Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up 2nd Edition

by Sheldon H. Harris (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0415932141

ISBN-10: 0415932149

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Factories of Death details the activities of the Japanese army scientists that conducted numerous horrifying experiments upon live human beings. It investigates who from the upper echelons of the Japanese military and political establishments knew of the experiments, also the question of whether or not Allied POWs were subjected to such tests, and the nature of the deal that was brokered with US authorities after the war. This new edition has been completely updated, and contains an entirely new chapter detailing the numerous revelations that have surfaced since the book's initial publication in 1994.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Factories of Death is about Japan's secret biological and chemical experiments on live human beings and United States complicity in covering up the truth. Sheldon Harris has done us all a service by painstakingly uncovering the facts behind one of mankind's biggest yet least known crimes." -- James Bradley, author, Flags of Our Fathers
"This book brings sound scholarship and strong moral conviction, tempered by carefully nuanced argument, to bear on a subject of continuing international concern. It deserves a readership far beyond the circle of Second World War specialists." -- The International History Review
"The book's two parts, "Japanese Factories of Death" and American Cover-Up," are meticulously researched with the results presented in an outraged tone." -- Military Review

About the Author

Sheldon H. Harris is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Northridge. He began his research on Japanese biological experiments in Manchuria in 1984.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 2nd edition (March 22, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 424 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0415932149
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0415932141
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1450L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.96 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #245,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #48 in Biological & Chemical Warfare History (Books)
- #63 in Military Sciences
- #108 in Asian History (Books)

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A Chinese Customer

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2020

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The book shop is wonderful, as well as the mail service. Shipped very fast and the book arrived in a good status, didn’t get any damage (shipped to China). It’s an excellent book - perfect content, beautiful printing. Everything is satisfying. Thank you very much for everything.

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SLS

Good for Historians who want to know the whole truth about Japan war

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2015

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This was something I did not know about. A lot in history about the Germans not so much about the Japanese. It is interesting in how much America posts about the Nazis and how little they talk about the Japanese

6 people found this helpful

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KayakFisherman

Interesting book

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2017

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Visceral. These guys got away with it all. Sad. No reparations for Chinese and Allied victims. Sadder.

4 people found this helpful

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S. M. H. Klauber

Only 3 Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2006

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I read this book because, frankly, my knowledge of this subject is weak. I know some about the Japanese Unit 731, but not much compared to the reading I have done on the Nazi's similar nefarious efforts.

The book does impart a good amount of information, but is not that well-written. If it were not for some references to 1990's events, I would swear this was a book out of the 1950's. Not that folks did not write great stuff in the 1950's, but the book's organization and style are, well, old-fashioned (??). Its not a good enough book to be 5 stars, and the writing quality takes it down to 3 stars. That said, I would suggest it to readers who have a definite interest in the Japanese BW efforts, and the U.S. giving them a Cold War "pass".

9 people found this helpful

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Michael M.

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2015

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great book

2 people found this helpful

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John Richard Schrock

The Best Scholarship on the Worst Wartime Atrocities

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2020

“Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-up” Revised Edition, Routledge Press, © 2002 385 pages, softcover.

The author, Sheldon H. Harris (1928–2002) was Professor of History at California State University, Northridge and Professor Emeritus. He was a scholar educated at Brooklyn College, Harvard and Columbia Universities. From the time he learned of this wartime atrocity, Professor Harris dedicated his life to this most scholarly examination of the Japanese bacteriological warfare conducted in Manchuria, and the American cover-up that occurred thereafter. He presented papers at international conferences on science and ethics, and published many scholarly articles on his research before authoring the first edition of this book in 1994.

All other accounts of Unit 731, prior and subsequent to this book, are partial when compared to this carefully research effort. There will be further information and perhaps refinements to this story if the U.S. declassifies further historical documents, but this text remains the standard for accuracy and depth of research on this topic.

Part One covers “Japanese Factories of Death”
Chapter 1: Manchuria
Chapter 2: Ishii Shiro
Chapter 3: The Beiyinhe Bacteria Factory
Chapter 4: Phase 1: Building Ping Fn
Chapter 5: Phase 2: Hell in Ping Fan
Chapter 6: The Secrets of Secrets: Human Experiments
Chapter 7: The Death Factory in Changchun
Chapter 8: The Death Factory in Nanking
Chapter 9: Experiments on Prisoners of War
Chapter 10: Who Knew?
Part Two covers “American Cover-ups”
Chapter 11: The American Biological Warfare Program
Chapter 12: Discovery of the Secret of Secrets
Chapter 13: Investigations
Chapter 14: Scientists and the Cover-up
Chapter 15: The Military and the Cover-up
Chapter 16: Conclusion

Americans have a naive understanding of our participation in germ warfare research. We easily dismiss and forget such evidence, such as the case of the deadly anthrax letters sent to folks in Washington, DC at the same time as the unrelated 9-11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Anthrax is normally an infection some farmers get, with cutaneous symptoms that are easily treated with common antibiotics. But the anthrax letters were a special strain of anthrax, engineered as a bioweapon by our Fort Detrick. We all heard about it and we all rapidly forgot about it. But our bioweapon program, second only to the Manhattan Project in warfare research, was a major U.S. effort in bioweapon development at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and figures heavily in the second part of this book.

Further insight into our bioweapon programs is documented in the 58-minute television program aired in 2001 on PBS and produced by WGBH: “NOVA-Bioterror.” If a reader views this program first, it then sets the wartime atmosphere and mindset for the U.S. coverup described in Harris’s book and the top secret status of our research history maintained today. The book: "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" by Judith Miller, William J. Broad and Stephen Engelberg released in 2002 also parallels the content of this video.

Harris does not dismiss other Allied countries’ participation in bioweapon research either, noting that the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Holland all employed bioweapons researchers and had facilities conducting such research. The NOVA-Bioterror footage documents the unveiled bioweapon factories left deserted following the breakup of the Soviet Union, also confirming Harris’s perspective. Unfortunately, despite the superficial condemnation of such research, the need to develop vaccinations and other materials to counter biological warfare agents in itself essentially requires the production of the agent in order to develop the cure. And despite the 1969 germ warfare weapons ban signed under President Nixon, modern countries are continuing “defensive” research in Biosafety Level 4 lab facilities, and probably must do so. Indeed, one of the interests of Ft. Detrick scientists was the biosafety suits the Japanese had developed to keep Japanese researchers safe while working with animals and humans infected with insect-borne bubonic plague and typhus, and incorporating those insects into aerial “bombs” dropped over Chinese cities in order to allow the insects to spread these terrible diseases. Further details on this weaponized entomology is available in Jeffrey Lockwood’s “Six-Legged Soldiers” book that focuses on the use of insects in biological warfare, and likewise presents substantial evidence of U.S. military involvement. Four chapters of Lockwood’s book are devoted to the Unit 731 horrors.

Is there an inborn sense of decency in humans that should repulse them from conducting germ warfare experiments on living victims, including vivisection without anesthetic? It seems that some of the younger Japanese medical workers were repulsed when they first came to perform such operations, but that most became hardened and able to dismiss their victims as less than human.

Normally in a review, I summarize the points chapter-by-chapter and point out weaknesses, etc. But Harris has done a solid job of heavily documented research that leaves little in question.

There are nearly a dozen other books that address Unit 731 and related Japanese biowarfare efforts and while telling partial stories, they lack the extensive references and documentation that Harris has provided.

The remains of the Unit 731 camp, originally 40 miles outside of Harbin, have now been enclosed within the city limits of the ever-growing metropolis of Harbin. The Unit 731 Museum on that site was rebuilt and modernized in 2015, and I visited it for a day in 2016. The theme is not anti-Japanese marketing, but a sober reminder that under certain circumstances, any body of people could resort to such methods in a time of war where, as one Japanese officer stated, “you do what you must do to win.” That is the warning message of the museum, and in the final chapters of Harris’s book, he describes documents and statements attesting to our willingness to resort to biological warfare despite our proclamations otherwise.

Once Harris learned of this terrible event, he dedicated the rest of his life to investigating and documenting it. This book is a testimony to his life well spent.

2 people found this helpful

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Jordi Vilalta Lopez

the crooked timber of humanity

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2008

This is "the other" good book on Unit 731 and the bacteriological warfare research and development secret Japanese program (focused mainly in occupied Manchuria and Northern China, mainly in the 30's) that included (or rather consisted of) large-scale laboratory experimentation on humans doomed to die (sometimes after being vivisected, with a little anesthesia as an option that could be easily dispensed with).

How many men, women and children died directly in lab experimentation? Difficult to answer: probably between five and fifteen thousand. How many during field testing on unaware civilian communities? The best guess is to double the previous range. How many died in real combat? We can safely double once more the range, noting by the way that some hundreds if not thousands of them were Japanese soldiers.

Who ordered and lavishly funded this program? The highest military brass, militarist extreme right-wing Japanese politicians and bureaucrats, perhaps the Imperial House, even the Showa Emperor Hirohito himself.
Who did the dirty job? The almost totality of the brightest physicians and biological experts of the country's elite Universities (but they didn't think that the job was dirty at all, just a very well-paid one).
Who was in command of the operation? A named Ishii, Shiro, a noted bacteriologist and a junior Lt. Col. when it all began, who ended his military career (but not his extravagant way of life) with militaty distinctions awarded by the Emperor himself, as the only Lt. General ever to come out from the Medical Corps.

How many of these men were brought on trial on war-crime charges? NIL, zero. Why? It's one of the most interesting questions on this bloody, mind-boggling business, and the book answers it well and directly enough.
Has the Japanese Government acknowledged that these events ever took place? NIL, no. Why? They can't care less about some thousand "human beings" (so to speak: during the Manchurian and Chinese "incidents" they were routinely spoken of as "logs" or, in one of the facilities, "experimental material") of clearly inferior races.

Has any US government acknowledged that these events ever took place? NIL, no. Why? They had to protect at all costs (and there were high costs involved, indeed) all the "medical" data that the Japanese war criminals intelligently traded for immunity from prosecution and living well paid lives on Government and private funding (I recommend you to read my review on the competing book "Unit 731: Testimony" by Hal Gold, so I can dispense with some long explanations).

If you started reading this, it means that the above data were to some extent known to you, unlike many of your countrymen. Turning therefore to this particular book ("Factories of Death") it will remain, probably forever, the "definitive" historical reference on the whole subject. It's written by a qualified historian, and it's rather thicker than the competition (some 385 pages of a much larger format). The story is well told, even if sometimes it seems twice-told: there is some amount of repetition, not as a cut-and paste affair, but trying to keep the reader on track with repeated contextual information. Every possible detail has been meticulously researched as far as possible and then more. The writing is fluid, but it's not a page-turner either, partly by the monstrosities it implies, partly for all the painstaking historical detail (probably TOO MUCH detail for non professional readers). One gets accustomed to skipping the end-of-chapter notes, with let's say 84 of them in small type, that give the references to the most abstruse documents and sources, even for the seasoned historian. Yes, there are some more pictures than in Hal Gold shorter and simpler book, but this really doesn't count as an advantage.

A honest, serious, rather balanced book it is, the scholarly work of a dedicated professional historian. A book that almost commends itself. If you want all the damned available details about this history, please don't hesitate to buy this very good book (by the way, signature-sewn rather than mass-market paperback, and with a 250-year life acid-free paper). If you, on the other hand, aren't very fond of abstruse bibliographical notes, and want a straightforward summary account, then Hal Gold's is your book, easier on your pocket and on your brain, but surely not on your heart.

27 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

J Alec Lewis

Disturbing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2015

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A very well written and accurate account of the atrocities that the Japanese committed during the second World War.

Miha

More massive than expected

Reviewed in Italy on March 8, 2020

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It's a really voluminous book.
Delivery as planned

Traceyface

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on February 4, 2015

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=o)

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