Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial by Jeanne Guillemin (review)

In 1931 Japan invaded Korea from the north of China and the puppet state of Manchuko was proclaimed. From 1937, Japanese aggression extended to large parts of the Chinese south; from the capital Nanjing to the important ports on the South China Sea. From there, the occupation of many areas of Southeast Asia and the island between the mainland and Australia was prepared. Without the Chinese ports, the logistically well-prepared attack on Hawai'i, Singapore and the Philippines would hardly have been possible.

As early as the second half of the 1930s, the Japanese army began building research facilities for the production and testing of biological and chemical weapons. One of the most famous places is not far from the city of Harbin and is known as Unit 731. Under the direction of Ishii Shirō, indescribably cruel human experiments were carried out here. Many civilians and prisoners of war died. Among other things the ways of spreading epidemic diseases were tested.

In recent years, the pseudo-medical experiments and their effects on the victims in the experimental facilities and far beyond have been investigated in more detail. A very interesting regional museum was built. The scientific efforts are certainly closely related to the anniversaries of the last decade, which have been celebrated much more intensively. This also includes dealing with the legal treatment of Japanese war crimes and crimes against humanity. The knowledge about the processes in Japanese secret facilities is today much more comprehensive than in the 1970s and 1980s. Not least because of the opening of the archives, especially in the United States, but also in other countries.

Jeanne Guillemin's work is a very interesting example of a file-based, historical review focusing on the discussion of Japanese biological warfare in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (imtfe). Her focus is on the work of US authorities, and here lies the originality of this work: the perspective of the most important actor of this second and last international tribunal for the prosecution of World War II crimes at the highest bureaucratic and military level (major war criminals). The author approaches US judges and prosecutors very carefully and by no means one-dimensionally. She guides the reader through the administrative jungle of the IMTFE mammoth trial in a well-structured way and along the decision lines. It's obvious that the US military was very interested in the "results" of the biological experiments. The discrepancy between legal clarification and military secrecy becomes apparent in many places. After just a few pages, it becomes clear that without the author's very good expertise in question of biological weapons, such work would not have been possible—Chapeau! Very noteworthy are the introductory chapter and large parts of the summary, which provide an extremely informative overview of the development of modern chemical and biological weapons. Without this basic information, only a few insiders would otherwise be able to access passages of the work. A really recommendable read—also independent of the actual topic.

However, it must also be noted that the author's assessment could be enhanced by examining crimes committed by the Germans during the Nazi era. During World War II, human experiments with vaccines were undertaken, especially in concentration camps in many places in Germany and in occupied countries. Although it was not to develop biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, as on the Japanese side, and more to develop vaccines for the military, for the victims under both terrorist regimes, this difference in the end (death) was of little significance. Perhaps the author's reticence to compare these war crimes stems from how the Nazi regime carried out human experiments decentrally in labour and concentration camps, while the Japanese miltary focused on Harbin...