Selected Documents & References

• Researching Japanese War Crimes Records – Introductory Essays (PDF) Published by the National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, 2006.
• Selected Documents on Japanese War Crimes and Japanese Biological Warfare, 1934-2006 (William H. Cunliffe)
• Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warfare Program. An overview of the organization and function of Unit 731 by Tsuneish Keiichi, Japan’s leading specialist on biological warfare.
• Japanese Imperial Army Disclosure Act of 1999. A bill introduced by US Senator Dianne Feinstein to require disclosure classified records and documents in the possession of the U.S. Government regarding chemical and biological experiments carried out by Japan during the course of the Second World War, which was approved on May 18, 2000.
• Japanese Medical Atrocities 1932-45: What, Who, How and Why? (PDF) An symposium paper presented by Takashi TSUCHIYA, Associate Professor of Osaka City University in 2005
• Medical Experiments on POWs. An brief introduction written by Sheldon H. Harris.
• Intelligence Report on Japanese Chemical Warfare (Vol. I to V), Tokyo, Japan: Office of the Chief Chemical Officer, GHQ, AFPAC, 1946 (World War II Operational Documents, Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library)
  • Volume I: general organization, policies and intentions, tactics
  • Volume II: the chemical warfare research and development work of the Japanese
  • Volume III: the manufacture of CW materials by the Japanese
  • Volume IV: Japanese chemical warfare supply system and storage installations (Part A to H)
  • Volume V: Japanese chemical warfare equipment and material
• A Preliminary Review of Studies of Japanese Biological Warfare and Unit 731 in the United States, WU, Tien-wei
• Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons: Japan. Published by Global Green USA, this paper examines the history of chemical weapons in Japan, including production, stockpiles, and especially sea-dumping of these weapons, June 2010
• War and Medicine: Exhibition panel brochure (PDF). Project exhibition in the 27th General Assembly of the Japan Medical Congress, 2007.

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Related Websites and Videos

• Unit 731 a half century of denial
• Japan’s Dirty Secret
• The forgotten victims of biological warfare
• Asian Holocaust: WMD Opium, Sex Slaves, Nanjing Massacre Pillage, Slavery, WMD Unit 731, 100, 516
• Unit 731 Lawsuit Against Japanese Government (Japanese/English)
• Unit 731 – Human experiment (History Channel)
• Unit 731 – Nightmare of Manchuria (History Channel)
• Unit 731 – The Truth of Harbin (History Channel)
• History of Biowarfare (NOVA Online)
• Research Society for 15 Years War and Japanese Medical Science and Service (Japanese)
• The Association for the Verification of Inhuman Conduct by Japanese Researchers and Health Care Professionals during the War (Japanese)
• The Museum of War Crime Evidence by Japanese Army Unit 731 (Chinese)
• Smithsonian: The Untold Story of the Vengeful Japanese Attack After the Doolittle Raid

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Books & DVDs

• Barenblatt, Daniel. A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

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  Journalist Barenblatt, an expert on Japanese biological warfare, valuably summarizes the known facts and reasonable speculations about it. Like many other aspects of science in Japan, the country's knowledge of biology was much more advanced before World War II than the rest of the world believed. Japan's biological warfare capability, carefully developed with the direct support of the emperor, had been tested upon Chinese and Western subjects and deployed operationally at the cost of as many as a million Chinese lives. After the war, cold war politics prevented war-crimes prosecution of Japanese biowar experts and may have led to the use of their talents and stocks of material in Korea (Barenblatt grants that such use has not been proven). Barenblatt's useful addition to the literature on biological warfare and WWII belongs on the same shelf as Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking (1997) and studies of the comfort girls, where it may, however, raise the hackles of Japanese still in the dark about their country's war crimes.
• Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony. Tokyo: Yenbooks, 1996. (Grade 11+)

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  This book is on Japan's wartime human experimentation. It works as a forum for victims, veterans, former doctors and secret police alike to recount their stories and their role in the horrifying activities of Unit 731, the leading Japanese unit responsible for such atrocities.
• Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932 – 45 and the American Cover up. Routledge, 1994. New York: Norton, 1994. (Grade 11+)

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  Harris presents evidence from Chinese, American and KGB archives that Japanese scientists used human beings, including Allied prisoners of war, in biological warfare (BW) research during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. (Publishers Weekly, at http://www.amazon.com/Factories-Death-S-Harris/dp/0415132061) (Grade 11+)
• Correspondent: Unit 731. Videorecording. Producer: Giselle Portenier. BBC, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1796044.stm

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  Unit 731 was a special division of the Japanese Army, a scientific and military elite. It had a huge budget specially authorized by the Emperor, to develop weapons of mass destruction that would win the war for Japan. America and Germany had their nuclear arms race. Japan put its faith in germs. This documentary covered the story of the Chinese plaintiffs in their struggle for the compensation lawsuit against the Japanese government. There were also stories of Japanese ex-soldiers who had involved in Unit 731 as well as interviews of Japanese right-wingers who blatantly denied any biological and chemical warfare experimentations and atrocities committed by Japanese imperial forces.
• Hidden Holocaust in World War II by the Japanese Army. print 1998.

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  From the front cover: "Japanese delegation to the photo exhibitions of war atrocities committed by Japanese Army (June 25 – July 7, 1998)." Contributions from Japanese testifiers including lawyers, scholars and ex-soldiers who have involved in the Lawsuit of Germ Warfare Against the Japanese Government and statements from Chinese plaintiffs (victims) are included. Appendices. (grade 10+) Available with BC ALPHA (bcalpha@alpha-canada.org)
• Unit 731: Nightmare in Manchuria. (DVD) The History Channel, 1999.

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  The documentary covers the top secret research facility called Unit 731. Japanese doctor Shiro Ishii, head of Unit 731 and his staff conducted bio-chemical weapons research that claimed the lives of untold thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands. Such deeds were not exposed and no one was ever punished for the atrocities committed at unit 731 and other similar camps, because the documents recording their grim findings were secretly sold to the United States in exchange for amnesty.

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News Reports