Monday, April 26, 1999
Tokyo Must Address the Actions of Its Wartime 'Killing Machine'
- War crimes: Japan conducted medical experiments on prisoners;
this
issue has never been publicly examined.
By ABRAHAM COOPER
What if there was no Nazi hunter like Simon Wiesenthal to pursue the
perpetrators of genocide? What if the U.S. bartered Auschwitz
doctor
Josef Mengeles' freedom in return for the results of his horrific
experiments? What if postwar Germany had installed top Nazi doctors
in
the National Institutes of Health or as deans in leading medical schools
or as surgeons general of the new German defense forces?
Impossible, you say? A second-rate script or a third-rate novel?
No, I
have just described what happened in postwar Japan to a cadre of
unrepentant criminals whose deeds matched their Nazi soul mates in
cruelty and depravity. And incredibly, one of the surviving war
criminals recently invited me to his home to gloat about his role.
Meet Toshimo Mizobuchi, an energetic 76-year-old, who lives near Kobe
where he granted me a 2 1/2-hour interview. Still vigorous, he
is
organizing this year's reunion of several hundred surviving veterans
of
the Japanese Army's Unit 731, which conducted Japan's not-so-secret
chemical-biological warfare operation in Manchuria before and during
World War II.
Deliberately infected with plague, anthrax, cholera and other pathogens,
an estimated 10,000 Chinese civilians and allied prisoners of war were
made into human guinea pigs by Unit 731. They were vivisected
without
anesthesia and then dispatched by lethal injection. Other experiments
involved tying victims to stakes and bombarding them with shrapnel
laced
with gangrene; inserting them in pressure chambers to see how much
their
bodies could take before their eyes popped; and exposing them,
periodically drenched in water, to subzero weather to determine their
susceptibility to frostbite. Three large incinerators disposed
of the
corpses, which burned quickly because the internal organs had been
removed.
Beyond the torture chambers of Unit 731, which occupied a
six-square-kilometer base that rivaled Auschwitz-Birkenau in size,
the
Japanese Army conducted germ-warfare field tests not only against nearby
Chinese and Russian territory but as far away as Burma, Thailand and
Indonesia. The death toll may have run as high as 200,000.
A training officer, my solicitous host Mizobuchi was a mere cog in a
killing machine staffed by 3,000 medical research personnel, many
recruited from Japan's top institutions of higher learning. The
mastermind of it all was Gen. Shiro Ishii, a physician who combined
a
flair for organization with the sadism of Mengele. American occupation
authorities in Japan, who after the war gave Ishii immunity from war
crimes prosecution, were astounded by the scope of an operation that,
in
addition to producing lethal pathogens, manufactured 20 million doses
of
vaccine each year at just one facility.
Ishii also shared the Nazi penchant for euphemism. His murderous
operation was designated the Water Purification Bureau. And while
Mengele called his gruesome experiments Artzvorstellern or "medical
checkups," Ishii designated his victims as muralas or "logs," a grim
joke that originated when the Japanese told the local Manchurians that
the Unit 731 facility was being built as "a lumber mill."
A half-century later, Unit 731's victims are still nothing more than
"logs" to Mizobuchi.
Assigned to Unit 731 in January 1943, he first learned of its treatment
of experimental subjects when be was told the meaning of the "white
smoke coming from the chimneys."
Later, he became an instructor who taught new recruits without
personally participating--or so he claims--in torture. Mizobuchi
also
disclaims responsibility for the liquidation of the camp in 1945 of
all
remaining 400 prisoners by "volunteers" who reported to him.
Mizobuchi then described the lessons he learned and imparted to his
students that were based on human experimentation and included "what
happened when a human being did not have water for a week. He
would go
insane. With water but without food, a person could last 50 to
60
days." When I asked whether he had any regrets about what was
done to
the prisoners, Mizobuchi almost jumped out of his chair. "No"
he
insisted defiantly, "the logs were not considered to be human.
They
were either spies or conspirators already sentenced to death.
So now
they died a second time. We just executed the death sentence."
Mizobuchi even detailed Japan's aborted plan to unleash germ warfare
against American troops on Saipan in June 1944. He also participated
in
July 1945, in training kamikaze pilots for Operation Cherry Blossoms
at
Night. This was to involve five submarines, each carrying two
or three
small aircraft with wings folded against the fuselage, to the California
coast where they would attack San Diego with "plague bombs" full of
infected fleas. Planning for this incredible operation only was
aborted
when Japan abruptly surrendered after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Mizobuchi has nothing but praise for Gen. Ishii of Unit 731.
He
considers his ultimate military superior, Gen. Hideki Tojo, "a
war
criminal" but only in the sense that he launched a war that he should
have known Japan was not yet prepared to win. As for himself,
Mizobuchi
confirmed to me that under the same circumstances, he would again be
a
"willing executioner" with no compunctions about his role.
While Germany has faced up to the horrors committed by its Mengeles,
the
time is long overdue for Japan to admit the atrocities committed by
its
Ishiis and Mizobuchis. For despite the efforts of Japanese activists,
including a handful of repentant war criminals, today's Japanese
government continues to maintain its half century virtual blockade
against telling the full historical truth to its younger generations.
The American government, however belatedly, has begun to address our
own
national complicity in covering up the crimes of Unit 731. The
U.S.
Justice Department wants to add to its "watch list" of war criminals,
which currently includes 60,000 Europeans but fewer than 100 Japanese,
those responsible for war crimes ranging from the Nanjing massacre
to
the work of Unit 731. Washington should also immediately rescind
the
blanket amnesty granted to these criminals.
But Japan must also awake from its self-inflicted amnesia. An
international historic commission convened by Tokyo would replace
revisionism and propaganda with an honest quest for history.
It would
also go a long way to reassure Japan's Asian neighbors that it has
learned the lessons of the past and deserves their trust.
Even professed neutral nations like Sweden and Switzerland have had
the
courage to take a painful look back at their World War II record; can
Japan be allowed to do any less?
As Japan tries to gain permanent member status on the U.N. Security
Council, the international community must insist on Tokyo assuming
a
moral responsibility consistent with its aspirations for international
political and economic leadership. The memory of the nameless
victims
of Unit 731 demand no less.
- - -
Rabbi Abraham Cooper Is the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center
