A Higher Form of Killing by Robert Harris

Author:Robert Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307430403
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

It might have seemed that the primacy of biological weaponry, with its huge capacity for destruction, had ended when the mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Since the Western allies now enjoyed immense atomic superiority, there were many who argued that the distasteful business of waging war with disease could be forgotten. Yet the very imbalance caused biological warfare research to receive its greatest impetus: as the Soviet Union at that time had no atomic weapons, it was thought that she might regard biological weapons as a temporary substitute. In the cold war atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion, biological research and propaganda allegations grew steadily.

On Christmas Eve, 1949, Moscow Radio announced that twelve Japanese prisoners of war were to be charged with waging biological warfare in China. The Russians claimed that the Japanese had been producing vast quantities of bacteria, and had planned to wage biological warfare against the Allies. The allegations became more specific the next week. Three days later Moscow Radio claimed that Detachment 731 of the Kwantung Army had used prisoners of war for horrific biological warfare experiments, and then, the following day, that one of the prisoners had confessed to his interrogators that the unit had been established on the orders of the emperor himself. On December 29 Pravda came to the point. The United States was protecting other Japanese war criminals, and engaging in biological warfare research herself.

According to an account of the trial published in Moscow the following year, all the Japanese prisoners were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from two to twenty-five years. They were said to have admitted to carrying out gruesome experiments. The evidence of Major Karasaw Tomio was explicit:

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