Hidden Atrocities

Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial

Jeanne Guillemin

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231544986
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du Japon

In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied intent to bring Axis crimes to light led to both the Nuremberg trials and their counterpart in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East. Yet the Tokyo Trial failed to prosecute imperial Japanese leaders for the worst of war crimes: inhumane medical experimentation, including vivisection and open-air pathogen and chemical tests, which rivaled Nazi atrocities, as well as mass attacks using plague, anthrax, and cholera that killed thousands of Chinese civilians. In Hidden Atrocities, Jeanne Guillemin goes behind the scenes at the trial to reveal the American obstruction that denied justice to Japan's victims.

Responsibility for Japan's secret germ-warfare program, organized as Unit 731 in Harbin, China, extended to top government leaders and many respected scientists, all of whom escaped indictment. Instead, motivated by early Cold War tensions, U.S. military intelligence in Tokyo insinuated itself into the Tokyo Trial by blocking prosecution access to key witnesses and then classifying incriminating documents. Washington decision makers, supported by the American occupation leader, General Douglas MacArthur, sought to acquire Japan's biological-warfare expertise to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union, suspected of developing both biological and nuclear weapons. Ultimately, U.S. national-security goals left the victims of Unit 731 without vindication. Decades later, evidence of the Unit 731 atrocities still troubles relations between China and Japan. Guillemin's vivid account of the cover-up at the Tokyo Trial shows how without guarantees of transparency, power politics can jeopardize international justice, with persistent consequences.

1

MACARTHUR IN JAPAN

“PUNISH THE WAR CRIMINALS”

In a national broadcast on the evening of August 14, 1945, President Truman announced that the emperor of Japan had accepted the “unconditional surrender” demanded in the Potsdam Declaration. With the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 behind him, Truman spoke with the authority of the world’s only nuclear power. The official “V-J” day, Truman cautioned, would have to wait until the surrender document was officially signed. He was putting General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in charge of the event and designating him the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)—a decision cleared beforehand with the British, Chinese, and Soviets. During the prior week, Truman’s chief of staff, George C. Marshall, another five-star general of the army, had kept up a steady flow of “eyes only” communications to MacArthur, dictating the terms of Japanese surrender and details about his command.1 The situation in the Pacific was far from stable. After Nagasaki, 150 US B-29 bombers had staged massive bombing raids on the Japanese Home Islands, dropping 700 one-ton bombs on Osaka, the densely populated port, and five other cities.2 Fears persisted that Japanese soldiers and civilians were mobilized to fight to the death.

Five days after Truman’s announcement, sixteen representatives of the Imperial Army and Navy arrived at MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila. MacArthur made it a point not to meet the delegates.3 Instead he let his chief of staff, Lieutenant Richard K. Sutherland, and his head of combat intelligence, General Charles A. Willoughby, and a team of translators communicate the Washington directives. The directives emphasized the liberation of prisoners of war and the cooperation of civilian and military officials, who should remain in their positions until notified of their dismissal by MacArthur, to whom the emperor and the Japanese government were subject.4

On August 20, after a day and night of meetings, the Japanese contingent left Manila and returned to the emperor with the translated text of the Instrument of Surrender, to which Hirohito agreed. General MacArthur decided to position himself as soon as possible in Japan as the supreme commander, to show he was in charge of the Occupation. Although he first planned for a surrender ceremony on August 30, a typhoon delayed his trip for two days and the ceremony was rescheduled for September 2. A steady stream of policy directives from the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) in Washington instructed him how to proceed in bringing Allied forces in the Pacific to assemble in Tokyo. Created in 1944, this interagency body deliberated decisions on top national security issues, including Axis war crimes prosecutions, and had a special subcommittee on Far East affairs.

The authority behind SWNCC was the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the presidential advisory group organized at Marshall’s suggestion in February 1942. Led by Admiral William Leahy, the JCS members were the senior officers of the army, navy, and army air force. Its wartime purpose was to defeat the Nazis by working jointly with the United Kingdom and its service heads as the Combined Chiefs of Staff.5 President Roosevelt grew to rely greatly on the Joint Chiefs, and especially Admiral Leahy, for advice about US grand strategy.6 President Truman after him did the same, and, when the war ended, he kept Leahy, promoted to fleet admiral in 1944, as head of the JCS and a close advisor. Also on the JCS was Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in the 1930s had spent seven years assisting MacArthur in the Philippines; like MacArthur and Marshall, Eisenhower had been made a five-star general of the army late in the war.7

Just before General MacArthur left Manila for the Atsugi Air Base in Yokohama, he received more SWNCC orders regarding postsurrender policy for Japan. On route in his new C-54 transport plane Bataan II, he summarized the agenda to an aide:

First, destroy the military power. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release the political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize political power. Separate the church from the state.8

The first item, “destroy the military power,” involved gaining control over Japan’s seven million armed imperial troops scattered over an enormous area. Nor did all the imperial commanders agree with the surrender terms. On August 11 a group of army field officers in Tokyo were caught in a plot to kidnap the emperor and assassinate the delegates who had negotiated for peace. Between August 15 and August 29 a spasm of more failed coups, arrests, suicides, and protests rocked Tokyo. In the aftermath, the government’s army minister and a rear admiral committed suicide.

Through the emperor’s intervention, the chaos ended in time for MacArthur’s arrival.9 As had been typical of him throughout the war, the general always wanted to be first on shore, no matter what the danger.10 On this day a contingent of photographers he brought with him captured the historic image of the supreme commander in his trademark sunglasses, a corncob pipe clenched between his teeth, wearing a khaki uniform and gold-braid cap.

Allied security in and around Tokyo was necessarily high. The Eighth Army had secured Atsugi Air Base with 7,500 US troops; the US Third Fleet, under Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the British Far East Fleet had converged at ports near Tokyo Bay. US Marines joined two parachute regiments to control the docks of Yokohama and nearby Yokosuka. A small contingent from the Royal Australian Navy took over three fortresses at the entrance to Tokyo Bay, where they hoisted a Union Jack. The battleship Missouri was moored in the bay. In deference to Admiral Nimitz and his essential contribution to Japan’s defeat, President Truman had given firm orders that the surrender ceremony would take place on its deck and outlined the details of the ceremony.11

Without incident, MacArthur went from Atsugi to his temporary headquarters in Yokohama, where he was put up at the New Grand Hotel and established an advanced base at the Customs Building. Then and on his later entrance into Tokyo, his cavalcade passed quiet crowds of destitute civilians and a flattened landscape of ashes and the ruins of factories.

On September 2, on the deck of the Missouri, MacArthur officiated at the historic signing of the Instrument of Surrender. With over two hundred Allied vessels anchored nearby, four destroyers were kept busy shuttling guests to the ceremony. Dozens of reporters were positioned on scaffolding alongside the veranda deck (which the crew called “the surrender deck”). Only one Japanese photographer was allowed, kept under armed guard lest he have suicidal kamikaze impulses.12 On the deck, a large table with two chairs had been set up; on the table were the documents to be signed (one copy for the Japanese, one for the Allies).

At 9:00 a.m., General MacArthur and representatives from the nine Allied nations (Australia, Britain, Canada, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, and the United States) assembled, along with their staffs and guards. Thanks to MacArthur, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand officials were allowed to sign individually rather than cede their authority to the British.

In time to meet the Allied representatives, an eleven-person Japanese retinue had been ferried from the mainland and carefully escorted up to the deck. Leading them was Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, dressed in a top hat, white gloves, a morning coat, and striped trousers. Shigemitsu, who had lost a leg in a Korean terrorist attack in 1932, leaned awkwardly on a cane. At his side, in full dress uniform, peaked cap, and riding boots, was General Umezu Yoshijiro, known to his troops as the “Ivory Mask” for his implacable demeanor.13 In 1944 Umezu had risen from commander of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria (where he oversaw Unit 731) to chief of the Imperial Army General Staff.

Standing at a microphone, General MacArthur, his hands shaking slightly, began the ceremony by reading his speech. Its conclusion resounded with postwar idealism: “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish—for freedom, tolerance and justice.”14

Foreign Minister Shigemitsu signed Japan’s surrender on behalf of the imperial government and was followed by General Umezu, who signed for the Imperial General Headquarters. General MacArthur signed next as the supreme commander. After MacArthur, Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the commander of the Pacific navy, signed for the United States. General Xu Yongchang, the Chinese chief of general staff, was first among the Allies to sign after Nimitz. The representatives of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the other parties followed in order.15

As the ceremony ended, nearly two thousand B-29 bombers and navy fighters flew in formation over the harbor, a symbol of the victors’ military might. Nonetheless, a Japanese diplomat who witnessed the proceedings credited MacArthur with creating “an altar of peace” on the Missouri’s narrow quarter deck.16

Soon after the surrender ceremony, MacArthur was taken on a tour of the Tokyo Bay area, which had been leveled by US bombing raids. His immediate conclusion was that the war had brought Japan near to economic and industrial collapse, making it unable to wage war. Assured by General Umezu that Japan’s 2.25 million soldiers in the Home Islands would be demobilized by October 10, MacArthur halved the estimated number of regular army troops needed for the Occupation, from 400,000 to 200,000. He felt, and correctly so, that the Eighth Army, set to add between 100,000 and 130,000 in the next several weeks, would suffice.17 That he announced this decision to the press before consulting Washington raised hackles at the White House, where President Truman and his military advisors were already worried over the postwar drop in soldier recruitment.18 Even more troublesome was the thought that MacArthur’s temperamental resistance to Washington, a problem during his wartime command, would undermine US goals for the Occupation.

On September 8 MacArthur moved to the refurbished US embassy in Tokyo, with his wife, Jean, and young son, Arthur. At a private ceremony with an honor guard, the same American flag that had flown over the White House when Pearl Harbor was attacked was raised over the compound.19 MacArthur’s temporary headquarters remained a large, barracks-like room in the Customs Building in Yokohama. There, on September 12, he announced to an assembly of army and navy officers and a team from the War Crimes Office in Washington that he envisioned prosecution of Japanese war criminals in both the major tribunal and minor trials: “The Trials must be conducted in the full light of publicity. They must be fair and free from vengeance or politics. They must be examples to the world of law and justice. We shall be criticized but we shall strive for the verdict of history.”20

Looking for Biological Weapons

Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, a specialist in bacteriology from the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service, was in the third jeep behind MacArthur in the army cavalcade that brought the SCAP contingent to Tokyo.21 Age 35, he was head of an infectious disease research division at Camp Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, the center of the secret US biological warfare program, and he was well known to military intelligence in Washington.22

Months before, General MacArthur with Lieutenant Sutherland had laid the groundwork for incorporating US scientists like Sanders into the final push for victory over Japan.23 They began with the creation of the Pacific Branch of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (PBOSRD), an offshoot of the Washington OSRD, which oversaw both the Manhattan Project and the US biological warfare program. Physicist Karl T. Compton, president of MIT and also the head of OSRD field operations in Washington, was appointed its leader. At first the idea was to mobilize scientific assistance for the final assault on Japan, with the recruitment of several hundred engineers and 300 tons of special laboratory equipment to be sent to Manila, where PBSORD would provide “an advanced echelon of scientific ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Statement
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue: General Ishii and Germ Warfare
• Introduction: Lasting Peace and the Protection of Civilians
• 1. MacArthur in Japan: “Punish the War Criminals”
• 2. Spoils of War: Secret Japanese Biological Science
• 3. International Prosecution Section: Toward the “Swift and Simple Trial”
• 4. The Investigation for Evidence in China
• 5. The Best Witnesses
• 6. Tokyo: The Rush to Trial
• 7. The Trial Begins
• 8. The Atrocities
• 9. The Soviet Division Versus US Military Intelligence
• 10. National Security Versus Medical Ethics
• 11. Open and Closed Trials
• Epilogue: The Fallout
• Acknowledgments
• Source Notes
• Acronyms
• Principal Characters
• Notes
• Index