Page 16 - Marutas of Unit 731

He was able to successfully charm the President of Kyoto Imper ial
University, Araki Torasaburo. He even charmed his daughter, and was able

to marr y into the family to have a strong backing in medical science. Even

with his busy home life, research work, and networking, he still frequented

geisha houses and local bars. He eventually stumbled upon the rep ort of the

Geneva Protocol and the conference reports of Harada Toyoji and other

militar y doctors and was impressed with the potential of chemical and
biological warfare in future war strateg y. During World War I, the Ger man

army’s use of chemical weapons in icted heavy civilian casualties.

Consequently, 44 countries passed an agreement at the 1925 Conference on

Disarmament in Geneva on June 17, 1925 and signed an inter national

protocol named “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of
Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacter iological Met hods of

Warfare” (“Geneva Protocol), prohibiting the use of chemical and biological

weapons in war. Representatives from Japan were also pres ent at this

conference and were involved in draing and signing the Geneva Protocol,

although it was not rati ed in Japan at the time. At the suggestion of his
university mentor, Kiyano Kenji, he traveled to 25 Wester n countries in a

span of two years starting from April 1928. It was rather usual for Japanes e

militar y members to visit the West to learn, similar to Kaneko’s exper ience.

e countries included Singapore, Ceylon, Eg ypt, Greece, Turkey, Italy,

France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungar y, Czechoslovakia, Belgium,
Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Nor way, Finland, Polance, Soviet Union,

Estonia, Latvia, East Prussia, Hawaii, Canada, and the United States. Some

countries were more secretive about their research, but some, such as MIT

were more open. Aer the visit, Ishii believed that Japan was behind and

needed to engage in biological warfare research. Four months upon
returning to Japan, Ishii Shiro became an instructor at the Imper ial Japanes e