The germ weapons researched and developed by unit 731 of the Japanese army invading China are like a fierce tiger. They used the blood of Chinese to make tiger food, and raised the evil tiger of the germ weapon, all in order to devour the lives of more Chinese compatriots and create more and more tragic disasters for Chinese compatriots, so as to create a bloody road for their so-called "paradise of the king's road"!
After nearly 10 years of research and accumulation, the Japanese army's bacteriological weapons have stepped out of the door of the laboratory and pushed onto the chamber of the actual battle, such as a knife out of the sheath, like an arrow on the string.
At that time, Ishii Shiro triumphantly commented to himself: "The efficacy of various bacteria has been tested in the laboratory and in the wild with living people." The germ weapon is one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the Kwantung Army. Unit 731 was well prepared to directly attack enemy forces with a large number of deadly bacteria if necessary, and to conduct bacteriological warfare against cities behind enemy lines with aircraft. ”
Regarding how to "move", Ishii believes: "Spreading bacteria from the plane is as effective as releasing poisonous gas. Much more effective is the throwing of bacteria with vectors, i.e. with insects, especially fleas. Fleas are the most vital insects. After the fleas are infected with plague, the plague bacteria stored in the flea body can smoothly fall to the ground with the fleas. ”
Former commander of the Kwantung Army, Ozo Yamada, confessed during his trial in Burleigh: "When it was sown from the plane, bacteria were packed in a special bomb or sown by a special device on the plane. When applied directly on the ground, bacteria are used to contaminate reservoirs, pastures and livestock. ”
Yamada also confessed: "At the request of the General Staff Headquarters, the Japanese Army Ministry has guaranteed that Units 731 and 100 will use all necessary equipment, raw materials and materials. The special germ units, which had been established on the basis of Units 731 and 100 and their detachments, were placed under the command of the commanders of the various fronts and the commanders of the various corps. ”
In this way, the germ warfare plans that would later massacre Chinese on a larger scale were carried out one after another in a conspiracy between the Japanese General Staff Headquarters, the Kwantung Army Command, and Ishii Shiro's Unit 731, as well as other germ units.
The earliest bloody case of the Japanese army using aircraft to drop bacteria was the plague war carried out in the autumn and winter of 1940 in ningbo, Quxian, Jinhua, Yiwu and Dongyang in the Zhejiang region. This operation, known as the "First Expedition" by the 731 members, lasted for more than 4 months.
Ningbo was the only deep-water port in China at that time to receive aid from overseas, which could dock ships of 10,000 tons. In order to cut off our sea traffic supply line, the Japanese army urgently needed to blockade the port. If there is a plague epidemic in this area, so that foreign ships do not dare to enter the port, will it not be naturally blocked?
In July of that year, Ishii Shiro, as the commander-in-chief, led 40 of his bacteriological combat cadres to the Central China Theater, and together with the 1644 unit in Nanjing and the personnel sent by the Japanese 22nd Division in Hangzhou, they made six successive dispatches to drop bacteria and bacterial pollutants from the plane into the water sources and urban residential areas around Ningbo and Jinhua.
Probably to invite merit and rewards, but also to commemorate their first battle, Ishii Shiro also made a documentary recording of this experience in the Zhejiang operation, and whenever the superior came to visit the 731 Unit Bungalow station, he would broadcast it in the secret room to show off his "merits".
Former Unit 731 Education Minister Xi Junying disclosed the contents of the film during the trial in Boli. "What was first staged on the screen was how the vessels containing the plague-infected fleas were placed under the fuselage, and then how the spreaders were placed on the wings of the aircraft," he said. Four or five people got on the plane, and the plane flew into the air, toward the enemy side. Fly over the enemy, you can see the Chinese army moving, you can see the scene in the Chinese village. Then a puff of smoke broke away from the plane and fell downwards, which was a plague fleas scattered on the heads of the enemy troops. Then the subtitle "Strong plague epidemic in Ningbo" appeared on the screen.
This may serve as one of the physical evidence of the crimes committed by the members of 731.
However, the most terrifying plots and scenes are just obscured by them. The devils were triumphant and relaxed. The process on the screen hides the unbearable blood of the Chinese outside the picture due to the plague.
There were many reports of bacterial warfare in Ningbo that year, but there were also places where there were inconsistencies in time and death toll.
According to a 1994 investigation by Huang Ketai and others, author of "The Terrible Germ Warfare - Historical Facts of the 1940 Ningbo Plague", the situation was as follows: In the early morning of October 27 of that year, the sky was gloomy, and a Japanese monoplane invaded the skies over Ningbo and distributed leaflets. The leaflet reads: "Chongqing (then the seat of the Kuomintang central government) was in the midst of a famine and the people were not living, while Japan had plenty of food and clothing, and there was still surplus grain to help you." At about 2 p.m., the Japanese planes once again dropped wheat and other grains over the aircraft, and after the Japanese planes passed, the residents found many strange red fleas on the ground. Later, I learned that this was the flea that the Japanese army specialized in spreading the plague.
Two days later, it was discovered that someone had contracted the plague. By 3 November, 16 had died, and seven more the following day. A day later, another 20 people died.
For a time, the cries of mourning came and went, and people in mourning clothes abounded, and people were terrified. On the night after the Japanese poisoning, it rained, washing wheat grains and disease fleas off the roof and floating on the ground, which in turn exacerbated the spread of the epidemic. The death toll soon increased to 106, with 45 people from 12 families dying. The vast majority of these dead were buried deep underground in Laolong Bay on the southern outskirts.
Zhong Hui, who worked in the Ningbo Epidemic Prevention Committee at that time, said: "When I went to the epidemic area, I wore white flea suits and tarpaulin boots, and climbed a lot of red and red fleas that had never been seen before on my lower body, and I found that the courtyard that fell the most wheat had the most deaths, like Baochangxiang Clothing Store, 14 people died, Yuantai Hotel died 6 people, and these two places had the most wheat." ”
Jiang Xincai, the only survivor of Bao Changxiang's clothing store and the son of the owner Jiang Abao, will never forget the tragic scene at that time: "At the beginning, I only knew that two employees of the nearby Tongshun Tizhuang suddenly died violently. Then I saw a fishmonger in Donghou Street with three families dying violently. They all developed symptoms such as high fever, and then my father, stepmother and brother were also admitted to the hospital due to their serious illness, and then died and were buried in Lao Long Bay. There were 15 people in the store, 14 people died violently, and I was the only one who escaped. ”
Of the 99 plague patients admitted to the isolation hospital at the time, only two were rescued.
John Powell, an American journalist who was in Ningbo, was shocked to see the tragic situation and said: "The germ warfare of the Japanese army has caused a large number of Chinese to die like ants!" ”
The plague in Ningbo caused a shock to the Kuomintang government, which organized and carried out a series of epidemic prevention and treatment work, blockaded the epidemic area, established an isolation hospital, disinfected and exterminated rats, and so on.
In order to completely eradicate the source of the epidemic, on the evening of November 30, the authorities decided to burn all the houses in the infected area of Kaiming Street. At 7 p.m., the epidemic area began to set fire at each fire point at the same time, and after 4 hours, 115 households and 137 houses and all buildings in the 5,000-square-meter epidemic area were burned down, and more than 500 people lost their homes, leaving a rubble ruin, which was later called the "plague field".
Almost at the same time as Ningbo suffered, Quxian, Jinhua, Dongyang and Yiwu were also attacked by the 731 germ warfare unit, and the plague was raging and people were killed like ants.
October 4, 1940, was the Day of Suffering in Qu County. At about 9 a.m. on this day, a Japanese plane flew over Quxian county and sowed wheat, millet grains and rag strips mixed with fleas. Two bags of fleas were picked up in the goldfish tank of Wang Xuelin's family in Chaijia Lane.
On November 12, Wu Shiying's 8-year-old daughter in Chai Jia Lane and Huang Liao, a resident of West Street in the county, first developed symptoms of plague and died on the 15th and 17th respectively. From 12 November to 5 December, 21 plague patients were found in 24 days, all of whom died.
In early February 1941, there was another plague in Emperor Lane in the urban area, and it increased day by day, reaching a peak in May, slowing down after June, and gradually stopping in December. There were 281 cases and 274 deaths.
The whole process of the overview began on October 4, 1940, when the Japanese army sowed the plague germs over Quxian County, and the plagued the people of Quxian County, until more than two years after the surrender of Japan in 1948, the torture of the plague was over.
During this period, except for 1942 and 1944, when there were no case reports due to the unclear epidemic, in a period of 6 years, 328 cases of plague occurred, 318 deaths, and the mortality rate was more than 90%.
Moreover, the plague epidemic in Quxian county also spread to Longyou, Lanxi, Shangrao and other places. Quxian County, which had never had a record of plague before, became the hardest hit area of the plague for a while.
The plague in Jinhua began on December 27, 1940. Chen Wanli, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Health Department of the Kuomintang, and others went to Qu County to inspect the prevention and control of plague, and when they passed through Jinhua, they saw an enemy plane in the sky spreading white objects, and a wisp of white mist appeared.
On the 29th, Chen Wanli arrived in Quxian County, and someone told him that on the 28th, two more enemy planes cast white smoke over Jinhua, and there were caviar-like particles falling, and asked him to send someone to Jinhua to check it. Chen Wanli immediately sent Wu Changfeng, an inspector of the Provincial Health Department in Quxian County, to Jinhua, and that night he learned that the enemy plane was spreading plague bacteria.
Yiwu, Dongyang and other places are also the victims of the Japanese army's germ warfare.
From October 2, 1941 to May 1942, plague broke out in Yiwu North City Gate and other places. The epidemic spread all the way to the Xujieling area, and people continued to die.
Liu Zongxin, the captain of the Red Cross 312 team, died of infection by treating plague patients. In order to prevent the epidemic, more than 20 houses in Suxi Town were burned, and 138 people died in Yiwu this time. The plague in Dongyang, according to the investigation of Li Chufan and others, was transmitted from Yiwu, began in the village of Badantou, and then spread to Weishan, Geshan and other villages. 95 people were infected and 92 died.
Compatriots have become unjust souls. This is another page of blood-sprinkled history, a page of Chinese the sadness of dying alive under the devil's "germ butcher's knife"!