The Great Revelation: The Investigation and Trial of Japan's Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons after World War II

preface

During the Tokyo trial, the Soviet Union requested the United States to interrogate, extradite, and try Shiro Ishii and others in order to obtain information on biological warfare. The U.S. Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the War Department, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Far East Command discussed the response strategy through multiple letters and telegrams, and finally reached a consensus on "exchanging biological warfare information without charging war crimes." In the negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union around biological warfare intelligence, the United States achieved the desired goal of possessing Japan's biological warfare intelligence alone, while avoiding the disclosure of biological warfare intelligence to the public. Under the "prior instruction" and "on-site supervision" of the United States, the joint interrogation led by the Soviet Union was to no avail. The Soviet Union was angry about this, did not give up, and launched the Boli Trial alone after the Tokyo Trial, which was not only a continuation of the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union in Tokyo, but also a typical event of the great power game under the Cold War pattern.

After World War II, the U.S. Department of Defense successively sent Sanders, Thompson and others to Japan to secretly investigate biological warfare, until the Tokyo trial began, the U.S. secret investigation was still not completed. During this period, the Soviets obtained clues of Japanese biological warfare intelligence from prisoner-of-war interrogations, and subsequently proposed to the United States for interrogation, extradition, and trial of Shiro Ishii and others. The Soviet demands came into direct conflict with U.S. targets, which wanted to monopolize biological warfare intelligence while avoiding disclosure of biological warfare intelligence. To this end, the U.S. Department of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of Defense, the War Department, the Department of the Navy, the Air Force, and the Far East Command discussed the response strategy through multiple letters and telegrams, and finally reached a consensus on "exchanging biological warfare information without charging war crimes." As a result, the United States monopolized and kept biological warfare intelligence secret, while the Soviet Union suffered a complete defeat in Tokyo.

The U.S.-Soviet negotiations around biological warfare intelligence came to an end with the end of the Tokyo Trial, but the Soviet Union was not satisfied, and then launched the Boli Trial, which is not only a continuation of the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union in Tokyo, but also a typical event of the great power game under the Cold War pattern. 1 This paper tries to use the Archives of the United States as the main reference, sort out the motives, processes and results of the US-Soviet negotiations, observe the balance of interests and coping strategies of the US internal institutions, and explore the internal relationship between the Tokyo Trial and the Boli Trial, so as to reveal a face of international relations in Northeast Asia before and after the Cold War.

survey

After the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and entered northeast China, it brought back to the Soviet Union more than 500,000 Japanese "prisoners of war" and a large number of Japanese pseudo-archives, and among the captured personnel were Kiyoshi Kawashima and Shizoo Uzawa of the 731 unit. 2 From September 12 to 19, 1946, Soviet investigators Colonel Kudoriafutsuef and Captain Nikichin interrogated Kiyoshi Kawashima and Tsutomu Tsutomu at the Khabarovsk prisoner-of-war camp and received a large number of clues to Japanese biological warfare intelligence. Kiyoshi Kawashima confessed to the organization, core personnel, operational functions and scope of activities of the 731 Unit, including biological research, biological warfare, vaccine production and serum manufacturing. Shizosuke Shōzawa confessed that unit 731 used American prisoners of war to conduct serum human experiments in Shenyang's Allied prisoner-of-war camps, and carried out biological experiments in Ningbo, Quxian and Yushan, Zhejiang.

The Soviets passed biological warfare leads through intelligence channels to Soviet representatives who were participating in the Tokyo trial. On January 7, 1947, Major General Vasiliev, assistant prosecutor of the Soviet Union at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, sent a letter of request to Major General Charles A. Willoughby, deputy chief of staff of the Second Staff of the Allied General Command, through the Investigation Department of the International Prosecutor's Office, requesting that is, Shiro Ishii, Kikuchi, and Sumumi Ota, request the addresses of Takashi Murakami and Kanezang Nakaru, and make it clear that the Soviet Division of the International Prosecutor's Office already possessed materials related to Japan's biological warfare. A supplementary interrogation is expected before being brought before the Tokyo tribunal. Vasiliev said: "This interrogation was conducted at a specific location, and the relevant information was not disclosed to the outside world.

Vasiliev's written proposal made Willoughby, who was in charge of U.S. intelligence, realize that the Soviets had taken notice of the Japanese, and perhaps the Soviets were also spying on the movements of the U.S. military. For this Soviet request, the Americans were anxious to understand the "bottom card" of soviet biological warfare intelligence: how did the Soviets know? What exactly did the Soviets hold? To this end, Lieutenant Colonel Robert P. McQuail of the Intelligence Department of the U.S. Far East Command took the initiative to interview the Soviets. At 9 a.m. on January 15, 1947, at the former Army Provincial Building in Tokyo, a meeting was held with D.L. Waldorf, Maguire, Major O.V. Keller of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Office, and Colonel Leon N. Smirnov of the Soviet Union. Smirnov affirmed the reasons for interrogating the Japanese: "The Soviets had biological warfare intelligence through the interrogation of prisoners of war, which was very absurd to the Soviets and attracted the attention of biological warfare experts, who re-interrogated and inspected the ruins of the bungalow, and finally confirmed the information. Maguire asked, "Was the ruins of the bungalow destroyed by bombing or by fighting?" Smirnov replied: "The bungalow was completely destroyed by the Japanese, who tried to cover up all the evidence. All the documents were destroyed, so our experts didn't even bother to take pictures of the ruins, too badly damaged. He added: "At the Nuremberg trial, a German expert witness said that spreading typhus by fleas was recognized as the best method of biological warfare. The Japanese also seem to have mastered this technology, and getting this information was valuable to both the United States and the Soviet Union. Smirnov may not have realized that the problem of Maguire's "bungalow ruins" was directly related to the U.S. military's assessment of the problem. If the Soviets destroyed the biological warfare base in the bungalow during the battle, there would be troop documents and biological warfare intelligence captured, and the extent to which the Soviet army had biological warfare intelligence was difficult to assess. If Unit 731 had destroyed the Bungalow Headquarters on its own, there were two possible outcomes for the biological warfare intelligence data: one was to be transferred in advance, and the other was to destroy it directly on the spot, then the Soviet Union would not get more valuable direct intelligence. Maguire then wrote in the evaluation report: "Smirnov's intelligence is consistent with the information available to the United States, the data on bacterial production is new intelligence, the situation of living experiments is still questionable, and the complete destruction of bungalows and the destruction of documents also corroborate previous information."

When the biological warfare intelligence surfaced, the US military had been secretly investigating for 22 months, and how much of a gap between the effect of the investigation and the expected goal, and how much difference there was between the degree of investigation and the actual situation, constituted a reference element for the United States to weigh the pros and cons and formulate a response strategy. On the one hand, the United States' attempt to dominate the Tokyo trial must be supported by the Soviet Union, and to a certain extent, it is necessary to adopt a compromise approach to deal with the frontal conflict, and cannot let the biological warfare incident directly affect cooperation with the Soviet Union; on the other hand, the United States hopes to achieve the preset goal of monopolizing biological warfare intelligence, and is worried about causing the Soviet Union to covet and pursue it for a long time, forming an unfavorable situation in which biological warfare intelligence is forced to be made public. To this end, the U.S. Far East Army Command urgently asked Washington to formulate a response strategy through a military emergency.