January-February 2005
>From the Archive
Japan's sad chapter
For decades, both the Japanese and U.S. governments denied Japan's use of chemical weapons during World War II. But by the 1980s, graphic accounts started to surface about atrocities that involved Japan's use of poison gas against Chinese civilians and testing of chemical weapons on American, Chinese, and Russian prisoners of war.
Yuki Tanaka's October 1988 Bulletin article, "Poison Gas: The Story Japan Would Like to Forget," provided one of the most horrifying retellings. Tanaka describes the experiences of Japanese civilians who worked at factories that produced chemical and biological weapons on the small island of Okunoshima, where "all the trees were withered, and one could not avoid the foul smell wherever one went," Tanaka wrote. http://www.thebulletin.org/index.htm