Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up

Rating:
Summary: An indictment of Japanese physicians losing their way
Review: "F[a]ctories of Death" is a most important contribution to our knowledge about the use of biological warfare by the Imperial Japanese Army during the period, 1932-45.The active participation of Japanese physicans in the implementation and execution of the use of pathogens for mass destruction is useful for understanding what we Americans may be facing in the near future. The lack of prosecution of ANY Japanese physicans of Unit 731 for war crimes is particularly disturbing.

Rating:
Summary: An indictment of Japanese physicians losing their way
Review: Although some readers might find this book boring and tedious due to too many facts, I believe the author wrote this book not for entertainment but for a more noble purpose. Since this is
one of the very few books and articles on this grim subject, the
more facts it contain the better it is to a serious researcher.
The author covered sufficiently the unethical reasons of the US
government's cover-up and permitted those Japenese, including
Emporior Hirohito, responsible to avoid prosecution as war
criminals. However, why China, under Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong,both hated the Japanese with a passion, acted similarly was not explained adequately. I hope more research will be done to clarify this dificiency.
I read somewhere that "Justice is not only a matter of punishment.
Justice can also be served by having the moral courage to accept
responsibility and make recompense when a great wrong has been done, however long ago and far away the event." I sincerely
hope this is so.

ose Japanese, including
Emporior Hirohito, responsible to avoid[rpsecution as war criminals in exchange for information from the Japanese program.
However, why China, under Chiang Kai-Shek and Moa Zedong, both
hated the Japanese with a passion, acted similarly was not explain adequately. I hope more research will be done to clarify this dificiency.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating book
Review: Factories contains a wealth of interesting and horrifying information. Too bad it could have been written in about twenty pages. I found that the author repeated himself chapter after chapter. Somewhat of a chore to get through.

Rating:
Summary: scholarly but lacking analysis
Review: Harris' book is a necessary complement to the others which have been written over the years, i.e. it provides solid facts and data that were lacking in the other works. Although as a scientific piece of paper it is excellent, I have been disappointed in the treatment of such a horrible matter in such a scientifically detached way, much like the lukewarm attitude from journalists and reviewers when they talk about the deal made by the allied authorities with these criminals. In fact, they are worse than criminals since they treated their human victims much worse than people treat rats in their labs these days.
The pardon of these brutes and exchange for data on human experimentation was and is a dastardly act that should merit the strongest of condemnation. Saying it was a "Dark chapter in medical history.." simply does not cut it!! May the 10,000 victims of this horrible act eventually find the justice and peace they have waited so long for.

Rating:
Summary: Gruesome & erudite, but not a page turner
Review: Sheldon Harris is considered the foremost authority on Japanese atrocities during WW2. Here he documents the atrocities carried out by Hirohito's scientists in Manchuria in the 1930s and early 1940s.

He begins with a chapter or two on Japan's own Angel of Death - the architect of the infamous U731 experiment camp in NE China. It's not particularly engrossing, but I suppose a character profile is necessary.

Then we get into the dirt - which is basically a highly detailed account of the depravity waged in Manchuria. Local Chinese communities and POWs were subjected to spine chillling experiments, no less depraved than the low points of Mengele and other Nazis. The most disturbing fact is that the army wasn't the main sponsor at the beginning. It was the Japanese academic community in Tokyo and Kyoto. It wasn't until the army discovered how effective the germs would be against the Allies that they became interested.

Then comes the second half which details how US and Soviet forces gave quid pro quos to Japanese scientists for their 'information'. No one who has read anything about the end of WW2 in Europe should be surprised what Harris reveals in here.

I found this book quite boring. I didn't manage to stay the course. It took a couple of sessions to near the end. I still haven't finished, some eighteen months after waging war on page one.

Rating:
Summary: Must-read for WW2 history buffs.
Review: Sheldon Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up (Second Edition) (Routledge, 2002)

During the time of the Great Depression in America, and up through the end of World War II, the Japanese medical corps, operating through the imperialist Kwantung Army, conducted thousands of biological warfare experiments on live human subjects. These subjects were primarily Chinese peasants convicted of petty crimes, but also included, as WW2 wore on, prisoners of war and non-criminal Chinese. For over forty years, these facts were kept an almost complete secret from the general public; glancing references would surface now and again, or a slick TV documentary would pop up for a British of Korean version of the TV magazines that are those countries' parallels to something like 20-20 in America. No one treated the subject in depth; no one knew how to get enough proof. Even the Chinese government, when it attempted a full-length film documentary, was unable to come up with enough information (their aborted attempt was made into a fictional film, the notorious Men Behind the Sun).

Then came Williams and Wallace and their book Unit 731. Seven years later, Sheldon Harris expanded greatly on Williams and Wallace's knowledge with the definitive text on Unit 731's war crimes, Factories of Death. Another seven years has gone by since, and Harris and Routledge have released a second edition of Factories of Death that contains the updated information from documents that have been declassified since. As time goes on, the book gets even more horrifying.

Unlike Williams and Wallace or Hal Gold (whose book Unit 731: Testimony is a brilliant, if anecdotal, complement to this work), Harris keeps his feet rooted firmly on the ground, keeping any conjecture to the most logical conclusions to be drawn from the facts at hand. Gold, for example, speculates in Unit 731: Testimony that both MacArthur and Truman were fully aware of the America cover-up of Unit 731's activities; Harris refrains from even hinting at such a thing until all the evidence is completely laid out, and even then, he only glancingly makes reference to then-President Truman at all. Because of this loathness to speculate, when Harris does let the cork out and start ranting (which happens only very briefly, at the end of the penultimate chapter), some of the teeth are taken out of his vituperation; he's just not willing to go where he needs to go. One might cynically think that the stronger language that haunts the last third of the penultimate chapter is there simply because ranting sells and scholarship doesn't. (That said, those reviewers who have noted the book's dryness are right, to an extent, but anyone who considers this painfully dry should try reading any other book Routledge has ever released. This is a John Grisham novel in comparison, going by readability. I was surprised, and pleased, at how quickly the book flew by, given its imprint.)

That same failing is Harris' greatest sin here; not one of commission, but of omission. Other books on Unit 731 have raised a number of questioning specters that Harris doesn't touch on at all, including a few for which there is smoking-gun evidence (use of American biological warfare in North Korea in the 1950s that has Ishii Shiro's stamp on it, the biological munitions plant at Hiroshima that led to America's bombing of that city in 1945, etc.). It could reasonably be concluded that Harris didn't think the evidence was sufficient to warrant mentioning them in the text, but even the casual Unit 731 scholar is sure to have heard the allegations; better, if you're writing the definitive piece of scholarship, to address them rather than leave them
twisting in the wind.

Still, an excellent piece of work, one that history buffs are well advised to seek out. Schoolchildren (for this material is definitely in need of dissemination) could do with an abridged version; those who seek this out because they loved Men Behind the Sun should probably stick with the film unless they're used to reading nonfiction. (The notion of Ishii as a two-dimensional villain will be shattered within the first few pages. Prepare yourselves.) ****

Rating:
Summary: an important book on a neglected topic
Review: The Japanese experiments on the Chinese during World War II have not gained the notoriety in this country accorded to the similar Nazi experiemnts, and this book helps correct that unfortunate deficit. It's all here, including a thorough history of the shameful American cover-up that immunized the Japanese doctors & military leaders responsible for this atrocity from prosecution. The book gets a bit dry at times, but remains an essential, and long-overdue, look at this shameful chapter in Japanese & American history.

Rating:
Summary: Factory of "Facts"
Review: This book is a very well documented attempt to prove that the Japanese conducted biological and chemical testing on people - including American prisoners of war - before and during World War II. The book is sometimes engrossing but often tedious. This is because the author appears to believe in the premises that "no information is too trivial" and "more is better". The depth of the research is quite impressive. However, much of the information is redundant from chapter to chapter.

The book is true to its title. It merely seeks to prove that the Japanese did human testing and that the U.S Government permitted those Japanese responsible to avoid prosecution as war criminals in exchange for information and results from the Japanese program. In this regard the book is very successful. Medical and other professionals in the area of biological weapons will be dissappointed in the book's lack of information on the results of the Japanese testing pertaining to the effects of these weapons on humans.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disturbing, even now.
Review: When I read this book, I was struck by the difference in histories of the German death camps and the Japanese.

What is striking is the apathy toward the Japanese biological and chemical warfare testing by the allies. Is it because the victims were Chinese? Or was it related to an occidental acceptance or oriental suffering? Or was it just money, exhaustion, and the interest by the allies in the field?

In any event, the very dryness of this book makes it more compelling. And the cooperation after the war between the US government and the Japanese authorities is shattering.

What is even more depressing is the see no evil attitude after the war by the Japanese. Almost no information made it to the Japanese people, and they appear to care less.

At least they moved on to making transistors.