Shirō Ishii

Shirō Ishii
Ishii in 1932
Native name	石井 四郎
Born	(1892-06-25)June 25, 1892 Shibayama, Chiba, Japan
Died	October 9, 1959(1959-10-09) (aged 67) Tokyo, Japan
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service / branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1921–1945
Rank	Surgeon General (Lieutenant-General)
Commands	Unit 731, Kwantung Army
Battles / wars	Second Sino-Japanese War World War II
Awards	Order of the Golden Kite, Fourth Class

Surgeon General Shirō Ishii (石井 四郎, Ishii Shirō, [iɕiː ɕiɾoː]; 25 June 1892 – 9 October 1959) was a Japanese microbiologist, army medical officer, and war criminal who served as the director of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Ishii led the development and application of biological weapons at Unit 731 in Manchukuo during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, including the bubonic plague attacks at Chinese cities of Changde and Ningbo, and planned the Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night biological attack against the United States. Ishii and his colleagues also engaged in human experimentation, resulting in the death of over 10,000 people, most of them civilians or prisoners of war. They were later granted immunity in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East by the United States government in exchange for information and research for the U.S. biological warfare program.

Biography

Early years

Shirō Ishii was born in Shibayama in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, the fourth son of Katsuya Ishii, a local landowner and sake maker. Ishii attended the Chiba Imperial School in Chiba City and the Fourth High School in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture before studying medicine at Kyoto Imperial University. In 1921, Ishii was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army as a military surgeon with the rank of Army Surgeon, Second Class (surgeon lieutenant). In 1922, Ishii was assigned to the 1st Army Hospital and Army Medical School in Tokyo, where his work impressed his superiors enough to gain him post-graduate medical schooling at Kyoto Imperial University two years later. During his studies, Ishii would often grow bacteria "pets" in multiple petri dishes, and his odd practice of raising bacteria as companions rather than as research subjects made him notable to the staff of the university. In 1925, Ishii was promoted to Army Surgeon, First Class (surgeon captain).

Biological warfare project

By 1927, Ishii was advocating for the creation of a Japanese bio-weapons program, and in 1928 began a two-year tour of the West where he did extensive research on the effects of biological warfare and chemical warfare developments from World War I onwards. Ishii's travels were highly successful and helped win him the patronage of Sadao Araki, the Japanese Minister of the Army. Ishii also received the backing of Araki's ideological rival in the army, Major-General Tetsuzan Nagata, who was later considered Ishii's "most active supporter" at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. In January 1931, Ishii received promotion to Senior Army Surgeon, Third Class (surgeon major). According to Ishii's followers, Ishii was extremely loyal to the Emperor and had an "enthusiastic personality" and "daring and carefree attitude", with eccentric work habits such as working late at night in the lab after hanging out with friends at town. He was also known for his heavy drinking, womanizing and embezzling habits, which were tolerated by his colleagues.

In 1935, Ishii was promoted to Senior Army Surgeon, Second Class (surgeon lieutenant-colonel). On August 1, 1936, Ishii would be given formal control over Unit 731 and its research facilities. In these facilities Ishii and his men would perform experiments on live humans, including but not limited to: infecting living subjects with plague rats, forced pregnancies, vivisections and inducing frostbites and trying to cure it by bludgeoning frozen limbs.

Further promotions for Ishii would follow; he was promoted to Senior Army Surgeon, First Class (surgeon colonel) in 1938, Assistant Surgeon General (surgeon Major General) in March 1941, and Surgeon General (surgeon Lieutenant General) in March 1945. Towards the end of the war Ishii would develop a plan to spread plague fleas along the populated west coast of the US, known as Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. This plan was not realized due to the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945. Ishii and the Japanese government attempted to cover up the facilities and experiments, but ultimately failed with their secret university lab in Tokyo and their main lab in Harbin, China. The Japanese Army's Unit 731 War Crimes Exhibition Hall (731罪证陈列馆)[ex] in Harbin stands to this day as a museum to the unit and the atrocities they committed.

War crime immunity

Ishii was arrested by United States authorities during the Occupation of Japan at the end of World War II and, along with other leaders, was supposed to be thoroughly interrogated by Soviet authorities. Instead, Ishii and his team managed to negotiate and receive immunity in 1946 from Japanese war-crimes prosecution before the Tokyo tribunal in exchange for their full disclosure. Although the Soviet authorities wished the prosecutions to take place, the United States objected after the reports of the investigating US microbiologists. Among these was Dr. Edwin Hill, the Chief of Fort Detrick, whose report stated that the information was "absolutely invaluable;" it "could never have been obtained in the United States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans," and "the information was obtained fairly cheaply." On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington D.C. that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."

Ishii's immunity deal was concluded in 1948 and he was never prosecuted for any war crimes, and his exact whereabouts or occupation were unknown from 1947. Richard Drayton, a Cambridge University history lecturer, claimed that Ishii later went to Maryland to advise on bioweapons. Another source says he stayed in Japan, where he opened a clinic where he did examinations and treatments for free. Ishii kept a diary but it did not make reference to any of his wartime activity with Unit 731.

Death

In his last years, he could not speak clearly; he was uncomfortable and on pain medication and spoke in a harsh voice. Ishii died on 9 October 1959 from laryngeal cancer at the age of 67 at a hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Ishii's funeral was chaired by Masaji Kitano, his second-in-command at Unit 731. According to his daughter, Ishii converted to Catholicism shortly before his death.

Popular culture

• Portrayed by Min Ji-hwan in the 1991–1992 MBC TV series Eyes of Dawn.
• In the season 6, episode 7 of The Blacklist (TV series), entitled General Shiro, an assassin utilizes beetles to target victims involved in creating pesticides. Many references were made in regards to the real General Shiro.
• Portrayed by Gang Wang in the 1988 film Men Behind The Sun.
• American thrash metal band Slayer released a song about Ishii and his war crimes titled "Unit 731" on their 2009 album World Painted Blood. The song follows a similar vein to Slayer's famous song about fellow Axis war criminal Josef Mengele, "Angel of Death". Like "Angel of Death", the song was written by Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who himself was an amateur historian of WW2.

See also

• Josef Mengele
• Operation Paperclip
• Khabarovsk War Crime Trials

Sources

References

• Barenblatt, Daniel. A Plague Upon Humanity: the Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation, HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN 978-0060186258
• Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 978-4900737396
• Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0029353011
• Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 978-0415091053, 978-0415932141
• Endicott, Stephen and Hagerman, Edward. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0253334725
• Handelman, Stephen and Alibek, Ken. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 978-0375502316, 978-0385334969
• Harris, Robert and Paxman, Jeremy. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 978-0812966534
• Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 978-1883319854, 978-0756756987, 978-0826412584, 978-0826414151