The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (79 page)

DOCUMENT: THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE, MAY 16, 1997 [EXTRACTS]

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN APOLOGY FOR STUDY DONE IN TUSKEGEE

The East Room 2.26 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, on Sunday, Mr. Shaw will celebrate his 95th birthday. (Applause.) I would like to recognize the other survivors who are here today and their families: Mr. Charlie Pollard is here. (Applause.) Mr. Carter Howard. (Applause.) Mr. Fred Simmons. (Applause.) Mr. Simmons just took his first airplane ride, and he reckons he’s about 110 years old, so I think it’s time for him to take a chance or two. (Laughter.) I’m glad he did. And Mr. Frederick Moss, thank you, sir. (Applause.)

I would also like to ask three family representatives who are here – Sam Doner is represented by his daughter, Gwendolyn Cox. Thank you, Gwendolyn. (Applause.) Ernest Hendon, who is watching in Tuskegee, is represented by his brother, North Hendon. Thank you, sir, for being here. (Applause.) And George Key is represented by his grandson, Christopher Monroe. Thank you, Chris. (Applause.)

I also acknowledge the families, community leaders, teachers and students watching today by satellite from Tuskegee. The White House is the people’s house; we are glad to have all of you here today. I thank Dr. David Satcher for his role in this. I thank Congresswoman Waters and Congressman Hilliard, Congressman Stokes, the entire Congressional Black Caucus. Dr. Satcher, members of the Cabinet who are here, Secretary Herman, Secretary Slater, members of the Cabinet who are here, Secretary Herman, Secretary Slater. A great friend of freedom, Fred Gray, thank you for fighting this long battle all these long years.

The eight men who are survivors of the syphilis study at Tuskegee are a living link to a time not so very long ago that many Americans would prefer not to remember, but we dare not forget. It was a time when our nation failed to live up to its ideals, when our nation broke the trust with our people that is the very foundation of our democracy. It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future. And without remembering it, we cannot make amends and we cannot go forward.

So today America does remember the hundreds of men used in research without their knowledge and consent. We remember them and their family members. Men who were poor and African American, without resources and with few alternatives, they believed they had found hope when they were offered free medical care by the United States Public Health Service. They were betrayed.

Medical people are supposed to help when we need care, but even once a cure was discovered, they were denied help, and they were lied to by their government. Our government is supposed to protect the rights of its citizens; their rights were trampled upon. Forty years, hundreds of men betrayed, along with their wives and children, along with the community in Macon County, Alabama, the City of Tuskegee, the fine university there, and the larger African American community.

The United States government did something that was wrong – deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. To the survivors, to the wives and family members, the children and the grandchildren, I say what you know: No power on Earth can give you back the lives lost, the pain suffered, the years of internal torment and anguish. What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry. (Applause.)

The American people are sorry – for the loss, for the years of hurt. You did nothing wrong, but you were grievously wronged. I apologize and I am sorry that this apology has been so long in coming. (Applause.)

To Macon County, to Tuskegee, to the doctors who have been wrongly associated with the events there, you have our apology, as well. To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never be allowed to happen again. It is against everything our country stands for and what we must stand against is what it was.

So let us resolve to hold forever in our hearts and minds the memory of a time not long ago in Macon County, Alabama, so that we can always see how adrift we can become when the rights of any citizens are neglected, ignored and betrayed. And let us resolve here and now to move forward together.

The legacy of the study at Tuskegee has reached far and deep, in ways that hurt our progress and divide our nation. We cannot be one America when a whole segment of our nation has no trust in America. An apology is the first step, and we take it with a commitment to rebuild that broken trust. We can begin by making sure there is never again another episode like this one. We need to do more to ensure that medical research practices are sound and ethical, and that researchers work more closely with communities...

The people who ran the study at Tuskegee diminished the stature of man by abandoning the most basic ethical precepts. They forgot their pledge to heal and repair. They had the power to heal the survivors and all the others and they did not. Today, all we can do is apologize. But you have the power, for only you – Mr. Shaw, the others who are here, the family members who are with us in Tuskegee – only you have the power to forgive. Your presence here shows us that you have chosen a better path than your government did so long ago. You have not withheld the power to forgive. I hope today and tomorrow every American will remember your lesson.

Thank you, and God bless you. (Applause.)

UNIT 731

Officially known under the gloriously misleading name of the “Anti-Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army”, Unit 731 was a covert Japanese biological and chemical warfare group set up in 1936. The unit’s main base was a six kilometre square compound at Pingfang in Manchuria, complete with a railway line, barracks, dungeons, laboratories, operating rooms, crematoria, bar, airport, cinema and Shinto temple. At this Auschwitz of the East, Unit 731 conducted medical and biological warfare (BW) experiments on criminals, political opponents, Allied POWs and Chinese civilians. Known to staff as “logs”, the victims were subjected to a Dante-like range of horrors – live vivisection, food deprivation, injection with horse urine, hanging upside down until death, frostbite, electrocution, incarceration in high pressure chambers (until the victim’s eyes popped out) but mostly injection with the germ cultures of cholera, botulism, anthrax, smallpox, plague and VD. Unit 731 planes dropped plague-infected flea “bombs” on the Chinese populations of Yunnan, Ningbo and Changde in which over 400,000 people died. A clear case, you might think, for Unit 731 scientists to be tried for war crimes? Especially the Unit’s leader, Lieutenant-General Shiro Ishii?

The Soviets thought so, and hauled captured Unit 731 personnel before the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trial in 1949, with those found guilty being sent to a gulag. And the Americans? The US Army sent several investigators from its BW base, Fort Detrick, to Japan after the war to interrogate Japanese scientists from 731; the US interrogators concluded that, although Unit 731 members were guilty of contravening the rules of land warfare, their BW knowledge was so essential – and so far in advance of the USA’s – that some deal should be done with them. And reported to this effect to General MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces. He, in turn, wrote to Washington DC in 1947, suggesting 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”.

Replying to MacArthur, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee agreed that Ishii and his scientists would receive immunity from prosecution for war crimes if they gave up all their deadly data. Unsurprisingly, they said “
Hai
.” So: in return for acquiring the expertise of Unit 731’s scientists, the US covered up the evidence of its crimes, which may well have included torture and experimentation on captured GIs (see Congressional Research Report document, p.563). No charges were ever brought by the prosecutor at the Tokyo War Crimes trial, and many of the Unit’s personnel went on to play a prominent role in Japanese society; Ishii’s successor as head of 731, Dr Masaji Kitano, became head of the Green Cross pharmaceutical giant. Ishii himself was transported to the USA to carry on his bioweapons research, this time for Uncle Sam, in much the same way useful Nazi war criminals were under
Project Paperclip
.

To this day, Japan refuses Chinese demands for an apology and compensation for what happened at Pingfang on the grounds that there is no legal basis for them.

The site at Pingfang is now a museum.

Further Reading

Sheldon Harris,
Factories of Death
, 1994

Peter Williams and David Wallace,
Unit 731: Japan’s Secret Biological Warfare in World War II
, 1989

DOCUMENT: CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE REPORT FOR CONGRESS: US PRISONERS OF WAR AND CIVILIAN AMERICAN CITIZENS CAPTURED AND INTERNED BY JAPAN IN WORLD WAR II: THE ISSUE OF COMPENSATION BY JAPAN

Starting with the 1980 publication of “Japan’s Germ Warfare: The U.S. Cover-up of a War Crime”, in
The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
information on alleged Japanese Army biological warfare experiments on POWs has slowly been revealed, contributing to the continuing intensity of the WWII POW issue.

According to Sheldon Harris, there were apparently at least two different chemical and biological warfare units centered in Manchuria, each commanded by a different officer. One organization was Unit 100, with a central headquarters at Changchun, 150 miles south of Harbin: it was commanded by Major, later Major General, Wakamatsu Yujiro. Although, Harris reported, it experimented on humans, it has gotten little attention so far. The experiments about which the most is known are the biological warfare (BW) as well as some chemical warfare (CW) experiments, reportedly directed by a military doctor named Shiro Ishii. From the mid-1930s through 1945, Dr. Ishii, who eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant General, reportedly directed BW experiment organizations under various names at a number of locations in and around the northern Manchurian city of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province. His main organization, Unit 731, was based in Manchuria, 15 miles south of Harbin at Ping Fan [sic]. The base at Ping Fan [sic] had a perimeter of almost four miles, an airfield, and a rail spur from Harbin, 150 buildings, and 3,000 employees. Ping Fan [sic] was declared a Special Military Region and was very securely fortified and guarded.

Three books have been written about the activities of Unit 731, and it has been the subject of frequent mentions in U.S. newspaper articles in the late 1990s. A one-hour television documentary on Unit 731, entitled
History Undercover: Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria,
was broadcast on the History Channel on March 7, 1999, and was rebroadcast an additional three times. Books have been written about Unit 731 in Japan, former members have come forward to tell of their activities, and a traveling exhibit about it has been seen by some 200,000 Japanese.

Ongoing private investigations by scholars have described Unit 731 as spreading disease and causing epidemics in field experiments that may have killed tens or even hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Although exact numbers are unknown, various researchers have alleged that Unit 731 performed laboratory experiments on somewhere between 850 to 10,000 or more subjects, and that none of them survived. According to author Sheldon Harris, victims consisted mostly of Han Chinese inhabitants of the area around Harbin but also included stateless White Russians, Harbin Jews, criminals, communist guerrillas or spies, Mongolians, Koreans, the mentally handicapped, and also Soviet soldiers captured in border skirmishes. Newspaper articles also state that Allied soldiers, possibly including some Americans, might have been experimented on.