The Pittsburgh Press (January 5, 1946)
Japs tested bubonic plague on Yanks, Communist says
Nip editor tells of experiments on American, Chinese prisoners in Manchurian cities
TOKYO (UP) – Jap Communist leaders said today that members of the Jap Medical Corps inoculated American and Chinese prisoners with bubonic plague virus during bacteriological warfare experiments at Harbin and Mukden in Manchuria.
Yoshio Shiga, editor of the Communist Red Flag, said the Japs bombed institute headquarters in Harbin to destroy evidence of the experiments when Soviet troops approached the city.
Other Communist sources said the “human guinea pig” experiments both at Harbin and Mukden were directed by Lt. Gen. Shiro Ishii of the Jap Surgeon’s Corps and former head of the Ishii Institute at Harbin.
The same sources said similar experiments attempted in Canton last year “backfired” and caused a plague epidemic in the city.
The Communists asserted that Ishii escaped from Japan and still was alive.
The War Department in Washington this week announced that Army investigation showed the Japs were prepared for extensive use of biological warfare.
Jap progress in the science of spreading disease was understood to have followed conventional lines – probably cholera germs spread by planes to poison the water supply and typhus cultures dropped over cities.
American medical authorities, however, doubted the practicability of the plague virus as a means of destruction. They pointed out that powder containing germs is more effective, since powder when inhaled causes an aggravated form of pneumonia that usually is fatal.