Germ Warfare Timeline
Published: Aug. 13, 1995
· 1925 -- Geneva Convention governing wartime conduct bans biological weapons. Japan
refuses to approve treaty.
· 1932 -- Japanese troops invade Manchuria. Shiro Ishii, a physician and army officer
who was intrigued by germ warfare, begins preliminary experiments.
· 1936 -- Unit 731, a biological-warfare unit disguised as a water-purification unit,
is formed. Ishii builds huge compound -- more than 150 buildings over six square
kilometers -- outside the city of Harbin. Some 9,000 test subjects, which Ishii and
his peers called ''logs,'' eventually die at the compound.
· 1942 -- Ishii begins field tests of germ warfare on Chinese soldiers and civilians.
Tens of thousands die of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases. U.S.
soldiers captured in Philippines are sent to Manchuria.
· 1945 -- Japanese troops blow up the headquarters of Unit 731 in final days of Pacific
war. Ishii orders 150 remaining ''logs'' killed to cover up their experimentation.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur is named commander of the Allied powers in Japan.
·
1946 -- U.S. cover up of secret deal with Ishii and Unit 731 leaders -- germ warfare
data based on human experimentation in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution
-- begins in earnest. Deal is concluded two years later.
· 1981 -- John Powell, a former publisher of a Shanghai magazine who was unsuccessfully
tried for sedition in the early 1950s after accusing the United States of using germ
warfare in Korea, exposes immunity deal in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
· 1985 -- Dr. Murray Sanders, a former lieutenant colonel who was a U.S. adviser
on biological warfare, claims that he persuaded MacArthur to approve the immunity
deal in the fall of 1945.
· 1986 -- Congressional subcommittee holds one-day hearing in Washington, called
by Rep. Pat Williams of Montana, aimed at determining whether U.S. prisoners of war
in Manchuria were victims of germ-warfare experimentation. Hearing is inconclusive.
Sources:
''Factories of Death,'' by Sheldon H. Harris (Routledge, 1994); and ''Prisoners of
the Japanese: POWS of World War II in the Pacific,'' by Gavan Daws (William Morrow,
1994).
