A former UN biological weapons inspector is leading a campaign to educate the world on the germ warfare practiced by the Japanese in China from 1931 to 1945.
German cell biologist and former weapons inspector with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) Jan van Aken has just completed a research tour of war crime sites in China.
"I was astonished at the fact that the Chinese victims of Japanese biological weapons have suffered so much in the past 60 years," said the Hamburg University biologist.
"However, very few people know this fact. It is essential for more people to know this history of inhumanity so as to prevent similar tragedies," van Aken said in Yiwu City, east China's Zhejiang Province.
Van Aken has visited Quzhou, Jinhua, and Yiwu, in Zhejiang, to collect evidence of germ warfare.
He was accompanied by his assistant, Matthias Ziegler, and WangXuan, head of the Plaintiffs Delegation of Chinese War Victims, which has lobbied for compensation from the Japanese government and helped in lawsuits.
Van Aken said he would file the findings of the investigation with the sixth deliberation meeting of United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons and their Destruction to be held in Geneva in November.
He would also publicize Japanese germ warfare crimes to the world via the Internet and international media.
"My nine-year-old younger brother suffered so much that he kept scratching the bed board with his bleeding hands," said Wu Shigen, a citizen of Quzhou, who escaped the atrocities, telling van Aken how his younger brother and sister died of plague in 1942.
Qiu Mingxuan, a former head of Quzhou Health and Epidemic Prevention Station, has investigated Japanese germ warfare allegations for years. He discovered that more than 50,000 people in Quzhou died of plague from 1940 to 1948.
At Caojie Village of Jinhua, 70-year-old villager Dai Zhaokai rolled up his trousers and revealed to van Aken the yellowish-white scars of anthrax and answered van Aken's questions about his infection.
Later, van Aken went to Chongshan Village of Yiwu to research the claims of human experiments and vivisection.
Wang Peigen, secretary-general of the Plaintiffs Delegation, said 403 people in the village fell victim to germ warfare in 1942. "The Japanese captured villagers infected with plague and pulled out their internal organs to make bacteria bombs. The old villagers still remember the screams."
Van Aken and Ziegler said they were overwhelmed by the evidence.
"It is hard to express my feelings," said van Aken. "On the one hand, it is distressing to see the long-lasting torture Japanese germ warfare brought to the Chinese people; on the other, I find myself grateful that Wang Xuan et al are saving the living evidence.
"Through this investigation, I believe the Japanese did practice germ warfare. This is a fact, not a theory." He said a wider knowledge of the story might help prevent future tragedies.
Wang Xuan said, "This investigation has reinforced our determination to carry out lawsuits against the Japanese for their atrocities to the end."
Since August 1997, the Plaintiffs' Delegation has been appealing for the Japanese government to apologize and compensate victims.
Studies by Chinese and foreign scholars have shown that between1931 and 1945, Japanese troop Unit 731 with its human biological weapons laboratory, and other units repeatedly practiced germ warfare in China.
(Xinhua News Agency June 13, 2006)
