintiffs.
The reports uncovered by Kan's team revealed that, after the report about the possibility of contamination, untreated blood products were recalled by the Japanese importer. However, when the importer tried to present a report to the Ministry of Health, it was told that such a report was unnecessary. The Ministry claimed that there was a "lack of evidence pointing to links between infection with HIV and the use of unheated blood products." According to one official, "we could not make public a fact that could fan anxieties among patients" [J.E.N].
According to the files, the Ministry of Health had recommended, in 1983, that the import of untreated blood and blood products be banned, and that emergency imports of heat-treated products be allowed. A week later, however, this recommendation was withdrawn because it would "deal a blow" to Japan's marketers of untreated blood products [Updike].
In 1983 Japan imported 3.14 million litres of blood plasma from the US to produce its own blood products, as well as 46 million units of prepared blood products. These imported blood products were said to pose no risk of HIV infection, and were used in Japan until 1986. Heat-treated products had been on sale since 1985, but there was neither a recall of remaining products nor a warning about the risks of using untreated products. As a result, untreated blood preparations stored at hospitals and in patients' home refrigerators were used up; there have been cases reported in which individuals were diagnosed with haemophilia for the first time between 1985 and 1986, began treatment, and were subsequently infected with HIV, even though it was known that HIV could be transmitted in untreated blood preparations, and treated products had become available and were in use at that time.
As early as 1984, several Japanese haemophiliacs were discovered to have been infected with HIV through the use of untreated blood preparations; this fact was concealed from the public. The patients themselves continued to receive "intentional propaganda" which downplayed the risks of contracting HIV from blood products, assured their safety, and promoted their use. Of some 4500 haemophiliacs in Japan, an estimated 2000 contracted HIV in the 1980s from untreated blood preparations [J.E.N].
Charges
Matsushita Renzo, former head of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau, and two of his colleagues, were found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death. Matsushita was sentenced to two years in jail. A murder charge was also brought against him. Matsushita, who after retirement became president of Green Cross, is one of at least nine former Ministry of Health bureaucrats who have retired to executive positions in Japan's blood industry since the 1980s