Page 21 - Unit 731 Testimony

climber. In a society where Confucian-rooted respect for superiors and a
strong consciousness of hierarchy dictates boundaries of behavior, Ishii's
forward drive ran roughshod over protocol.

Ishii felt a calling to the military, perhaps to serve his country, but
surely to advance his own goals of medical research. In 1920, he graduated
university and enlisted in the army. Shortly thereafter, he was
commissioned a lieutenant, and by the summer of 1922, he had managed to
gain a transfer to the First Army Hospital in Tokyo. His fever for research

was appreciated by his superiors, and two years later he was assigned to
return to his alma mater for postgraduate work in bacteriology, among other
fields.

During these days, he was a frequent visitor to the home of the school
president, an affront to Ishii's university instructors in that he was
socializing not only out of his own league, but theirs, as well. He eventually
grew close enough to the top man at Kyoto Imperial University to marry his
daughter. This marital link cemented his position with the university's
medical research people and facilities; in a sense, thus, it also laid the
beginnings of a foundation for his human experimentation in China.

Japan was a signatory to the Geneva Convention of 1925, which led to
the prohibition of biological and chemical warfare. As a specialist in
bacteria-related fields, Ishii actually found this development encouraging;
he reasoned that if something were bad enough to be outlawed, then it must

certainly be effective. In a way, Ishii's thoughts could be considered par for
someone in a bureaucratic environment. Anyone familiar with life in a
bureaucracy—especially a large and ponderous one—realizes that a large
part of its total energy is expended to protect and enhance individual
members' own roles in the organizational machinery.

Inspired by these developments, Ishii pressed for the establishment of
a military arm whose activities centered around weapons based on biology.
This was his field; the more important it became to the military, the greater
his own importance would grow within the system. Financial considerations
provided logic to support his cause. Compared with the costs of building,

manning, and maintaining huge conventional forces, for example, bacteria
and gas were far less expensive. Other advantages were to appear later, but
the cost factor was a major selling point for Ishii in his appeals to the top
levels of the Imperial Japanese Army.