Page 86 - Unit 731 Testimony

SCAP was ready to let Ishii and his associates off the hook. Before the
War Department could reach a decision, however, it had to know what
opinion IPS held regarding the Ishii biological warfare group. The War

Department requested information, and so Legal Section conferred with
IPS. The latter body provided a list of biological warfare activities then
known to it, and the statement that "strong circumstantial evidence exists of
use of bacteria warfare."
By this time, full translations of the affidavits made by a Major

Karazawa to his Soviet captors had come into the hands of IPS. In these, it
was stated that Karazawa was engaged in the manufacture of germs at the
Ishii unit. More specifically, in 1940, Ishii and one hundred of his
subordinates had conducted an experimental test in Hangzhou, central
China, for which Karazawa claimed he had manufactured seventy
kilograms of typhus bacilli, five kilograms of cholera bacilli, and five

kilograms of plague-infected fleas. Bacteria were sprayed by plane over
areas occupied by the Chinese army, following which a plague epidemic
broke out at Ningbo. Karazawa also repeated information he had heard
from Ishii about how he had experimented with cholera and plague on the
mountain bandits of Manchuria, and that in 1942, when the Japanese army
was retreating in central China, the Ishii group infected the vicinity of
Chuxian and Yushan with typhoid and plague bacilli. Further testimony

claimed that on several occasions during 1943 and 1944, the Japanese
kenpeitai had furnished as fodder for human experimentation with plague
and anthrax bacilli Manchurians "who had been sentenced to death."
Karazawa even implicated people at the very top of Japan's military
organization, claiming that Ishii had advised his staff that they were under

orders from the General Staff in Tokyo to improve virus research.
IPS had also obtained information on four locations in China where, in
October and November of 1940, Japanese planes scattered wheat grains,
and bubonic plague appeared shortly afterward. Yet, it still refrained from
bringing Ishii to trial. Nor did it deem it worthwhile to call up members of

the Ishii group to testiify against their superiors who were listed as
defendants in the trials. In December 1946, after considering using the
material in its hands as a basis for prosecution, IPS replied to SCAP, and by
extension the War Department, that the evidence on hand was not sufficient
to connect any of the accused with the Ishii detachments's secret activities.