Last month, we covered the start of the violent and unforgiving
campaign that took place in the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi
as the Japanese invaders hunted down the American pilots that had taken part in the Doolittle Raid.
In their ensuing struggle to curb down the Chinese air power in the region, the natives of Zhejiang
and Jiangxi suffered the abuse and savagery of the Japanese troops, who caused such devastation
on the land that around 90% of the market towns and its homes were destroyed. In many cities,
the streets were left void and one could only see ruins and burning houses on the horizon.
Yet this was just the beginning, with the invaders now preparing to withdraw from the area
with the employment of biological warfare, thus leaving only death and misery in their wake.
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In the month of May, the Japanese Empire had entered into the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi
to destroy the Chinese air bases in the region, successfully achieving their objectives by late
June with the capture and destruction of the airfields at Lishui, Quzhou and Yushan. With this,
the invaders hoped to secure their home islands from any air raids that they might suffer from
Chinese soil, and they also wanted to punish those involved in the Doolittle Raid, be it the American
pilots that had crash landed on these provinces or the Chinese population that had aided them
afterwards. In fact, little did the pilots know that the same gifts and trinkets that they left
behind in the Chinese villages as a reward for their help would later on be evidence of their
stay there, something that would directly lead to the torture and murder of those who they had
called friends. During this period, in which the Japanese temporarily occupied the region along the
Zhejiang-Jiangxi railway, the Chinese defenders wouldn’t sit idly by either. General Sawada and
his 13th Army effortlessly repelled the Chinese counterattack against his western front, but he
would be plagued by guerrilla attacks all across his occupied territory. The 11th Army of General
Anami, however, would face the brunt of a renewed counteroffensive by his longtime rival General
Xue Yue and his 9th War Area. With his 79th Army defeated, he now decided to transfer the 4th and
58th Armies from Changsha to Liuyang, ordering them to recapture the lost position at Linchuan.
During the latter part of June, the Chinese forces seized the line of heights on the left bank of the
Fuhe River, gradually moving in on Linchuan while the Japanese waited for an opportunity
to counter the enemy thrust. By June 25, the 4th Army had settled on an exposed position
south of Linchuan and Huwanzhen, so Anami decided that the time was ripe to open his attack.
He first sent the Takehara Detachment towards Chongren to cut off the enemy escape route
while the 3rd Division and the Imai Detachment exerted heavy pressure on the Chinese positions
and started to push them towards Yihuang . By June 30, the 4th Army had been routed and its
main strength had been annihilated in a perfectly coordinated offensive action. In response, the
58th Army started to withdraw from the Chongren area, but it would be rapidly intercepted by the
Japanese forces near the town of Xia’aotou , where the Chinese army would stoutly resist until its
rear units began to retreat towards Zhangshu . By July 6, the Chinese had been completely defeated
and its retreating soldiers had fled into the distant mountains. In the meantime, General Sawada
was also preparing to undertake an operation to destroy the Chinese naval base at Wenzhou , where
Allied submarines were being refueled and supplies were being smuggled into the countryside. In that
regard, he ordered the Kozonoe Mixed Brigade to advance towards this objective on July 2.
Five days later, the brigade departed Lishui and got to capture Wenzhou on July 11
with the support of IJN vessels, defeating many Chinese guerrilla units on the way.
With the hazardous Ou River cleared, Sawada then began preparing for his
next operation , this time against the last remaining Chinese base in Zhejiang,
located at the town of Songyang . After getting transferred to Longyou on July 12, the Harada
Mixed Brigade was ordered to advance on Suichang two weeks later. By August 1 the town had fallen,
so Sawada now directed the recently-arrived Nara Detachment at Lishui and the Harada Mixed Brigade
at Suichang to execute a pincer movement against Songyang. Two days later, the last
Chinese base had been reduced and many materials, including railway equipment, had been confiscated.
By the middle of August, Generals Sawada and Anami were content with the amount of destruction and
looting that their troops had incurred in, so they decided that it was time for their final
withdrawal from the region. Sawada planned for his units to initially concentrate on the vicinity of
Quzhou to then commence their retreat towards Jinhua. There, the 22nd Division would be left
to garrison the area , as the Japanese could still obtain valuable materials such as fluorite, copper
and tin from the region. On August 15, the first Japanese unit began its withdrawal towards Quzhou,
successfully concentrating in the area by August 25. The following day, the final retreat towards
Jinhua began, spearheaded by the 22nd and 32nd Divisions; and by August 31, the 13th Army had
completely assembled around Jinhua, where Sawada instructed the 22nd to commence the fortification
of the area and ordered the 70th Division to cover its rear at Shaoxing . The 11th Army, meanwhile,
gradually began to withdraw its forces towards Nanchang, completing this action by August 27.
Yet coinciding with the withdrawal operation of the Japanese units, the secret bacteriological
warfare group known as Unit 731 was sent to the region to execute land bacterial sabotage so as
to prevent the Chinese from quickly reoccupying these territories to immediately rebuild their
destroyed air bases. This unit, in direct violation of the Geneva Protocol that prohibits
the use of chemical and biological weapons in war, had been formed in 1936 by a secret order
of Emperor Hirohito , tasked with applying biology and medicine in weapon research and
manufacturing. Commanded by the infamous Colonel Ishii Shiro under the name ‘Epidemic Prevention
and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army’, Unit 731 had been conducting inhumane
activities in the region around Harbin since its establishment. Inside their Square Quarter,
which consisted of four three-storey buildings and acted as a special jail to hold victims,
Japanese surgeons and scientists took part in horrendous human experiments, such as living
dissections, bacterial infections and frostbite experiments, resulting in the torture and killing
of thousands of innocent civilians. The captives in the Square Quarter were also stripped from
their name, personal information and identity, only getting recognized through a three-digit
number, something that earned them the name “marutas”, which means “logs” in Japanese.
Inside these laboratories of death, not only were men, women, children and even infants dissected,
they were also infected with deadly diseases, such as anthrax, cholera and the bubonic plague,
through a variety of infection methods, including oral medication and injection.
Large-scale human experiments in the field were also conducted, resulting in the detonation of
germ bombs that could kill several people in just a matter of hours. Frostbite experiments took
particular relevance for the Japanese scientists, as they wanted to investigate what would be the
effect of extremely cold temperatures on the human body so as to be prepared to fight in such
conditions in case war with a nation like the Soviet Union erupted. From these experiments,
in which human subjects barely clothed were exposed to temperatures below zero, the Japanese
hoped to produce dried bacteria and to study the prevention and treatment methods of frostbite.
They also conducted poison gas experiments, defining different types of poison gas in their
laboratories while testing and producing gas masks and protective suits there. This resulted in the
invention of a poison gas analyzer, an anti-poison gas medicine and disinfectants for poison,
in addition to the research on poisonous weapons that was conducted in their labs.
But it would be their research on bacteriological warfare that would become of extreme relevance
for the Chinese people of Zhejiang and Jiangxi. From their main base at Pingfang,
Unit 731 launched a great variety of outdoor field experiments on bacterial bombs, bacterial vaccines
and bacteriological war strategy, while at the same time importing a large number of rats, mice
and rabbits as experimental objects used to spread bacteria along with insects such as fleas, lice,
flies and mosquitoes. These living creatures were infected with more than fifty kinds of bacteria,
including plague, typhoid fever, anthrax, glanders, and tuberculosis.
Evoking the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Unit 731 had the power to spread a wide variety
of diseases on their enemies, provoking famine, pestilence and death on them and
bringing disaster to the ecosystem. Since the start of the war, Ishii and his followers would
invent at least 1770 bacteria bomb models, including the frequently-produced Model UJ150,
which was built in a ceramic shell that could protect the bacteria from temperature. These
ceramic bombs usually held anthrax and bubonic plague-carrier fleas, and when they exploded, the
biological agents were dispersed into the air with great lethality and destructive power. In 1939,
their research finally started to be put into action, causing hundreds of Chinese communities
to suffer from widespread plague, cholera, and typhoid fever, something that resulted in a high
death rate for the unsuspecting civilians. An important bacteriological attack carried out
by Unit 731 and its satellite Unit 1644 was the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack of October of 1940,
which targeted the area of Ningbo in the province of Zhejiang. On this attack, wheat, corn, scraps
of cotton cloth and sand, carrying plague-infested fleas were airdropped over the area, resulting in
a huge outbreak of bubonic plague that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent Chinese inhabitants.
Such was the devastation brought by the bacteriological warfare
that the area had to be quarantined and later burned to the ground to eradicate the disease.
Now, to accompany the withdrawal operation of the 11th and 13th Armies, Ishii and his
Unit 731 prepared again to conduct an important bacteriological attack over Zhejiang, this time
with the airdropping of the easy-to-carry ceramic bombs. Ishii and his followers engaged in heated
arguments on which bacteria were best to use, and in the end, they decided to employ plague,
anthrax, cholera, typhoid and paratyphoid, immediately ordering almost 300 pounds of anthrax
and paratyphoid for the operation. These would be then delivered inside some peptome bottles
labeled as “Water Supply” to Nanking, where the bacteria would be transferred to metal flasks.
In order to support the airdropping operation, Japanese troops would contaminate wells, rivers
and fields using these flasks, hoping to sicken the local Chinese forces and guerrilla units to
prevent them from quickly reoccupying the region. Furthermore, the Japanese also prepared 3000 rolls
contaminated with typhoid and paratyphoid and then handed them over to Chinese prisoners of war,
subsequently releasing them to go home and spread these diseases.
Another horrific tactic employed by the Japanese was to deposit biscuits infected with typhoid near
fences and behind trees to make it look like the retreating soldiers had left them behind,
knowing full well that the hungry inhabitants would devour them without a doubt. By August 1,
the success of the bacteriological operation was already discernible, so Major-General Ishii
was rewarded with a promotion to division head of Army Surgeon in the 1st Division,
subordinated to the North China Area Army. In his stead, Major-General Kitano Masaji was
appointed as new head of Unit 731, and it would be under his tenure that the apex of large-scale
production and development of bacteriological warfare would unfold. But the success of Unit
731 would quickly get out of hand for the Japanese Empire. By December of 1942, massive outbreaks of
cholera were reported by the Tokyo radio; and not long after, the Chinese government would have to
quarantine many towns in the province of Zhejiang due to the epidemic caused by the Japanese.
Many retreating Japanese soldiers would also get sick with the diseases spread by Unit 731,
with losses amounting to more than 1700 men as their own biological weapons turned on them.
Nevertheless, this was a terrible price that the Chinese had to pay for the Doolittle Raid.
Not only did entire villages get looted and burnt to the ground by the invaders; not only were their
women raped, their men tortured and their children slaughtered; but their land, their own ecosystem,
was also harmed with the use of bacteriological weapons, leaving entire regions uninhabitable for
many years. Those poor souls that were lucky to survive two months of violent and savage Japanese
occupation would have to face the deadly diseases the invaders left behind. There would not be many
survivors, but those who did would reach out to American and Chinese reporters and investigators,
so that the knowledge of these Japanese war crimes would not be forgotten. Next week, we have
a special episode in the works for you, so stay tuned for more from the Pacific War series. If
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