Hidden History Alive Within the Present
Quotations from “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (updated edition), by William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2004 and other primary and secondary sources
1.”But that war was over. The Americans were now to have their day in every corner of the world. The ink on the Japanese surrender treaty was hardly dry when the United States began to use the Japanese soldiers still in China alongside American troops in a joint effort against the Chinese communists. (In the Philippines and in Greece, as we shall see, the U.S. did not even wait for the war to end before subordinating the struggle against Japan and Germany to the anti-communist crusade.)
2.The communists in China had worked closely with the American military during the war, providing important intelligence about Japanese occupiers, rescuing and caring for downed U.S. airmen. [David Barrett, “Dixie Mission: The U.S. Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944; Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1970; passim: R. Harris Smith, “OSS: The Secret History of America’s First CIA, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972, pp. 262-3; New York Times, 19 December, 1945, p. 24] But no matter. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek would be Washington’s man. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA) estimated that the bulk of Chiang’s military effort had been directed against the communists rather than the Japanese. He had also done his best to block the cooperation between the Reds and the Americans. Now his army contained Japanese units and his regime was full of officials who had collaborated with the Japanese and served in their puppet government. [Smith, op. cit, p. 259-82; New York Times, 19 December 1945, p. 2] But no matter. The Generalissimo was as anti-communist as they come. Moreover, he was a born American client. His forces would be properly trained and equipped to do battle with the men of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai.”
3.President Truman was up front about what he described as “using the Japanese to hold off the communists”:
“It was perfectly clear to us that if we told the Japanese to lay down their arms immediately and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over by the communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison until we could airlift Chinese National [Chiang’s] troops to South China and send Marines to guard the seaports.” (William Blum p. 21 cited [Harry S. Truman, Memoires, Vol. II, “Years of Trial and Hope” 1946-53, Great Britain, p. 66])
4.“The deployment of American Marines had swift and dramatic results. Two weeks after the end of the war, Peking was surrounded by communist forces. Only the arrival of the Marines in the city prevented the Reds from taking it over. And while Mao’s forces were pushing into Shanghai’s suburbs, US transport planes dropped Chiang’s troops in to seize the city.” [D.F. Flemming, “The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960, New York, 1961, p. 570, passim Blum, p. 39]
5.“In a scramble to get to key centers and ports before the communists, the U.S. transported between 400,000 and 500,000 Nationalist troops by ship and plane all over the vastness of China and Manchuria, places they could have never reached otherwise.
6.As the civil war heated up, the 50,000 Marines sent by Truman were used to guard railway lines, coal mines, ports, bridges and other strategic sites. Inevitably, they became involved in the fighting, sustaining dozens, if not hundreds in the casualties. U.S. troops, the communists charged, attacked areas controlled by the Reds, directly opened fire on them, arrested military officers, and disarmed soldiers. [New York Times, September-December, 1945, passim Barbara W. Tuchman, “Stillwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45, New York, 1972, pp 666-77] The Americans found themselves blasting a small Chinese village ‘unmercifully’, wrote a Marine to his congressman, not knowing how many innocent people were slaughtered.” [Congressional Record, Appendix, Vol. 92, part 9, 24 January 1946, letter to Congressman Hugh de Lacy of Washington State]
7.“United States planes regularly made reconnaissance flights over communist territory to scout the position of their forces. The communists claimed that American planes frequently strafed and bombed their troops and in one instance machine-gunned a communist-held town.” [New York Times, 6 November 1945, p.1; 9 December 1945, p. 2] To what extent these attacks were carried out by US airmen is not known. “ [p. 40]
8.“There were, however, American survivors in some of the many crashes of the United States aircraft. Surprisingly, the Reds continued to rescue them, tend to their wounds, and return them to US bases. It may be difficult to appreciate now, but at this time the mystique and the myth of ‘America’ still gripped the imagination of people all over the world, and the Reds helped to rescue scores of American flyers and had transported them through Japanese lines to safety. ‘The Communists’ wrote the New York Times ‘did not lose one airman under their protection. They made a point of never accepting rewards for saving American airmen.’ “ [New York Times, 9 December 1945, p.24; 26 December 1945, p.5]
9.“When 1946 arrived, about 100,000 American military personnel were still in China still supporting Chiang. The official United States explanation for the presence of its military was that they were there to disarm and repatriate the Japanese. Though this task was carried out eventually, it was secondary to the military’s political function, as Truman’s statement cited above makes abundantly clear.”
10.“The American soldiers in China began to protest about not being sent home, a complaint echoed around the world by other GIs kept overseas for political (usually anti-communist) purposes. ‘They ask me too, why they’re here’, said a Marine lieutenant in China at Christmas time, 1945. ‘As an officer, I am supposed to tell them, but you can’t tell a man he’s here to disarm the Japanese when he’s guarding the same railway with [armed] Japanese’. “ [New York Times, 26 December 1945, p. 5]
11.Strangely enough, the United States attempted to mediate in the civil war; this, while being an active, powerful participant on one side. In January 1946, President Truman, apparently recognizing that it was either compromise with the communists or see all of China fall under their sway, sent General George Marshall to try to arrange a cease-fire and some kind of unspecified coalition government. While some temporary success was achieved in an on-and-off truce, the idea of a coalition government was doomed to failure as unlikely as a marriage between the Czar and the Bolsheviks. As the historian D.F. Fleming has pointed out, ‘One cannot unite a dying oligarchy with a rising revolution’.” [Fleming op cit p. 587]
12. Not until early 1947 did the United States begin to withdraw some of its military forces, although aid and support to the Chiang government continued in one form or another long afterward. At about this time, the Flying Tigers began to operate. The legendary American air squadron under the leadership of General Claire Chennault had fought for the Chinese against the Japanese before and during the world war. Now Chennault, Chiang’s former air force advisor, had reactivated the squadron (under the name CAT) and its pilots-of-fortune soon found themselves in the thick of the fray, flying endless supply missions to Nationalist cities under siege, dodging communist shell bursts to airlift food, ammunition, and supplies of all kinds, or to rescue the wounded. [Christopher Robbins, “Air America” (U.S., 1979, pp. 46-57); Victor Marchetti and John Marks “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence”, N.Y. 1975, p 149] Technically, CAT was a private airline hired by the Chiang government, but before the civil war came to an end, the airline had formally interlocked with the CIA to become the first unit in the Agency’s sprawling empire-to-be, best known for the Air America line.”
13.By 1949, United States aid to the Nationalists since the war amounted to almost $2 billion in cash and $1 billion worth of military hardware; 39 Nationalist army divisions had been trained and equipped. [“Hearings held in executive session before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee during 1949-50: Economic Assistance to China and Korea, 1949-50”, testimony of Dean Acheson, p. 23;made public January 1974 as part of the Historical series] Yet the Chiang dynasty was collapsing all around in bits and pieces. It has not only been the onslaught of Chiang’s communist foes, but the hostility of the Chinese people at large to his tyranny, his wanton cruelty, and the extraordinary corruption and decadence of his entire bureaucratic and social system. By contrast, the large areas under communist administration were models of honesty, progress, and fairness; entire divisions of the Generalissimo’s forces defected to the communists. American political and military leaders had no illusions about the nature and quality of Chiang’s rule. The Nationalist forces, said General David Barr, head of the U.S. Military Mission in China, were under ‘the world’s worst leadership’. “ [Tuchman, op cit. p. 676]
14.“The Generalissimo, his cohorts and soldiers fled to the offshore island of Taiwan (Formosa). They had prepared their entry two years earlier by terrorizing the islanders into submission—a massacre which took the lives of as many as 28,000 people [see Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, “Inside the League”, N.Y. 1986, pp 47-9 citing prominent American Generals and State Dept. officials in Taiwan at the time. See also D.F. Fleming, p. 578-9; In 1992 the Taiwan government admitted that its army had killed an estimated 18,000 to 28,000 native-born Taiwanese in the 1947 massacre (“Los Angeles Times”, February 24, 1992)] Prior to the Nationalists’ escape to the island, the US government entertained no doubts that Taiwan was a part of China. Afterward, uncertainty began to creep into the minds of Washington officials. The crisis was resolved in a remarkably simple manner: the US agreed with Chiang that the proper way to view the situation was not that Taiwan belonged to China, but that Taiwan was China. And so it was called.” [Blum p. 23]
15.“Yet short of an all-out invasion of the country by large numbers of American troops, it is difficult to see what more the US government could have done to prevent Chiang’s downfall. Even after Chiang fled to Taiwan, the United States pursued a campaign of relentless assaults against the communist government, despite a request from Chou En-lai for aid and friendship. The Red leader saw no practical or ideological bar to this. [“Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Vol. VIII, “The Far East: China”, US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1978, passim between pp. 357 and 399; 768, 779-80; publication of this volume of the US State Dept. series was held up precisely because it contained the reports about Chou En-lai’s request (“San Francisco Chronicle”, 27 September, 1978, p. F-1)] Instead the United States evidently conspired to assassinate Chou on several occasions.” [ “The Guardian, London, 24 August 1985; Blum p. 394]
16.“Many Nationalist soldiers had taken refuge in northern Burma in the great exodus of 1949, much to the displeasure of the Burmese Government. There, the CIA began to regroup this stateless army into a fighting force, and during the early 1950s a number of large-and-small-scale incursions into China were carried out. In one instance, in April 1951, a few thousand troops, accompanied by CIA advisors and supplied from air drops by American C-46s and C-47s, crossed the border into China’s Yunnan province, but they were driven back by the communists in less than a week. The casualties were high and included several CIA advisors who lost their lives. Another raid that summer took the invaders 65 miles into China where they reportedly held a 100-mile-long strip of territory.” [Blum pp. 23-24]
17.“While the attacks continued intermittently, the CIA proceeded to build up the force’s capabilities: American engineers arrived to help construct and expand airstrips in Burma, fresh troops were flown in from Taiwan, other troops were recruited from among the Burmese hill tribes, CIA air squadrons were brought in for logistical services, and enormous quantities of American heavy arms were ferried in. Much of the supply of men and equipment came in via nearby Thailand.” [Blum p. 24]
18.“The army soon stood at more than 10,000 men. By the end of 1952, Taiwan claimed that 41,000 communist troops had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded. The figures were most likely exaggerated, but even if not, it was clear that the raids would not lead to Chiang’s triumphant return to the mainland—although this was not their sole purpose. On the Chinese border two greater battles were raging: in Korea and Vietnam. It was the hope of the United States to force the Chinese to divert troops and military resources away from these areas [note and also away from overall development and socialist construction in general] The infant People’s Republic of China was undergoing a terrible test.” [Blum, p. 24]
19.“In between raids on China, the ‘Chinats’ (as distinguished from the ‘Chicoms’) found time to clash frequently with the Burmese troops, indulge in banditry, and become the opium barons of the Golden Triangle, that slice of land encompassing parts of Burma, Laos and Thailand which was the world’s largest source of opium and heroin. CIA pilots flew the stuff all over, to secure the cooperation of those in Thailand who were important to the military operation, as a favor to their Nationalist clients, perhaps even for the money, and ironically, to serve as cover for their more illicit activities.” [Blum, p 24]
20.“The Chinats in Burma kept up their harassment of the Chicoms until 1961 and the CIA continued to supply them militarily, but at some point the Agency began to phase itself out of a more direct involvement. When the CIA, in response to repeated protests by the Burmese Government to the United States and the United Nations, put pressure on the Chinats to leave Burma, Chiang responded by threatening to expose the Agency’s covert support of his troops there. At an earlier stage, the CIA had entertained the hope that the Chinese could be provoked into attacking Burma, thereby forcing the strictly neutral Burmese to seek salvation in the Western camp. [New York Times, 25 April 1966, p. 20] In January 1961, the Chinese did just that, but as part of a combined force with the Burmese to overwhelm the Nationalists’ main base and mark ‘finis’ to their Burmese adventure. Burma subsequently renounced American aid and moved closer to Peking. [David Wise and Thomas Ross, “The Invisible Government”, N.Y. 1965 pb edition, pp. 138-44; Joseph B. Smith “Portrait of a Cold Warrior”, N.Y. 1976, pp. 77-8; “New York Times”, 28, July 1951; 28 December, 1951; 22 February 1952; 8 April 1952; 30 December 1952, p. 3; opium in Robbins, op cit. pp. 84-7; Blum, op cit pp. 394]. For5 many of the Chinats, unemployment was short-lived. They soon signed up with the CIA again; this time to fight with the Agency’s grand army in Laos.” [Blum, op cit. p. 24]
21.“Burma was not the only jumping-off site for CIA organized raids into China. Several islands within about five miles of the Chinese coast, particularly Quemoy and Matsu, were used as bases for hit-and-run attacks, often in battalion strength, for occasional bombing forays and to blockade mainland ports. Chiang was ‘brutally pressured’ by the US to build his troops on the islands beginning around 1953 as a demonstration of Washington’s new policy of ‘unleashing’ him.” [Blum, op cit. p. 24; see also “Washington Post”, 20 August 1958, Joseph Alsop, a columnist, former staff officer under Chennault, and CIA asset, along with brother Stewart Alsop, covertly in media, was well connected with the Taiwan regime; see Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media”, in “Rolling Stone” magazine, 20 October 1977]
22.“The Chinese retaliated several times with heavy artillery attacks on Quemoy, on one occasion killing two American military officers. The prospect of an escalated war led the US later to have second thoughts and to ask Chiang to abandon the islands, but then he refused. The suggestion has often been put forward that Chiang’s design was to embroil the United States in just such a war as one means of returning to the mainland.” [Blum, op cit p. 25; Quemoy and Matsu, Stewart Alsop; “The Story Behind Quemoy: How We Drifted Close to War”, “Saturday Evening Post”, 13 December 1958, p.26; Andrew Tully, “CIA: The Inside Story”, N.Y. 1962, pp. 162-5; D.F. Fleming, op cit, pp 930-1; Wise and Ross, op. cit pp. 116; “New York Times”, 27, April 1966, p. 28]
23.“Many incursions into China were made by smaller, commando-type teams air-dropped in for intelligence and sabotage purposes. In November 1952, two CIA officers, John Downy and Richard Fecteau, who had been engaged in flying these teams in and dropping supplies to them, were shot down and captured by the communists. Two years passed before Perking announced the capture and sentencing of the two men. The State Department broke its own two-year silence with indignation, claiming that the two men had been civilian employees of the US Department of the Army in Japan who were presumed lost on a flight from Korea to Japan. ‘How they came into the hands of the Chinese Communists is unknown to the United States…the continued wrongful detention of these American citizens furnishes further proof of the Chinese Communist regime’s disregard for accepted practices of international conduct.’ “[Blum, op cit p. 25; Wise and Ross, op cit. p. 116] … “Fecteau was released in December 1971, shortly before President Nixon’s trip to China; Downey was not freed until March 1973, soon after Nixon publicly acknowledged him to be a CIA officer.” [Blum, op cit. p. 25]
24.“The Peking announcement in 1954 also revealed that eleven American airmen had been shot down over China in January 1953 while on a mission that had as its purpose the ‘airdrop of special agents into China and the Soviet Union.’ These men were luckier, being freed after only 2 ½ years. All told, said the Chinese, they had killed 106 American and Taiwanese agents who had parachuted into China between 1951 and 1954 and had captured 124 others. Although the CIA had little, if anything, to show for its commando actions, it reportedly maintained the program at least until 1960.” [Blum, op cit. p. 25; Wise and Rose, op cit, p. 112-15; Thomas Powers, “The Man Who Kept the Secrets”, New York, 1979, pp. 43-4; “Newsweek”, 26 March 1973]
25.“There were many CIA flights over China for purely espionage purposes, carried out by high-altitude U-2 planes, pilotless ‘drones’, and other aircraft. These over flights began around the late 1950s and were not discontinued until 1971, to coincide with Henry Kissinger’s first visit to Peking. The operation was not without incident. Several U-2 planes were shot down and even more of the drones, 19 of the latter by Chinese count between 1965 and 1969. China registered hundreds of ‘serious warnings’ about violations of its airspace, and on at least on occasion American aircraft crossed the Chinese border and shot down a Mig-17” [ Marchetti and Marks, op cit, pp. 150, 287; “Washington Post”, 27 May 1966; “New York Times”, 28 March 1969, p. 40]
26.“It would seem that no degree of failure or paucity of result was enough to deter the CIA from seeking new ways to torment the Chinese in the decade following their revolution. Tibet was another case in point. The Peking government claimed Tibet as part of China, as had previous Chinese governments for more than two centuries…The United States made its position clear during the war: “The Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that the Chinese Government has long claimed suzerainty over Tibet and that the Chinese constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of these claims.” (“Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II –Updated Edition, by William Blum, Common Courage Press, 2004, Monroe Maine, p.25; from “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957, p. 630)
27.“After the communist revolution, Washington officials tended to be more equivocal about the matter. But U.S. actions against Tibet had nothing to do with the niceties of international law.”…By the mid-1950s, the CIA began to recruit Tibetan refugees and exiles in neighboring countries such as India and Nepal. Amongst their number were members of the Dalai Lama’s guard often referred to picturesquely as ‘the fearsome Khamba horsemen’, and others who had already engaged in some guerilla activity against Peking rule and/or the profound social changes being instituted by the revolution (Serfdom and Slavery were, literally, still present in Tibet). Those selected were flown to the United States, to an unused military base high in the Colorado Mountains, an altitude approximating that of their mountainous homeland. There, hidden away as much as possible from the locals, they were trained in the fine points of paramilitary warfare.” [Blum, op cit. p. 26]
28.“After completing training, each group of Tibetans was flown to Taiwan or some other friendly Asian country, thence to be infiltrated back into Tibet, or elsewhere in China, where they occupied themselves in activities such as sabotage, mining roads, cutting communications lines and ambushing small communist forces. Their actions were supported by CIA aircraft and on occasion led by Agency contract mercenaries. Extensive support facilities were constructed in northeast India.” [Blum, op cit. p. 26]
29.“The operation in Colorado was maintained until sometime in the 1960s. How many Tibetans passed through the course of instruction will probably never be known. Even after the formal training program came to an end, the CIA continued to finance and supply their exotic clients and nurture their hopeless dream of reconquering their homeland.” …In 1961, when the “New York Times” got wind of the Colorado operation, it acceded to a Pentagon request to probe no further. [ David Wise, “The Politics of Lying”, N.Y. 1973, paperback edition, pp. 239-54; Robbins op cit. pp 94-101; Marchetti and Marx op cit. pp 128-31, p. 97 1983 edition.] The matter was particularly sensitive because the CIA’s 1947 Charter and Congress’s interpretation of it had traditionally limited the Agency’s domestic operations to information collection.” [Blume, op cit. p. 26]
30.”Above and beyond the bedevilment of China on its own merits, there was the spillover from the Korean War into Chinese territory—numerous bombings and strafing by American planes which, the Chinese frequently reported took civilian lives and destroyed homes. And there was the matter of germ warfare….The Chinese devoted a great deal of effort to publicizing their claim that the United States, particularly during January to March 1952, had dropped quantities of bacteria and bacteria-laden insects over Korea and northeast China. It presented testimony of about 38 captured American airmen who had purposefully flown the planes with the deadly cargo. Many of the men went into voluminous detail about the entire operation; the kinds of bombs and other containers dropped the types of insects, the diseases they carried, etc. At the same time, photographs of the alleged germ bombs and insects were published. Then, in August, an ‘International Scientific Committee’ was appointed, composed of scientists from Sweden, France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil and the Soviet Union. After an investigation in China of more than two months, the committee produced a report of some 600 pages, many photos and the conclusion that: ‘The peoples of Korea and China have been the objectives of bacteriological weapons. These have been employed by units of the U.S.A. armed forces, using a great variety of different methods for the purpose, some of which seem to be the developments of those applied by the Japanese during the second world war.’ [Blum, op cit p. 26; “People’s China”, English-language magazine, Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 17 September 1952, p. 28]
31.“The last reference has to do with the bacteriological warfare warfare experiments the Japanese had carried out against China between 1940 and 1942 [Note here this author is incorrect as the Japanese experiments on human beings were conducted from 1931 to 1945 continuously in many locations in China under several units other than the infamous Unit 731 see “Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up by Sheldon H. Harris, Routledge, N.Y. 1994] The Japanese scientists responsible for this program were captured by the United States in 1945 and given immunity from prosecution in return for proving technical information about the experiments to American scientists from the Army biological research center at Fort Dietrick, Maryland. The Chinese were aware of this at the time of the International Scientific Committee’s investigation. [Callum A. MacDonald, “Korea: The War Before Vietnam”, N.Y. 1986, pp. 161-2] …In 1970… the “New York Times” reported that during the Korean War, when US forces were overwhelmed by ‘human waves’ of Chinese, the Army dug into captured Nazi chemical warfare documents describing Sarin, a nerve gas so lethal that a few pounds could kill thousands of people in minutes…By the mid nineteen-fifties, the Army was manufacturing thousands of gallons of Sarin.” [Blum, op cit p. 27; “New York Times”, 9 August 1970, IV p. 3]
32.And during the 1950s and 1960s, the Army and the CIA conducted numerous experiments with biological agents within the United States. To cite just two examples: In 1955, there is compelling evidence that the CIA released whooping-cough bacteria into the open air in Florida, followed by an extremely sharp increase in the incidence of the disease in the state that year. [“Washington Post”, 17 December 1979, p. A 18, “Whooping cough cases recorded in Florida jumped from 339 and one death in 1954 to 1,080 and 12 deaths in 1955; The CIA received the bacteria from the Army’s bacteriological research center at Fort Dietrick, Maryland.] The following year another toxic substance was disseminated in the streets and tunnels of New York City. [ “San Francisco Chronicle”, 4 December 1979, p. 12; For a detailed account of [numerous] U.S. Government experiments with biological agents within the United States including on large civilian populations without their awareness or consent see Leonard A. Cole, “Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas”, Maryland 1990; Blum, op cit, p. 395;
33.In March 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke before a congressional committee about American policy toward China. Mr. Rusk it seems was perplexed that ‘At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they are being threatened and encircled’. He spoke of China’s ‘imaginary, almost pathological notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the Peiping [Peking] regime’. The Secretary then added: ‘How much Peiping’s fear of the United States is genuine and how much of it is artificially induced for domestic political purposes only the Chinese Communist leaders themselves know. I am convinced, however, that their desire to expel our influence and activity from the western Pacific and Southeast Asia is not motivated by fears that we are threatening them.” [“Department of State Bulletin”, 2 May 1966; Blum, op cit. p. 27]
34.“The Japanese are using a BW [Biological Warfare] weapon that is more deadly, far vaster that that which killed the sleeping Americans on December 7, 1941. This attack would not only strike at outposts of empire but even at the life blood in the very veins of the nation. Its effects would be visited on generations. A crude type of this secret weapon speeded the fall of Bataan.” [Newman Barclar Moon, “Japan’s Secret Weapon”, New York Current Publishing, 1944 p. 2 [note year 1944 during the war] quoted in Sheldon Harris, op. cit p. 160 [Note also that prisoners from the Baatan death march were used by Japanese in experiments in Manchuria according to Sheldon Harris “Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-up, Routledge, NY 1994]
35.“Evidence gathered in this investigation has greatly supplemented and amplified previous aspects of this field. It represents data which we have obtained by Japanese scientists at the expenditure of many millions of dollars and years of work. Information has accrued with respect to human susceptibility to those diseases as indicated by specific infectious doses of bacteria. Such information could not be obtained in our own laboratories because of scruples attached to human experimentation. These data were secured with a total outlay of Yen 250,000 to date, a mere pittance by comparison with the actual cost of the studies.” [Edwin V. Hill, Basic Sciences, Camp Dietrick to General Alden C. Waitt, Chief, Chemical Corps, 12 December 1947, The National Archives, quoted in Sheldon Harris op cit. p. 190;
36.“As far as I know, it was true that a deal was made. But it was the US side which approached my father, not the other way around…What I would like to emphatically say…is ‘Isn’t it important that not a single man under my father’s command was ever tried as a war criminal?’ I am really sorry for those who had to live in seclusion to evade possible prosecution but were it not for my father’s courage in making a deal with the occupation authorities…you know what I mean’. “ [Ishii Harumi in “The Japan Times”, 29 August 1982, p. 12 quoted in Harris, p. 190]
37.“Many of the men who served Ishii in Manchuria and China later became deans of medical schools, senior science professors, university presidents, and key technicians in those industries that created the country’s economic miracle in the postwar era. He also created an infrastructure within the death factory in Harbin’s suburb that held together throughout the period of Japanese BW research. He was able, also, to inspire his men with fanatical loyalty to him personally, and to extraordinary dedication to the tasks assigned to them. [Harris, p. 54;
38.“Under a cloak of possible immunity from prosecution, the ‘open secret’ became detailed fact in 1946 and 1947. By that time, Unit 731 scientists did not have to resort to deceptive animal terms in describing their work to American scientists eager to gain precious information concerning human BW experiments. Perhaps they were not totally candid with the Americans but, but they did provide them with specific details of some of their previous work in the course of lengthy interviews and in written reports to investigators. The data were allegedly constructed from memory, since all records in Manchuria were supposedly destroyed during the Japanese retreat in 1945. However the documents themselves suggest strongly that many of 731’s records survived” [ Harris, p. 64; Thompson Report, pp. 11-12]
39.“The people of the unit [in Nanking] called their steel barred cells ‘rooms that do not open’. The cells were patrolled by armed guards at all times. At the 731st, they called these subjects ‘maruta’ (logs); but here, they were called ‘zaimoku’ (lumber).” (Harris, op cit. p. 101)
40.“Some veterans today—veterans captured and imprisoned in World War II’s Pacific Theater—have a story to tell and an agonizing chapter of their lives to resolve. These veterans…have not received justice…These men are victims of a terrible secret, born 44 years ago deep in Manchuria in Japanese POW camps. Theirs perhaps has been the longest and best kept secret of World War II, long denied by Japan and long concealed by the U.S. Government…. Bit by bit and year by year, despite our government’s public statements of ignorance, the truth has been leaking out. We know now that Mukden was more than just another Japanese POW camp for Allied soldiers….Operated by Japanese scientists from Unit 731, Mukden was a site for deadly chemical and biological experiments, for injections, body dissections, blood and feces tests, freezing of body parts, infection of wounds with anthrax, the applications of plague bacillus, cholera, dysentery, and typhoid….That.. Was what was waiting for many of the American fighting men who survived the Bataan Death March. Along with our soldiers at those terrible camps were also men from China, Great Britain, Australia, and the Soviet Union. We don’t know how many survived, but we do know that the U.S. government knew of the experiments at the war’s end.” [statement of Congressman Pat Williams, Democrat, Montana, before the Subcommittee on Compensation, Pension, and Insurance of the Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Ninth Congress, Second Session, 17 September 1986, Serial No. 99-61, p. 3; quoted in Harris, p. 113]
41.“I have refused to bow before circumstances and keep truth before closed doors. General Douglas A. MacArthur left his men in 1942 and sealed their fate in May of 1946 by promising the war criminal General Ishii immunity from prosecution if he would surrender the records of Unit 731. This collaboration between MacArthur and Ishii is unsavory to say the least. The lives of the American FEPOWs [Far East Prisoners of War] experiment on by Unit 731 at Mukden were forfeited in the name of national security.” [Ibid p. 18; Harris, p. 118]
42.“I understand that our Government consistently has denied any firm knowledge that any Americans were experimented upon. But today you will hear from a POW who was experimented upon. To deny that truth is to deny the existence of that POW. [Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, Ibid. p. 5]…
43.“We were required, when we came to the depot at Manila, on the way back from the prisoner of war camps, we signed a statement by the Army stating we would not tell before our experiences or conditions, what happened to us in the prison camps, before any audiences or the newspapers, under threat of court martial.” [Harris, p. 120]
44.“The Emperor’s youngest brother, Prince Mikasa, evidently visited Ping Fan and toured much of the facility. Unit 731’s official photographer remembered the visit vividly, because he had produced an unclear photograph taken of Mikasa during his stop. Ishii had upbraided the photographer, saying in effect, that with all the scientific expertise available at Ping Fan, surely something could be done to make the photograph more attractive. Mikasa in his memoirs remembered seeing ‘films where large numbers of Chinese prisoners of war brought by cargo trains and lorries were made to march on the Manchurian plain for poison gas experiments on live subjects.’ He also recalled: ‘A high ranking military doctor [Ishii?] who took part in these experiments was telling me prior to this, at the time when Lord Lytton with his group was dispatched by the League of Nations [1932, at the time Ishii began his BW work in Manchuria] in order to investigate the Manchurian incident, they attempted to give this group some fruit infected with cholera, but did not succeed.’ ” [“Mikasa-no-miya, Takahito, “Ancient Orient and I”, Tokyo, Gakusei Sha Publishers, 1984, pp. 16-17]
45.“Herewith extracts of telecom held by G-2 Personnel with the Chief of Chemical Corps…These extracts indicate the extreme value of the intelligence information obtained and the danger of publicity on this subject…It is the intention of Mil Int representative on SWNCC Sub Committee to recommend that information re B.W. given to us with not be divulged or used in war crimes trials…I [General Alden Waitt] consider it vital that we get the information and the secrecy [which would be impossible if war crimes trials were held] be maintained…The information so far indicates that the investigation is producing most important data. It merits all necessary support, financial and otherwise.” [Intelligence Information on Bacteriological Warfare, 9 June 1947, Record Group [ 331, Box 1434, 13, National Archives; Harris, op cit, p. 204]…”Experiments on human beings similar to those conducted by the Ishii BW group have been condemned as war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the trial of major Nazi war criminals in its decision handed down at Nuremberg on 30 September 1946; Harris, p. 218; note also some selected Nazi “scientists” were also given immunity from prosecution, put on CIA payroll (Operations ARTICHOKE and PAPERCLIP) in return for turning over similar “research” findings from experiments in Nazi concentration camps and institutes for the disabled.; SWNCC or Ste-War-Navy Coordinating Committee Report]
46.“The Associate Press reported today that ‘A Spokesman for General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters said today that the chemical section of his headquarters, in a ‘complete’ search of its files, however, did not find anything relative to Japanese use of bacteriological warfare.’ The statement was technically true but disingenuous. The Chemical Section was not involved with war crimes investigations, and had little or nothing to do with Ishii and BW. A search of the intelligence files, however, would have disclosed considerable American knowledge of Japanese BW preparations. Several days later, a MacArthur spokesman denied that any American POWs were subjected to BW experiments, as charged at Khabarosk. He conceded that Japan had done research with animals, ‘but that there was no evidence they ever had used human beings’, and that ‘no Americans held prisoner by the Japanese at Mukden ever accused their captors of having used them as human guinea pigs.’. Prosecutor Joseph Keenan chipped in with a denial that his investigators had found any evidence.” [“New York Times”, 27 December 1949, p. 16]
47.“There is proof of the experiments at Mukden. Dr. Sanders told me that he was aware of the experiments at Mukden, but not until after he cut the deal. He said he would have never cut the deal to grant Ishii immunity from prosecution if he had known Americans were experimented on. But he said that an American officer of high rank, ‘whom I pledged never to reveal his name’, had told him that Americans at Mukden were guinea pigs.” [ Harris, p. 121]
48.“The story of Japanese bacteriological warfare implicates more than half the persons tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and moiré than 5,000 others who worked on the BW program in some capacity. It involved a genuine conspiracy of silence…Allied prosecutors from half a dozen countries affected by the issue remained silent at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial about what they knew…The Chinese[Nationalists]…must have lived in hope of gaining some kind of quid pro quo for their silence….The Russian authorities who sought to raise the matter…allowed themselves to be silenced…What seems quite incredible is that the cover-up conspiracy—for it is by no means a demonological exaggeration to speak of it as a conspiracy—was maintained throughout the three years which elapsed between the Japanese defeat and the conclusion of the Tokyo trial…and that…the conspiracy was sustained for so long afterwards.” [Calvacoressi, Peter, Wint Guy, and Pritchard, John, “Total War: The Causes and Courses of the Second World War, revised second edition, N.Y. Pantheon Books, 1989, pp. 1201-06; quoted in Harris, p. 173]