be effective. In a way, Ishii’s thoughts could be considered par for someone in a bureaucratic environment. Anyone familiar with life in a bureaucracy—especially a large and ponderous one—realizes that a large part of its total energy is expended to protect and enhance individual members’ own roles in the organizational machinery.
Inspired by these developments, Ishii pressed for the establishment of a military arm whose activities centered around weapons based on biology. This was his field; the more important it became to the military, the greater his own importance would grow within the system. Financial considerations provided logic to support his cause. Compared with the costs of building, manning, and maintaining huge conventional forces, for example, bacteria and gas were far less expensive. Other advantages were to appear later, but the cost factor was a major selling point for Ishii in his appeals to the top levels of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Protection of one’s own troops was still also part of the thinking about germs, a continuation of the military hygiene success of the Russo-Japanese War. While Ishii was a researcher at Kyoto, in fact, he was dispatched to help cure an epidemic that had broken out in a region of Japan, and during the course of his work he developed a water filtration system that could be transported along with troops. In general, however, he brought a new approach to military thinking about bacteriology. Why not enlist the “silent enemy” as a “silent ally”? He traveled frequently to Tokyo, still shaking hands with the top leaders of the army high command, still social-climbing, and still pleading his case for the development of bacteriological research as a weapon for offensive warfare.
The army had a policy of sending certain officers overseas to study foreign military facilities. Ishii left Japan in the spring of 1928 on a costly tour whose expenses came partly out of his own pocket. He spent more than two years visiting over twenty European countries, the United States, and Canada. Despite the fact that his own money was involved in funding his travel, however, his object was public-spirited: the furtherance of chemical and bacteriological warfare as Japanese military orthodoxy. He researched the history of gas weapons during World War I, and he studied what various countries were doing in the fields of bacteriological and gas warfare.
The climate he found in Japan when he returned in 1930 was more conducive to these thoughts than when he had left. Nationalism burned hotter. The old slogan of “a wealthy country, a strong army” that had attended the launch of the Meiji Restoration six decades earlier was echoing among the upper echelons of the military establishment. One of the men Ishii convinced to sponsor his efforts was the Minister of the Army, who coincidentally had the same family name as the president of Ishii’s university. Araki Sadao—found guilty of overall conspiracy and waging war against China at the war crimes trials in Tokyo—was impressed with Ishii’s findings and ambitions and set the army into action along the lines mapped out by Ishii.
Manchuria
The South Manchuria Railway was the Japanese-operated nerve center of the growing Manchurian economy, within which Japan had been developing a commercial and industrial base since 1904. It was also one of the best-run railways in the world. Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire, a travel guide published in 1933, reports that
Manchuria … with vast riches and a promising future, is rapidly being developed and modernized by the capable and progressive Japanese. A great factor in this development is the South Manchurian [sic] Railway, originally constructed by the Chinese Eastern Railway Company as a link in the trans-Siberian route, but acquired by Japan from Russia at the close of the Japan-Russia [sic] War. Under the present able Japanese management the rapidly spreading system has become one of the great highways of the world, and it is as modern, as safe, and as dependable as the best American railway. Fast express trains, commodious sleeping cars and luxurious dining cars are features of the line, the employees of which speak English and Russian.
Apart from the transport services that it provided, the South Manchuria Railway also published English-language pamphlets for the major cities of Manchuria. They included maps, points of interest to tourists, and some historical background. The pamphlet for Mukden printed in 1933 contains an account of local history:
Manchurian Incident and North Barracks
At 10:30 p.m. on the 18th of Sept. 1931, the Manchurian Incident was started by the insolent explosion of the railway track at Liu-tiao kou between Mukden and Wen-kuan-tun stations of the South Manchuria Railway, which was executed by the Chinese regular soldiers. After the explosion, the Chinese soldiers attempted to flee themselves in the direction of the North Barracks, but just then they were found by the Japanese railway guards under Lieutenant Kawamoto, who were patrolling the place on duty. Suddenly the both sides exchanged the bullets and the Japanese made a fierce pursuit after them. On the next moment, the Chinese force of some three companies appeared from the thickly growed Kaolian [sorghum] field near the North Barracks, against which the Japanese opposed bravely and desperately, meantime dispatching the urgent report to their commander. The skirmish developed speedily and the Japanese troop was compelled to make a violent attack upon the North Barracks … After several hours of fierce battle, the barracks fell completely into the hand of the Japanese forces.
On the other hand, the Japanese regiment in Mukden rose in concert with the railway guards in the midnight of the same day and succeeded in occupying the walled town.
This “incident”—a pitched battle, actually—was no more than a Japanese ruse, used to justify occupying Mukden and moving on to a complete takeover of Manchuria. The real reasons behind the Japanese advance were a pair of developments in the region that had sounded warning bells to Japanese intent on retaining control of the area. First, China was showing trends toward unification under Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek). Also, the Soviets were flexing their muscles and applying pressure from the north. The Kwantung Army made a move to strengthen its hold on Manchuria, with its wealth of coal, iron, an array of other ores, and oil.
Three days after the explosion at Mukden, supporting troops came in from Japan’s colony of Korea, and in three months Japan had completely occupied Manchuria. Jiang was concentrating on establishing his influence over the rest of China at the time, and ordered a policy of nonresistance, leaving it for the ineffectual League of Nations to cope with Japan’s invasion. Japan thereupon established a Manchuria-wide government, concocting an ironical euphemism by declaring the three eastern provinces an “independent” nation called Manzhouguo (Manchukuo). Henry Pu Yi, who had been emperor of the Manchu dynasty until 1912, when it abdicated its control of China, was pulled out of retirement to lead the new “nation.” The Japanese gave him the title of “chief executive” to lend an illusion of historical legitimacy to the government.
With Japanese military control over Manchuria complete, the stage was set for the procurement of human specimens for the labs of Unit 731 and its associated organizations.
The Stage Is Set
As Japan continued expanding the breadth and depth of its power on the Asian mainland, Ishii Shiro’s career also continued to advance apace. In 1932, an Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory was set up within the army hospital in Tokyo, with Ishii in charge. The title of the laboratory was as euphemistic as Manzhouguo’s “independence” and the “Great East Asian Coprosperity Sphere” banner under which Japan conquered neighboring countries. Prevention of disease in the Japanese military was still an objective of the research, but the center of gravity had shifted to development of bacteriological and chemical methods of warfare. This laboratory was Ishii’s first major step in that direction.
Meanwhile, Japanese ascendancy in Manchuria was bringing the Japanese medical community closer to unprecedented opportunities for research. Ishii’s goal of turning bacteria and gas into weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army would require comprehensive research, and animal research had serious limits in producing usable data. Growing control by Japan over Manchuria would provide research materials in the form
