Hidden Atrocities: Germ Warfare, the Tokyo Trials, and the U.S.-Japan Deal, by Jenny Guiyeman, translated by Tan Yang, Gezhi Press, published January 2022, 353 pages, $88.00
Professor Jeanne Guillemin's Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial was first published by Columbia University Press in 2017, following Death Factory. (Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 & the American Cover-up), Western scholars have published another monograph on the history of Japan's bacteriological warfare experiments and practices during World War II. At the beginning of this year, the Chinese edition of this book was published, bringing domestic readers more diverse and rich insights on the subject of bacteriological warfare.
Compared with previous research, the focus on the use of new information is the biggest feature of this book. Thanks to the successive disclosure of relevant important archives in the past two decades, the author has been able to fully sort out and use them. A major source for this book is the results of a U.S. government compilation of Japan's war crimes archives between 2003 and 2007. The project provided about 100,000 pages of documents, including military diplomatic intelligence related to the development and use of biological warfare in Japan and various official documents. Another important source of information is the extensive documentation related to the Tokyo trial: in addition to court trial records and the archives of various institutions under the Allied Command in Japan (especially the archives of the International Prosecution Service), there are also a number of personal documents of prosecutors – several of whom (such as David Sutton and Thomas Morrow) have been deeply involved in some of the Chinese prosecutions since the beginning of the trial, and have traveled to China twice to investigate and collect evidence of Japanese war atrocities, including the use of bacteriological weapons, with the Chinese prosecution team. These valuable testimonies, notes, letters, and corresponding research reports are now concentrated in several institutions such as the University of Virginia and the University of Richmond, and a considerable number of them have not been known and used by domestic academic circles.
Perhaps because of the support of this part of the Tokyo trial literature, "Hidden Atrocities" chooses a different perspective from "Death Factory", not taking the specific process of the implementation of bacteriological warfare as the main object of discussion, but focusing on how the crimes of bacteriological warfare were once revealed in the postwar Allies' accountability, and then covered up. Therefore, the narrative of this book takes the march of the Tokyo trial as the main timeline, and revolves around the actions of two groups of people before and after the trial, inside and outside the courtroom: on the one hand, since the arrival of Allied Commander-in-Chief MacArthur in Japan, the accompanying Intelligence Section (G-2) began a secret investigation of Japanese biological weapons research and development scientists and related achievements, and the Sanders Report, Thompson Report, and Fair Report formed between 1945 and 1947 continuously assessed the potential value of these achievements to US "national security"; On the other hand, the International Prosecution Service (IPS), which is preparing for the prosecution of war crimes in Japan, immediately sent personnel to China to spare no effort to find evidence and try to link the wartime plague in Ningbo and Changde with the actions of the Japanese biological and chemical forces, so that charges could be made in the trial in the near future.
National interests and justice, intelligence officers and prosecutors uphold very different principles of action.
Assistant Prosecutor Sutton and others from the United States obtained "strong circumstantial evidence" on bacteriological warfare during their trip to China, but they still lacked ironclad evidence like the Nanjing atrocity, and could not open a case for a while. When they returned to Tokyo and offered further questioning of Shiro Ishii and other key figures, they were unexpectedly hindered: "No agency of any country can interrogate Japanese or other enemy aliens in Japan except under the prior authorization and direct supervision of the Assistant Chief of Staff of the G-2 Intelligence Section (Charles Willoughby) at Allied Headquarters." At the same time, the Soviet prosecutorial team brought intelligence on Unit 731 operating in the Harbin bungalow area, and they also hoped to further interrogate Shiro Ishii and others in Japan, and take the opportunity of the Tokyo trial to fully expose the bacteriological war crimes. In addition to warning Japanese scientists under its supervision and protection not to disclose any "important" information, the Intelligence Section succeeded in forcing Soviet prosecutors not to involve war crimes charges during interrogations. Ultimately, a directive from the U.S. Tri-Provincial Coordination Committee ultimately erased all possibilities for a full investigation into bacteriological warfare cases because "Japan's bacteriological warfare data are far more important than pursuing war crimes compared to [U.S.] national security." It was not until 1975 that the United States formally recognized the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare (1925 Geneva Protocol).
Although "Hidden Atrocities" has not carefully inked how Japanese bacteriological warfare materials play a valuable role for the United States, Sheldon Harris, author of "Death Factory", has frankly pointed out that the United States has been completely blinded by Ishii and others, and has overestimated the value of these materials, and "compared with the value of materials purchased from Ishii and other bacteriological warfare experts, the United States has paid a high price in honor and national character."
However, it is not only the national character and reputation of the United States that have been damaged. The suspected plague in Ningbo and Changde and the victims at the Harbin death factory never had a chance to appear on the Tokyo trial stage except for the only brief briefing by prosecutor Sutton in court — no evidence, no debate, no truth, just silence.
Jiyeman was not the first to point out that the issue of bacteriological warfare had not been tried before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and attributed the reason to the instructions of the US government. In 1983, Dutch judge Lerin of the Tokyo trial pointed out at a seminar: "The Japanese army committed the appalling war crime of bacteriological testing on prisoners. This incident was kept secret during the Tokyo trial... The United States expects the results of this criminal experiment through ugly acts and at the expense of thousands of lives... In the end, it was agreed not to bring the facts of the crime to court. Since then, scholars such as Harris and Kentaro Awaya have discussed this issue.
On November 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East held an international trial of Japan's leading Class A war criminal in World War II.
By contrast, Guiyeman's narrative does not begin from the grand perspective of state, government, and policy, but instead presents how U.S. intelligence agencies shield Japanese scientists involved in germ warfare by depicting and presenting the psychology and behavior of specific individuals—such as Willoughby, MacArthur, and others. It is not difficult for readers to understand between the lines the logic of their actions that matches the government. In other words, the concealment of atrocities cannot be dominated entirely by individuals, but depends on the actions of a collective will. The whole incident was set against the backdrop of the brief cooperation and then rapid cooling of the relationship between the two great powers in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, and the military wrangling that followed.
As the title suggests, "germ warfare" is not the only topic of the book. From chapters 3 to 8, Guiyeman devotes much of the space to the Tokyo trial itself: from the organizational structure of the court's operations to the personnel relations of the International Prosecution Service; From the collection of evidence, preparation for trial, and trial in the early stage to the trial, judgment, and aftermath after the trial. In Chapter 4, "Evidence in China," the author focuses on how Sutton and others successively obtained witnesses to the Nanjing atrocities and Japan's drug and economic aggression in China. Echoing this, Chapter VIII, "War Crimes," details how the prosecution used these witness evidence to expose the atrocities committed by the Japanese army. The two-line narrative of "revealing" and "hiding" creates a stark contrast. Perhaps the author is trying to remind readers how deliberately hidden events go to the shadows of history by writing about the atrocities that have been exposed.
In fact, not only did the Tokyo Trial not hear the bacteriological warfare case, but the BC-level war criminal trials organized by each country themselves are also difficult to find in cases related to bacteriological warfare or human bacteriological testing: the Yokohama Military Tribunal in the United States has tried vivisection of American pilots and conducted human experiments, but it did not involve bacterial tests. Moreover, the defendant in the case was a civilian doctor from Kyushu University, not a Japanese soldier. Although the Boli trial in the Soviet Union took bacteriological warfare as the main trial content, this trial was often characterized as political propaganda in the context of the Cold War in the Western context, and the facts were contrary to the truth and took a back seat. China is the largest victim of the East Asian battlefield and has endured appalling atrocities from its aggressors. According to the disclosed files, the ten Japanese war crimes tribunals established by the Nationalist Government after the war did not involve the trial of human bacteriological tests and bacteriological war crimes. In contrast, the trial of Japanese war criminals in New China in the 50s of the 20th century obtained some valuable bacteriological warfare information, which was a confession of the officers and men of the Japanese army's 1855 unit recalling the release of bacteriological and human experiments.
After two brutal wars of the last century, people have painfully hoped that international trials will prevent the recurrence of wars. By exposing war crimes, that is, punishing those who initiated wars, and even less speaking out on behalf of victims. However, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, composed of many countries, has its own inevitable contradictions, that is, the realization of universal justice and the game of interests between countries. Exchanging crimes and benefits is undoubtedly a damage to justice. Silencing the victim's voice is a further harm. At the same time, it also devalues the "educational" function entrusted to the court itself, affecting the overall understanding and self-reflection of war responsibility.
Professor Kentaro Awaya, a senior scholar of the Tokyo Trial Studies, has pointed out that there are still many uncertainties in the process of exonerating bacteriological warfare and chemical warfare, such as: "Why did the Chinese government finally agree to exonerate responsibility when it tried so hard to expose it during the war?" The book offers an explanation for this: "If Japan becomes America's bastion of democracy in Asia, then China [the Nationalist government] can only benefit from it by maintaining good-neighborly relations." In this way, China (the Nationalist government) hopes to conclude the trial of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East quickly and sign a peace treaty with Japan at an early date. Unfortunately, the Chinese literature on which this statement is based is not appropriate, which shows that the authors still have certain limitations in using Chinese literature, which also suggests that researchers in the Chinese world still have a lot of work to do in the future.
However, the use of English-language literature in "Hidden Atrocities: Bacteriological Warfare, the Tokyo Trials, and the US-Japan Deal" still makes a unique contribution to advancing the study of bacteriological warfare, and the author is very good at portraying characters - the characters of Jinan, Sutton, Morrow, Willoughby, Shiro Ishii and others are extremely vivid, and their confrontations inside and outside the courtroom are particularly vivid and intense, which makes this book very readable. Thanks to the translator, this fascinating narrative style is also reflected in the Chinese translation. Therefore, this book is not only a help and reference for domestic bacteriological warfare research, but also a good reading for ordinary readers to understand and learn this history.