Imperial Japanese Army

In 1933 the Japanese established The Army Chemical Warfare School at Narashino, 21 miles east of Tokyo. The 11-month course ran for 12 years and turned out over 3000 chemical warfare officers for the Japanese Imperial Army. There is little doubt that from 1937 onwards the Japanese made extensive use of poison gas in their war against the Chinese. 

Lewisite is the most important of the organo-arseni-cal CW agents. Exposure to lewisite is quite painful, and onset of symptoms occurs rapidly (seconds to minutes) (31) in contrast to sulfur mustard for which a latency period occurs of several hours between exposure and symptoms (32). Although it is not known to have been used as a CW agent, lewisite is still considered a potential threat due to the relative ease of production and its rapid onset of action. Moreover, substantial stockpiles of lewisite are present in the United States, Russia, and in China abandoned by the Japanese Imperial Army. This may constitute a potential hazard for public health (33). The toxicity of lewisite is inter alia caused by the high affinity for the vicinal di-thiol system present in dihydrolipoic acid, a component of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, as is the case for other arsenicals (34). This prevents the formation of acetyl coenzyme A from pyruvate. 

The Japanese also used chemical weapons during WWn. The Japanese Imperial Army injured and killed close to 100,000 people during the war using chemical and biological weapons. An estimated two million chemical warfare munitions and approximately 100 tons of toxic chemicals were abandoned in China alone when Japan surrendered. These abandoned chemical munitions continue to inflict casualties. As recently as August 4,2003, mustard gas leaking from an abandoned Japanese chemical weapons plant in northeast China killed at least 1 civilian and injured 35 others. Abandoned chemical weapons in China have caused an estimated 2,000 deaths since WWII. 

By then Hiroshima and its castle had found further service as an army base and the Imperial Army Fifth Division was quartered in barracks within and aroimd the castle grounds. The Fifth Division was the first to be shipped to battle when Japan and China initiated hostilities in 1894 Ujina harbor served as a major point of embarkation and would continue in that role for the next fifty years. The Meiji emperor moved his headquarters to the castle in Hiroshima in September, the better to direct the war, and the Efiet met in extraordinary session in a provisional Diet building there. Until the following April, when the limited mainland war ended with a Japanese victory that included the acquisition of Formosa and the southern part of Manchuria, Hiroshima was de facto the capital of Japan. Then the emperor returned to Tokyo and the city consolidated its gains. 

SIPRI, Vol. 1, p. 194 5250th Technical Intelligence Company, The Use of Poison Gas by Imperial Japanese Army in China, 1937-1945 Tokyo TIC (1946). 

Not surprisingly then, the Geneva Protocol did not act as a deterrent for one state party - Italy - and one signatory state - Japan - to use CW as a means of warfare in the mid- to late-1930s. Italy invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in October 1935 and before the end of the year tear gas grenades were used by Italian troops. These were replaced first by mustard-filled grenades and later on in the war spray-tanks mounted to planes were used to disseminate the chemical warfare agents.15 Likewise, the Imperial Japanese Army used CW in occupied Manchuria. As one account sums up ... 

Japanese studies toward an atomic bomb began first within the military. The director of the Aviation Technology Research Institute of the Imperial Japanese Army, Takeo Yasuda, a lieutenant general and an alert electrical engineer, conscientiously followed the international scientific literature that related to his field in the course of his reading in 1938 and 1939 he noticed and tracked the discovery of nuclear fission. In April 1940, foreseeing fission s possible consequences, he ordered an aide who was scientifically trained. Lieutenant Colonel Tatsusaburo Suzuki, to prepare a fuU report Suzuki went to work with a will... 

Of comse, the Japanese had learned the hard way that war is a bad thing, and the war-rerrotmcing corrstitution was still quite new and a matter of great pride for the Japanese people, so the idea that the Nakano School, a famous officer training course of the Imperial Japanese Army, could produce a pacifist (more or less) international police officer is a reassmance that Japan could indeed have a place in the world again. 

In the Russo-Japanese War, the death toll of the Imperial Japanese Army was 48 400 from battle and 37 200 from disease. Among the latter, 27 800 died of beriberi. The total number of beriberi patients in the Army reached 250 000. On the other hand, the Imperial Russian Army suffered from scurvy, which led to the fall of Port Arthur. 

The efficacy of barley-blended rice against beriberi was known to the chief medical officers of many army divisions. However, their request to adopt barley-blended rice as army provision was neglected by Rintaro (Ogai) Mori, a famous novelist and the head of the Second Army Medical Corps, Tadanori Ishiguro, a former director already retired but still influential on the Medical Department of the Japanese Army, and Tanemichi Aoyama, Professor of Tokyo Imperial University. 

As far as is known, aside from an occasional cyanide grenade tossed at US soldiers (without apparent result), the battlefield use of chemicals in World War II was limited to the Sino-Japanese theater of operations. The Imperial Japanese Army employed chemical weapons against the Chinese during World War II (starting 1937 up until at least 1942). 2... 

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