Page 16 - Unit 731 Testimony

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Background of Japanese

Biological Warfare

A Proud Medical Tradition

In all wars up until the Russo-Japanese War, it had been known that
the "silent enemy"—disease—took a greater toll of lives among fighting

men than did bullets. With the outbreak of the conflict with Russia, Japan
made history by resolving to learn from her mistakes. Chastened by the
waste represented by sickness-induced casualties that she had suffered in
her recent war with China, she paid an extraordinary amount of attention to
curbing battlefield illness. By the beginning of the twentieth century, her
scientists were already gaining fame for their work, and feathers in their
caps included discovery of the causes of beri-beri and dysentery. One strain

of bacteria, the Shiga bacillus, even carries the name of its Japanese
discoverer, Dr. Shiga Kiyoshi. The Western press termed the Japanese
"scientific fanatics," a telling commentary on the lack of scientific
awareness in other countries of the world, especially in military medicine.
By contrast, Japan's army had come to be a—if not the— world leader in
this field.

A perspective on Japanese military medicine at the time of Japan's war
with Russia in 1904-05 is offered by a U.S. Army doctor, Louis Livingston
Seaman. The Japanese granted him the privileges of a foreign military
attaché, and he accompanied Japanese troops in Manchuria during the

Russo-Japanese War. In addition to visiting field and base hospitals in
Manchuria, he also observed hospitals in Japan. After the war, he published
a book titled The Real Triumph of Japan: the Conquest of the Silent Foe. In
it, he writes that

the history of warfare for centuries has proven that in prolonged
campaigns the first, or open enemy, kills twenty per cent of the total
mortality in the conflict, whilst the second, or silent enemy, kills eighty