Book Examines Japanese WW2 Biowar Program
Thursday, March 11, 2004 9:10 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A secret Japanese Army unit, dubbed Unit 371, sprayed Chinese villages with bacteria, spiked their wells with disease and laced their food with germs, perhaps killing up to a million Chinese in World War II, a new book says.There could be over 700,000 or even one million" lives lost to Japan's biowarfare program, Daniel Barenblatt, author of "A Plague Upon Humanity," said in a recent interview.
The book, published in the United States by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., tracks Japan's development of biological weaponry from 1931 to 1945 and its use of these weapons -- bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera -- on civilians, many of them in China....
....AN ACT OF NATURE?
"These are poor people who are for the first time telling their stories. They, at first, thought it (their illnesses) was an act of nature. Many had no idea what was happening to them," said Barenblatt.