Japanese biological weapons leave bitter legacy in China: Russian experts

VLADIVOSTOK - Biological weapons should never be applied anywhere, and the civilized world will not tolerate such crimes against humanity, said two Russian experts on the history of the World War II (WWII).

In 1949, 12 former members of the Japanese Kwantung Army were tried in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk as war criminals for manufacturing and using biological weapons and carrying out inhuman medical experiments during WWII.

All accused were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging between two and twenty-five years in a labor camp. In 1956, those who were still serving their sentences were released and repatriated to Japan.

Japanese military officers were especially inhumane and brutal during the war, causing tremendous damage to Chinese civilians.

"The Chinese partisans, Communists and even civilians had been brought to a secret facility near Harbin where Japanese researchers infected these victims -- termed "logs" -- with anthrax, plague, paratyphoid, cholera and other infections," said Alexander Lavrentsov, a military historian and retired lieutenant colonel.

"Then they dissected the bodies and examined the process of the organs' infection. If somebody survived after such tortures, they infected the person again until the body wasn't good enough for experiments. No one survived," he said.

Japanese doctors also experimented on victims in the bitter cold of Harbin.

Once the limbs were "frozen solid," doctors would test their frostbite treatment, and then "amputate the damaged part of the arm." Around 500 to 600 people annually were brutally killed, Lavrentsov said.

The influence of germ warfare can still be felt among the Chinese inhabitants of the region and on the land, and the same applies to the Russian Far East, experts said.

"Containers of toxic substances are hidden in the ground of China, rusted, and the poison inside has washed from Chinese territory into the Songhua River, and then into the Amur. Now all these poisons come to Khabarovsk through the water," said Alexandr Filonov, another expert in military history.

The main task now, Filonov said, is to force Japan to destroy the remnants of these toxic substances in China. Negotiations were conducted before, but the problem hasn't been solved yet.