Posted on 04/21/2003 8:39:45 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
| 1,000 tons of Imperial Army's poison gas missing |
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The Imperial Army dumped 3,870 tons of poison gas in the sea at the end of World War II, according to government officials on Monday, but the whereabouts of another 1,000 tons remains unknown, the Mainichi has learned. The government will investigate the unknown location of the poison gas after research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) announced in 1980 that Japan apparently produced more than 4,880 tons of poison gas during the war. An earlier study of the Imperial Army's poison gas was launched in 1972 under the instructions of then Prime Minister Eisaku Sato after traces of poison gas were found on Okuno Island off Hiroshima Prefecture. Some locations where the gas was kept and dumped were announced in the Diet in 1973, but the amounts were not reported at that time. The Mainichi learned that the poison gas was kept at military facilities on Okuno Island, as well as on Hokkaido, in Tokyo and some 10 other sites across the nation. A factory that produced the poison gas was located in Okuno during the war. The results show that 2,799 tons of yepperite and lewisite, 13 tons of hydrogen cyanide and 1,059 tons of another cyanide were kept at these facilities. Army officials dumped most of the gas around Okuno Island and other offshore locations after the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers, that occupied Japan, ordered them to do so. A total of 3,765 tons of gas were dumped around the island, according to the results. But the amount of poison gas reported in the study apparently doesn't cover the total amount of gas the Imperial Army produced. After studying U.S. military reports kept at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the SIPRI announced in 1980 that Japan's army kept 4,886 tons of poison gas. In March, traces of gas produced by the army were detected in wells in the Ibaraki Prefectural town on Kamisu. A beer barrel containing the army's poison gas was found in Samukawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, in September last year. (Mainichi Shimbun, April 21, 2003) Related story: |
Maybe Japanese are looking for missing chemicals in the wrong place.
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