Biological Warfare and BioTerrorist Attacks: Need for Counter-Measures Biological Warfare
Biological Warfare Program of Japan Before and During the Second World War
In 1931 the Japanese Army occupied Manchuria. The next year the Japanese Army established a biological warfare facility in the Manchurian city of Harbin under the leadership of Army Surgeon Shiro Ishii. The laboratory studied many diseases that could be used as biological weapons, including anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia. The virulence of the biological agents was determined by experiments on more than 3000 live prisoners including some Americans. None of the prisoners survived. A staff of 300, including 50 medical doctors, injected prisoners with disease, forced them to eat contaminated food, or tied them to stakes and subjected them to clouds of anthrax or plague aerosols.
Ishii designed a small bomb consisted of a porcelain shell, filled with cotton wadding, wheat, rice, and live human fleas infected with bubonic plague. On October 4, 1940, a Japanese plane dropped flea bombs on Chü Hsien in Chikiang Province, resulting in 21 deaths. On October 27, 1940 plague bombs were dropped on Ningpo, a city south of Shanghai. The raid was led by Lt. General Ishii and recorded in a documentary film. There were 99 fatalities. On November 4, 1941, Japanese planes dropped plague bombs on Changteh City near Lake Tung Ting, causing an epidemic with 24 deaths.