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Biological Weapons Attacks Had Been Identified Early in Zhejiang Province
Shortly after they occurred in 1940, biological weapons attacks against Chinese civilians in Zhejiang province had been scientifically confirmed. The Chinese government had provided this evidence to Allied governments, and the evidence had been taken seriously by the US. In 1941, the US entered the war against Japan and China became a US ally. In 1942 President Roosevelt warned Japan to stop using “poison gas or other outlawed weapons” against China, or risk US retaliation in kind.
The evidence of the Japanese BW attacks was convincing because China had created a national epidemic investigation and control service that was unexcelled in the world. Founded in Imperial times and headed by Wu Lein-Teh, a Cambridge-trained Chinese physician, it employed both Chinese and European doctors who had been trained at the most prestigious western universities. The Chinese epidemic control workers were recognized as world authorities. For instance, Wu Lein-Teh and Austrian trained Robert Pollitzer co-authored the standard textbooks in the on Cholera and Plague control in the 1930s. After Dr Wu’s retirement, the World Health Organization asked Dr Pollizter to author the revised standard texts in the 1950s.
Dr Pollitzer personally investigated several plague outbreaks in China in the 1940s and determined that they had been caused by Japanese BW attacks. These occurred in both Zhejiang and Hunan provinces. His assessment was not based upon hunches nor was it created for wartime propaganda. Plague (as we will use it here) is a specific disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, and typically in its “bubonic” form, spread by the bite of rat fleas. It is a disease that occurs in limited geographic areas, and in a country as large as China, there are areas where it commonly occurs, areas where it sometimes can spread in epidemics, and areas where it has never occurred in the thousands of years of recorded Chinese history. Pollitzer knew these areas well, and had spent his entire career of over 25 years in studying the natural outbreaks of plague that occurred in China from time to time. In the 1940s plague appeared where it had previously been unknown, immediately following strange attacks by a single Japanese aircraft that dropped no bombs, but only grain and fleas. Moreover, Politzer knew that when plague naturally spreads to new areas, it always first causes disease in the local rat population, and only after rats begin dying in large numbers, does it spread to people. In these strange 1940s epidemics in China, it was people who first developed the plague, and only months later did it appear in rats. It was like no natural plague epidemic he had ever seen, and he was the world’s leading expert in plague. Moreover, it was entirely consistent with what had been directly observed by eyewitnesses: a deliberate attack delivered by air-dropping fleas already infected with plague bacteria. It was obviously a biological attack, and he stated so without reservation in his official report. This report was circulated to Allied governments.
Dr Pollitzer’s assessment that these epidemics were biological attacks was immediately recognized as valid by the leading plague expert in the United States, Dr KF Meyer, who on this information alone convinced the US Navy to mount a massive defensive effort to protect US troops against a Japanese plague attack when fighting Japan in the Pacific. For example, every US Marine storming the beaches of Iwo Jima had been vaccinated against plague, each had his uniform impregnated with insect repellant to protect against fleas, and the island was saturated with DDT as soon as planes could fly low enough to spray it. This was despite the fact that plague had never been reported from this or any island in the Iwo Jima group.
The Japanese BW Program was Quickly Covered Up in the West
The Japanese biological attacks were quickly forgotten after the Japanese surrender. In a disgraceful agreement with the Japanese BW war criminals, the US offered immunity from war crimes prosecution in exchange for the scientific data the Japanese had collected from murdering Chinese citizens, both in the laboratory and in field tests. The official US and Japanese policy became one of denying the existence of the Japanese BW program. The large-scale epidemics that had occurred in the 1940s in China were explained as the natural result of the disruptions of war.
In 1949 confessions of Japanese BW workers and a description of the Japanese BW program and its crimes appeared in a Soviet war crimes trial. However, the West dismissed this evidence as false communist propaganda. Repeating the story of the Japanese BW attacks became a disloyal act. Usually, even in scientific papers dealing with plague, the BW attacks in China were simply ignored.
The Proof of the Japanese BW Program Was Re-Discovered in the 1980s
In the late 1980s and 1990s, research by Dr Sheldon H Harris was able to prove that Imperial Japan had indeed embarked upon a major biological weapons program during World War II. However, the extent of the actual use of its biological weapons was unclear. Documents in US archives described mainly laboratory experiments that murdered captives, but gave little information about field tests or the outright use of biological weapons against a civilian population. Freely given confessions of Japanese veterans during this time offered more data: overt use of BW weapons in the field were identified as early as 1939 against the Soviets, and a detailed diary describing the 1942 Zhejiang BW campaign was discovered. But the impact of these attacks was uncertain: the Japanese usually evacuated after contaminating an area, and so had little scientific data of the effects.
The Full Extent of the BW Attacks in China was Unknown
The early attacks with plague and fleas were small-scale tests. Only a few dozen plague cases had been directly identified by Dr Pollitzer and the other Chinese workers immediately after the BW attacks, although hundreds of cases were to follow in some areas where plague became established in the local rat populations. The true extent of the suffering caused by the Japanese BW attacks in the 1942 Zhejiang “five pathogens” campaign had not been investigated in detail.
In examining this question, problems arise. Certainly war does make natural epidemics worse. We know from confessions and Japanese diaries that the Japanese spread several types of BW germs along with plague in Zhejiang province in 1942. Yet most of these germs were for common water-borne gastrointestinal diseases like Cholera, Dysentery and Typhoid fever. These diseases, unlike plague, were already present in this region of China. Can we say for certain that the epidemics of these diseases were really caused by the Japanese BW attacks?
This question resolves itself into the questions: Besides the plague outbreaks, are there other unmistakable markers of a true, successful biological weapon attacks?
This brings us to the rotten leg villages.
Japan Had a Large BW Program
The story of the rotten leg villages is important because it demonstrates conclusively that the Japanese did indeed deliberately spread biological agents as a weapon directed against both the military forces and the civilian population of China. It also shows that this effort was not simply a limited “field test”, but was intended to be a weapon of mass destruction directed against the population of an entire province. Indeed, it shows that this effort was successful, and resulted in tens of thousands of cases of severe illness, and thousands or even tens of thousands of deaths.
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, it had supported a large, well funded biological weapons program for nearly 10 years. Japan had already used biological weapons against the Russians in a brief border war with the Soviet Union in 1939. The results of this attack had been far from satisfactory: the Japanese were soundly routed by the Soviet troops, and the numbers of casualties caused by “backfire” of BW weapons sickened and killed many Japanese troops. In 1940 and 1941 Japan again tested a BW weapon, dropping fleas infected with plague bacteria into several Chinese cities that resisted the Japanese army’s advance in China. Some were responsible for causing plague outbreaks in the city populace, but again their effects were not decisive: the cities remained under Chinese control and the very effective Chinese epidemic control service instituted public health efforts that controlled the plague outbreaks and limited their spread. These are the attacks reported by Pollitzer.
The American “Hornet” Raid Makes Japan Fear the Zhejiang Airfields
In April of 1942 an event occurred that rocked Japan’s military and civilian leadership, and was to give the Japanese biological weapons program a mandate to show what it could do in a large scale offensive. On April 18, 1942, sixteen American B-25 bombers took off from the US aircraft carrier Hornet off the Japanese coast, and bombed military targets in Tokyo and several other Japanese cites. They continued to Chinese-controlled Zhejiang province where their plan was to land, refuel, and provide air support for the Chinese army there. In reality, they were unable to reach their airfields, and the American aircrews were forced to bail out and allow the planes to crash. Many of those landing in Japanese-held areas were protected by the Chinese population, and spirited to safety. Nearly all the Americans survived and returned home. It was, perhaps, the high point in Chinese-American relations for the last 100 years.
While Americans tend to think of this raid as a brave symbolic striking back, useful to boost sagging US morale after the disaster of Pearl Harbor, however it changed Japanese military thinking radically. The implications of this raid were very alarming to the Japanese high command. The attack showed that American aircraft carriers based in the Hawaiian Islands could approach the Japanese home islands. The airfields in Zhejiang province could allow American land-based aircraft to attack shipping in the Japanese “private lake” of the China Sea, threatening the vital lifelines of oil and rubber from the newly captured Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Long-range American heavy bombers, already on their way to China, could reach the Japanese home islands from Zhejiang. The Japanese, who had already successfully completed their entire war plan, decided that they needed to expand their perimeter of defense even further. This meant attacking the Hawaiian Islands and Australia, and pushing further into southern China to neutralize the Zhejiang airfields.
Japan Chooses to Use Biological Weapons in War: The “Six Pathogens” Attack on Zhejiang Province in 1942
Such an expansion taxed the resources of the Japanese military, already spread thin occupying parts of China and its newly conquered territories in Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Malaya and scattered Pacific Islands. First priority in men and materials was given to forces designated to attack the American and British forces. The Japanese were not really interested in occupying more Chinese territory, and tying up needed troops in an army of occupation. Its goal in Zhejiang was simply to deny use of the airfields and railway to US aircraft. The decision was made, therefore, not to occupy Zhejiang, but rather to advance, destroy the airfields and the railroad, and then withdraw, using biological weapons to make the area uninhabitable, thus denying use of the airfields to the enemies of Japan without the necessity of occupying the territory. It was to be a “biological scorched earth” policy.
This is what they proceeded to do. In the summer of 1942 Japanese columns advanced through the heart of Zhejiang Province along the rail line, capturing and destroying the airfields. The Chinese army withdrew, and offered little resistance. The Japanese did not plan to stay, and they were not prepared to mount a sustained military campaign: after the war US intelligence officers found that they had brought only enough ammunition for a single serious engagement. After securing the entire rail line, they destroyed all the rolling stock and locomotives, and retreated, destroying the track itself. While they retreated, they spread a variety of biological weapons in the villages they vacated, typically contaminating wells and irrigation water, and leaving contaminated food behind. This is documented in the diary of Imoto, a high-ranking Japanese officer in charge of the program, in what he refers to as the “six pathogens” campaign.
The Effects of the “Six Pathogens” Campaign on the Chinese Population in Zhejiang Province
There is no doubt that a series of unusual and extensive epidemics significantly depopulated areas of Zhejiang province in the late summer and fall of 1942, after the Japanese withdrawal. Immediately upon returning to the villages and towns that the Japanese had vacated, the Chinese populace was struck by a variety of epidemics that wiped out entire families and even entire villages. The death records of 1942 were preserved, and are available now, and clearly document this dying on a person by person, day by day, disease by disease basis. Survivors are yet living who remember the events. The Chinese have gathered this data, and examined and validated it quite rigorously.
How We Gather Medical Proof of BW Attacks in the Past
I am a medical historian, and my special interest is the study of epidemics that have occurred in the past. I was trained as a microbiologist and pathologist, and I apply these skills to analyze the historical accounts of epidemics. If I suspect that an epidemic might be a BW attack, some police skills are necessary. For instance, I must look for a motive, method and opportunity for the BW attack.
Sometimes it is easy to characterize which specific disease caused an epidemic that occurred in the past, and that it was a BW attack. The plague epidemics in China are easy, because the world’s experts in plague were present, on the ground in China, studying them, and full reports are available. In those that were BW attacks, there are the expert’s scientific studies and accounts by eyewitnesses describing the attacks. Documentation is available describing the Japanese BW program’s production of the plague flea BW weapon. Confessions and diaries of the Japanese who perpetrated these acts confirm they were deliberate BW attacks.
But usually it is more difficult, even to determine what disease caused an epidemic, because many diseases have similar symptoms, such as fever, nausea, diarrhea, cough, or rash. In these cases it is hard to identify a specific disease with certainty, particularly if all that is available are accounts from witnesses without medical training.
Sometimes it is possible to identify a disease from a layman’s description. Mumps is such a disease. An epidemic with few or no deaths that causes swelling of the cheeks (and sometimes the testicles in males) occurs in virtually no other disease. Similarly, bubonic plague, a highly lethal disease causing very large, painful, draining swellings in the groin or armpits can also be recognized from anyone’s description.
In March of 2002 in Zhejiang, we were lucky. We interviewed perhaps two or three dozen survivors and family members of victims, and were told the story of the “Rotten Leg” outbreak that began in 1942. Their stories were all similar, and from them we could identify two diseases from the descriptions alone, and these diseases indicate a BW attack. This book increases the total to nearly 150.
The “Rotten Leg” Diseases
The diseases that gave the “rotten leg” villages their name are two diseases we can identify from their descriptions alone. One is cutaneous anthrax, and the other is called glanders. Both of these are clearly the result of a biological weapons attack.
Cutaneous Anthrax
Anthrax has become more widely known since the US Postal outbreak of 2001, but it is important to realize that anthrax causes several types of disease. The disease it caused in Zhejiang in 1942 was cutaneous anthrax, not the respiratory form that killed the postal workers in 2001.
Cutaneous anthrax occurs when anthrax spores are introduced into a cut or abrasion. A small pimple or blister forms first, but it rapidly breaks open and becomes a blackened ulcer, an open sore. This black ulcer spreads, and typically the surrounding tissue becomes severely swollen, often reaching deforming size. Quite remarkably, considering the size of the ulcer and the swelling, the patient feels almost no pain. The ulcer involves mainly the skin, and the underlying muscle and bone are usually spared. If the infection begins on the face, swelling is the most important feature. Before antibiotics offered a quick, sure cure, about 50% of people died when the anthrax germs spread to the bloodstream and killed by overwhelming infection. The other 50% survived and the swelling receded and the ulcer healed, usually without a scar.
Occupational Cutaneous Anthrax
We know about cutaneous anthrax from cases that occurred in workers who handled anthrax-contaminated animal hides or hair and wool. In these occupational cases the primary lesions were usually on the hands or arms, or on the head and neck. It would either kill the patient or the patient would recover in a month or so. By itself, cutaneous anthrax does not form long-lasting ulcers nor chronically draining sores. No “chronic” cases of anthrax reported in the medical literature from the hundreds of occupational cases that occurred in workers who developed cutaneous anthrax. But it must be remembered that these occupational cases were not exposed to multiple BW bacteria, nor did they need to continue to work in fields where many other bacteria might also infect the open anthrax ulcer.
Cutaneous Anthrax in the Rotten Leg Villages
The death records of Zhejiang identify many deaths during and after 1942 as being caused by “black gangrene”, or anthrax. Although a portion of these represents glanders, as we will discuss below, many are certainly cutaneous anthrax. Testimony of survivors of “rotten leg” in 1942 include many who report they felt little or no pain, developed black ulcers and marked swelling, and some who survived with minimal scaring.
The cutaneous anthrax that occurred in Zhejiang in 1942 is a little different from occupational cutaneous anthrax. Zhejiang is a fertile, low-lying area with many irrigated fields. In the BW attack against Zhejiang the Japanese contaminated wells and water sources. In most Zhejiang most cutaneous anthrax cases occurred on the legs, when abrasions from farm work in irrigated fields would get infected by the contaminating anthrax spores from the Japanese BW release. The Zhejiang cutaneous anthrax cases often developed chronic, draining ulcers. These were almost certainly the result of infection by a second bacteria, either the glanders bacteria, as discussed below, or other germs from the soil in the fields.
The 1942 Zhejiang cutaneous anthrax outbreak was not natural. Human cutaneous anthrax does not spread from human to human. Human cutaneous anthrax cases occur only when humans are directly exposed to animals that died of anthrax, or products (such as hides and hair or wool) from animals that have died of anthrax. Natural anthrax is a disease of livestock, and where it occurs naturally it recurs year after year, and is well known. It was unknown in Zhejiang before the 1942 Japanese BW attack.
Livestock were not abundant in Zhejiang in 1942, and after the 1942 Japanese BW attack, many livestock in Zhejiang died suddenly, at the same time that the human rotten leg epidemic began. Both of these outbreaks are certainly due to the anthrax spread by the Japanese. Each human case must originate from a separate exposure to anthrax spores in the environment, but only a handful of the rotten leg cases had contact with livestock that died. So many human cases clustered in time and location in Zhejiang in 1942 is indicative of widespread deliberate contamination.
The Japanese had Developed Anthrax as a Biological Weapon
The cutaneous anthrax outbreak in Zhejiang in 1942 is clearly the result of a BW attack. Japan had studied anthrax as a BW weapon at their laboratory facilities at Unit 731 and elsewhere, murdering human captives in horrific “experiments.” They produced special bombs for anthrax, and tested them on human captives in field tests. They produced anthrax in industrial quantities, suitable for making military attacks. Recently uncovered documents of the Japanese Imperial Army describe BW materials spread to cause victims legs to “become swollen and rotten.” We know from other Japanese sources that anthrax was sent from the Japanese BW factories to Zhejiang for the 1942 BW attack.
Glanders
I had never heard of glanders before I met Professor Harris and began studying the Japanese BW program. In many ways glanders in 1942 was like Smallpox is today, an extinct disease whose only importance is as a biological weapon. Glanders had been the most important fatal disease of horses since ancient times. Before motor vehicles replaced horses in cities, it was a major problem in North America and Europe. Men exposed to horses sick with glanders, such as stablemen and veterinarians, could also develop glanders and die. In the late 1890s a test was developed to determine if a horse was infected. In wealthy countries in Europe and North America, all such infected horses were systematically destroyed by law, and by 1930 the disease was extinct in horses in those countries. With the elimination of glanders in horses, all human cases ceased in the West. Glanders was dropped from the standard textbooks of infectious diseases. The most recent book on glanders had been published in 1906.
In China, a mild form of glanders was fairly common among the horses, but it did not cause illness in people in China. The Chief Veterinarian of the US Army in China during World War II stated that although they frequently encountered cases of glanders among their animals, he had never seen a single case in the many soldiers and civilians who were exposed to these animals.
The Japanese Developed Glanders as a BW Weapon
Dr Harris mentioned glanders was studied by the Japanese as a biological weapon, and produced evidence that the Japanese had killed many captives with glanders to study how it killed humans. He told me it was developed as a major weapon, at both Unit 731, where it was developed to kill humans, and at Unit 100, where it was developed to kill horses. Glanders had been grown in industrial quantities, suitable for making large-scale attacks.
Glanders made a dangerous biological weapon. While horses that were sick with it were only mildly dangerous to humans, the bacteriological cultures grown in the laboratory were highly dangerous. In fact, in the West glanders was the leading cause of fatal infections of laboratory workers before it was eradicated. In 1944 the US army studied glanders at Ft Detrick, and within weeks every member of the laboratory where it was kept had developed glanders. Even today, with modern precautions, it caused a laboratory infection at Ft Detrick. Moreover, it was a hardy microbe. In nature it spread from horse to horse largely through watering troughs contaminated with germs from the horses noses, and the germ could survive for months in such troughs. It was a natural choice to contaminate wells or still bodies of water like rice fields and irrigation channels.
The fact that glanders was deadly to both horses and humans was a military advantage to the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese war. Indeed, the glanders bacteria used in Zhejiang in 1942 may have come from the veterinary BW unit (Unit 100) rather than the human BW laboratory (unit 731). Motor vehicles were few and gasoline scarce in the Chinese army. Horses or mules carried much of the ammunition and supplies. Among horses glanders is both highly fatal and highly contagious. Before it was controlled in Europe and North America, it was the scourge of military horses. In crowded military stables it would spread rapidly and kill all of the cavalry and transport horses.
When glanders broke out in the horses of a particular military unit, the only choice was to kill all the horses of that unit immediately, to avoid the disease spreading through the entire army’s horses. We will see that is exactly what happened when the Chinese army returned to the Zhejiang villages. So glanders was a particularly effective anti-animal biological weapon. A single case would either spread and kill all the other horses in the unit from the disease, or if identified by a veterinarian, it would cause the other horses in the unit to be killed to stop the outbreak.
In addition, stables and watering troughs remained contaminated and dangerous for months, and would infect new, healthy horses. In the Zhejiang campaign, where the aim was to deny the use of the airfields to the Americans, this meant that even if the airfields were rebuilt, there was no way to supply them: the railroad was destroyed, and even horse and mule transport was interrupted by the glanders contamination in the area.
Glanders was an ideal agent to spread as the Japanese retreated from Zhejiang in the late summer of 1942.