The Sunshine Project
News Release
29 August

China: The Forgotten Victims of Biological Warfare

(29 August 2006) - In China, hundreds of victims of biological warfare are still suffering more than 60 years after their villages were attacked with anthrax, glanders and other biological weapons agents. Sunshine Project staff member Jan van Aken visited victims and their relatives in the province of Zhejiang in Eastern China, where large scale biological attacks were conducted by the Japanese Army in the 1940s. A detailed report, with pictures from photographer Matthias Ziegler, is available on the Sunshine Project website. A German language report is published in the current issue of the German Greenpeace Magazine.

"Biological weapons are not history, they are still a reality in China," says Wang Xuan, a spokeswoman for the biowarfare victims. They are indeed a very painful reality for the survivors in the so called "rotten leg villages" near the provincial town of Jinhua in Zhejiang.

In 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted a retaliation operation along the Zhejiang railway. When the locals fled into the mountains, their wells and houses were infested with various pathogens such as anthrax and glanders. Upon returning to their houses, many villagers became sick and died. Others developed very painful ulcers, mainly on their legs. With no antibiotics at hand, the infections grew worse over the years and never healed. "Sixty four years of torture" is what Dai Zhaokai calls it. A farmer from the village of Caojie, more than 30 out of the 500 inhabitants of Caojie lived for decades with similar open, festering wounds.

In 1942, wartime conditions prevented an in-depth epidemiological survey in the affected region. Today, it is difficult to be certain how many were infected, which pathogens were involved, and which infections were due to biological warfare. In some villages the sheer number of victims indicates a biological attack. In Xia Yi, several kilometers from Caojie, more than 50% of resident became severely ill within a short period of time after the Japanese attacks.

"Not every person that got sick in the 1940s in China is a victim of biological warfare," says van Aken, "but there is no doubt that Japan did use biological weapons in Zhejiang in 1940 and 1942, and that many people were affected. The Chinese government should initiate detailed epidemiological studies in Zhejiang as well as in other regions where biological attacks are suspected to have occurred, in order to gather further evidence and support the victims. In a few years, it will be too late for them."

The example of a plague attack on the city of Quzhou shows that thorough epidemiological work can provide strong evidence linking individual victims with a biological attack. On 4 October 1940, a Japanese airplane dropped plague-infected fleas over Quzhou, a small town in Western Zhejiang. A few days later, the first victims there died, and soon the plague spread across the region. More than 5,000 people died in the Quzhou district, and many more in neighbouring areas.

The former head of the Quzhou Center for Disease Control, Dr. Qiu Mingxuan, worked 50 years to gather an enormous amount of data on the plague epidemic. In conjunction with original Japanese documentation from 1940, his epidemiological data provided key evidence that the plague epidemic was caused by the Japanese Army. Based on this evidence, a lower court in Tokyo ruled in 2002 that the facts prove biological warfare attacks in occupied China. It nevertheless denied compensation to the victims. The case is now pending at Japan's Supreme Court, which is expected to decide soon on the victim's claims for compensation and an apology from the Japanese government.

Despite all the evidence, the Japanese government still ignores the issue. "We do not have sufficient documentary evidence for the biological attacks in China," is the simple statement delivered by the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, Mr. Matsumoto.

"This is not just embarrassingly uninformed, it is simply untrue," says van Aken, "considering that at least one document possessed by the Japanese goverment has been ruled by the Tokyo court to prove the plague attack on Quzhou. It is time now for Tokyo to face this dark chapter of its history, acknowledge the biowarfare attacks and compensate the victims."

The victims are supported in their lawsuit by Japanese lawyers, activist groups and former members of the Japanese biowarfare unit, who now seek to right their wrongs and who testified in court. "There were always good Japanese, then and today" says Wang Xuan, but "real reconciliation between the two nations" will be impossible so long as Japan does not confront its biological weapons past.

Sunshine Project Report: http://www.sunshine-project.org/pingfan/
Greenpeace Magazine (Germany): http://www.greenpeace-magazin.de/