Occupied City
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C/S, GHQ, AFPAC 1
Chief Surgeon, GHQ, AFPAC 2
Chief Chemical Officer, GHQ, AFPAC 2
Nav. Tech. Jap. 2
A C of S, G-2
Att: War Department Intelligence Target Section. 3
War Department, G-2
Att: Scientific Branch 39
Air Technical Intl. Group, FEAF 2
Lt. Col. M. Thompson 1
Stencils have been sent to G-2, War Department, where additional copies may be made available upon request.
– Report ends –
*
Marked PERSONAL
Dai-Ichi Hotel, Tokyo, Japan
November 18, 1945
My dearest Peggy,
I hope, with all my heart, that you and the children are all well. As you know, I had hoped (& prayed) to be home with you all by now or, at the very latest, for Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, things have taken a turn for the worse here. I know now that they have lied to me (these Japs) & my work here is far from done. I realize that they flattered me in order to distract me, faking respect for my reputation & my work at the College of Physicians & Surgeons. I realize, too, that I have been blinded by their titles & ranks, their own reputations & work.
There is something, however, I should have told you before but I suppose I was ashamed even then because I already knew (in my heart of hearts) that I had made a mistake. I suppose, also, that I was worried you would think less of me as a husband & as a father (& as a man) had you known (& I worry you may yet think so).
Back in October, before I had even completed my report, I received a strange visit at my room here at the Dai-Ichi Hotel. I was lying on my bed, tired as usual, but unable to sleep when I heard a curious scratching outside my window. Imagine my surprise when I opened the curtains & saw a Jap, clinging for dear life to the water pipe, & staring back through the window at me. I ran back to my bed & grabbed my revolver from under my pillow. I then opened the window & grabbed the Jap by the hairs on his neck & hauled him into the room. He was wearing a beret, a sweatshirt & trousers & he was cowering & shaking before me. But he then pulled a document from the belt of his trousers & held it out to me. I took it from him with my left hand but all the time I kept my finger on the trigger of my revolver. I asked him who he was & what this document was. He told me he was a former BW engineer & that this document was the blueprint of a bomb known as the Uji bomb. He told me that this bomb was loaded with plague germs, that over one hundred were produced but that they did not work very well. He also told me experiments were carried out using Chinese prisoners.
I asked him for more details & he told me that the prisoners were chained to stakes at varying distances from the bomb, that the bomb was then detonated & records were taken as to the differing impact of the bomb & its germs on the prisoners at their various distances. He told me many prisoners died. He then told me that the prisoners were both Chinese AND American.
Of course, I was shocked & asked him where these experiments took place. He told me the experiments were conducted in a place called Pingfan, a suburb of Harbin, & and also at Mukden. He told me they also inoculated Chinese & American prisoners of war with bubonic plague.
As you know, my dearest Peggy, first and foremost, above all else, I am a medical doctor. I took the Hippocratic Oath & I believe in the words of that oath. I believe in the sanctity of human life.
So I knew then that I had made a mistake, a huge & terrible mistake, a mistake that would haunt me from then on if I did not take immediate steps to correct it. I knew I had to rectify my mistake.
I went straight to the General’s office. I told the General (& Willoughby & Compton) that Naitō had lied to me, lied to us all. I told them that we had no choice now but to scotch their immunity deal, that we had no choice now but to prosecute them all.
Well, the General raised his eyebrows & lit his pipe & then he said (& I quote), ‘Well, first we need more evidence. We can’t simply act on this. So keep going, keep going…’
Willoughby & Compton agreed with him (as usual) & Willoughby even added that I should ‘keep quiet.’
I admit I was surprised by their reaction. Most of all, I was surprised they were not surprised by this new information.
Of course, I went straight back to Naitō & I gave him a piece of my mind. As usual, he was most apologetic but it cut no ice with me. I demanded he give me all the information he had on this place called Pingfan & that if he did not, I would have him arrested as a war criminal on General MacArthur’s orders (this was a lie but two can play at that game, I thought).
Anyway, lie or not, it had the desired effect on Naitō. He told me he didn’t really know much about the place, just what he’d heard from conversations he’d had with scientists who had worked there. But he thought that Unit 731 (the name they use) chose Pingfan because it was ‘the perfect place’; the temperature was ideal, with an average wind speed of ten to twelve miles per hour, the optimal conditions for disseminating bacteria. The perfect place, he kept saying. He also said (& I quote again), ‘But, I promise you, no human beings were involved in the experiments there.’ Liar, I thought to myself & I knew then that Pingfan was a place I must see with my own eyes.
Well, the plane (a B29) was ready & waiting for me at Tokyo airport to fly me to China and Pingfan. I was aboard, the propellers turning, when the engine suddenly stopped & the pilot came back down the plane. He said he had just received orders from General MacArthur himself & that I was recalled & was not to go to Pingfan. I could not believe it & so I headed straight back to GHQ.
The General was waiting for me with Willoughby & Compton. He said it was simply too risky for me to go to Pingfan because relations with the Soviets were deteriorating daily & the General could not risk a B29 falling into their hands.
Willoughby also now claimed that all our intelligence in mainland China indicated that Pingfan had been razed on the day of surrender & that it was nothing but a ruin now, that there was nothing to see. Nothing to see indeed, I thought to myself. That is the story of my time here.
So to my regret & to my shame (but on their orders), nowhere in my report, neither with regard to the Uji bomb nor the Ha bomb, did I make reference to any human experiments, nor is there reference to the blueprint I had received from the BW engineer & his allegation that prisoners of war had been killed in experiments.
Things then took a further bad turn within hours of me filing the report. I was back at the hotel, already packing & dreaming of seeing you all, when there was a knock on my door. It was a reporter from the wire services. He was holding a copy of my report & said it looked ‘very interesting’ & that he wanted to know more. Of course, I asked him how on earth he got hold of it & he said that there was a heap of them on a desk at GHQ, that they were only marked RESTRICTED & that the press were allowed to read anything marked RESTRICTED. I immediately commandeered a jeep from the desk clerk & drove back to Dai-Ichi HQ. I ran up the stairs to the General’s outer office. It was dark and unlocked & there, on the desk, was a pile of my reports all marked RESTRICTED. I counted them up. There were twenty-eight, twenty-nine including the one in my hand. However, if the General’s secretary had done as I had asked & made thirty copies, then one copy was still missing.
There is no doubt in my mind that Naitō had taken the missing copy (though, of course, he denies it) & that my report was already being read out in the suburbs by the senior members of Unit 731. No doubt too, they were celebrating my incompetence.
I hope you will also understand, from all I have told you, why I cannot return home to you & the children until I have corrected my mistake. I beg your understanding, patience & forgiveness.
Think of me this Thanksgiving, as I will be thinking of you all that day, as I think of you and miss you all each and every day.
With all my love, your husband, Murray.
*
Stamped TOP SECRET
APO 500-Advanced Echelon
December 9, 1945
To:
Colonel Harlan Worthley, Office of the Chief Chemical Warfare Service, Special Project Division, Gravelly Point, Washington, D.C.
Dear Colonel Worthley,
It is with great regret, and heavy heart, that I write this letter to you. However, I am duty- and honor-bound to tell you that I sincerely regret writing the report dated November 1, 1945.
Almost immediately upon completion of the above-mentioned report, I was confronted with new information which contradicted statements included in my report. I realize now that my report includes statements that are not only contradictory but also false.
Many of these contradictions & falsehoods are the result of my (misplaced) trust in Lt. Col. Naitō. I thought Naitō was quick, helpful, efficient and very humble. I thought he worked a long day, every day, and then went home dutifully to his wife. I now know (though he does not know I know) that he does nothing of the sort. Every night, he leaves my office here at Supreme Allied HQ in the Dai-Ichi Building and makes immediately for a rendezvous with senior members of Unit 731 and Unit 100 who are hiding here in the suburbs of Tokyo. He goes to brief them on what I am finding out which – thanks to him – is precious little. I know now he has been controlling me and it is his job to make sure I don’t find out too much. He has been very good at his job (up to now).
It is true that thanks to Naitō I was able to interview Yoshijirō Umezu, the chief of the Army General Staff and commander-in-chief of the former Kwantung Army. I also interviewed Tadakazu Wakamatsu, the Vice-Minister of War; Lt. Gen. ToraShirō Kawabe, vice-chief of the Army General Staff; Hiroshi Kambayashi and Nobuaki Hori, the army and navy Surgeon Generals; Colonel Saburo Idezuki, chief, Division of Preventative Medicine, Tokyo Army Medical College; Colonel Takamoto Inoue, chief, Bacteriological Section, Tokyo Army Medical College; Colonel Tomosada Masuda, Ishii’s deputy; Major Junichi Kaneko, the BW bomb expert; Lt. Col. Seiichi Niizuma, a senior army technical expert.
I asked them about fuses, detonations and scattering devices. I asked them about their ‘bacillus bomb’. I showed them the Red Book – the book with the details of Special Bomb Mark 7 – which we had captured in the South Pacific in May 1944.
Of course, they must have known that this was all I knew, that this was all we had. They also knew all I really wanted to know was where Ishii was. But, repeatedly, they all told me they presumed the commander of Unit 731 was still in Manchuria, or even dead. But I now know they were lying (all of them).
However, based on these interviews and the information that Naitō gave me, and which at that time I believed (wrongly) to be true, it was my recommendation to SCAP that no one involved in the Jap BW program be prosecuted as a war criminal. I made this recommendation in the sincere (but false) belief that no prisoners were ever used as experimental ‘guinea pigs’, as Naitō had ‘vowed’ that this was never the case. This I know now was a complete and utter lie (among many, many others).
Now I have a new and secret informant – whose identity, at this stage, I cannot reveal. But I will say that my new informant was an engineer with Unit 731 in China and has supplied me with the documentation and information which details the extent of the offensive Jap BW program. Furthermore, this informant is willing to testify that prisoners were used as ‘guinea pigs’. It is my belief that this informant of mine has provided the documentation and testimony needed to prosecute members of Unit 731 and Unit 100 as war criminals.
As protocol dictates, I have furnished SCAP with this new intelligence but, for reasons that remain unclear, I have yet to receive any direction or instruction as to how to proceed. I fear, however, that time is of the essence and that we cannot afford to procrastinate any longer.
As you know, President Truman has appointed Joseph B. Keenan as our chief prosecutor at the IMTFE and Keenan is expected here in Tokyo any day now with his team of lawyers. I believe a meeting with the prosecution should be arranged as soon as possible, but await confirmation of your consent and further instructions in all these matters.
Sincerely, Lt. Col. Murray Thompson.
*
Marked PERSONAL
Dai-Ichi Hotel, Tokyo, Japan
January 27, 1946
My dearest Peggy,
I hope you & the children are all well & that you were able to enjoy a merry Christmas & a happy New Year. I am only sorry, with all my heart, that I was not there to enjoy the holidays with you. However, I fear I would have been poor company as I have had a bad cough (though worry not, I am certain I am over the worst of it now).
To be honest, these past few weeks have not been easy ones & I have now been forced to take matters into my own hands in regard to my work. I did so only after much thought & soul searching but in the sincere hope that I would be able to bring matters here to a head & a swift conclusion would follow. I am still hopeful that this will prove to be the case & that sooner-than-you-think I’ll be walking up the driveway to our house (never to leave again!).
To my consternation, & in spite of many interviews with the General & letters to Washington, I have still received no response to my urgent requests to follow up on the allegations of human experiments &, in particular, to locate & question Lt. Gen. Ishii (the top man in charge of the offensive Jap BW program in China).
But, as my father used to say, you have to beat the ground to startle the snakes & so I have been beating the ground very hard here in Tokyo. Very hard, indeed!
Earlier this month, I received a copy of George Merck’s personal report to Secretary of War Patterson on Allied BW activities during the war. Merck included in his report the following sentence: ‘There is no evidence that the enemy ever resorted to this (BW) means of warfare.’ But, in his conclusion, Merck stressed that continued efforts in BW research were vital to America’s security.
Having read this report, I realized I needed help. I called the one Jap journalist who has been helpful to me & I gave him everything I knew about Ishii & Unit 731. I told him he could run the story, but not to use my name. I then asked him for a favor in return. I asked him to call The Pacific Stars & Stripes newspaper & to give them everything I had given him. Of course, I asked him to leave out my name & to attribute all quotes to ‘Japanese Communist leaders’.
Two days later the article ran, quoting Japanese Communist leaders accusing ‘members of the Japanese Medical Corps’ of inoculating American & Chinese prisoners of war with bubonic plague virus. It went on (& I quote): ‘Dr Shim Ishii, former lieutenant general in the Japanese Surgeons’ Corps and former head of the Ishii Institute in Harbin, directed “human guinea pig” tests both at Mukden and Harbin.’
The article claimed that experiments at Canton had backfired & that plague had broken out in the city. It further stated that Ishii, despite having had a mock funeral staged, was alive & well & living in Japan. Well, as you can imagine, all hell broke loose & before I knew it I was back in the General’s office (though no one suspects it was me who so well & truly let the cat out of the bag)!
Anyway, Willoughby (who I do not trust) told me that Masaji Kitano, the commander of Unit 731 from 1942 to 1944, was already on a plane from China & I was to question him upon his arrival in Tokyo. But they saved the best for last – Ishii had also miraculously turned up in Chiba Prefecture & I was to interview him too.
So I am finally to meet the devil & talk with him.
Wish me luck & pray that I’ll be back home with you all very soon now. I cannot tell you how much I miss you all & am looking forward to seeing you, so kiss the children from me.
All my love, Murray.
*
Stamped TOP SECRET
APO 500-Advanced Echelon
February 25, 1946
To: Colonel Harlan Worthley, Office of the Chief Chemical Warfare Service, Special Project Division, Gravelly Point, Washington, D.C.
Dear Colonel Worthley,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your timely and continued support of my request to remain in charge of the Jap BW investigation. I am only
too aware that not every one (particularly in G-2) felt I, or anyone from Camp Detrick, should even remain involved.
As you are no doubt aware, the International Prosecution Section for the Tokyo War Crimes Trial is now here in Tokyo and in full swing. I have a meeting scheduled (for March 8) with Lt. Col. Thomas H. Morrow of the IPS, whose brief is to prepare the prosecution’s case in relation to Japanese military aggression and war crimes in China. From my initial conversations with Lt. Col. Morrow it is clear that he wishes to bring BW matters before the Tokyo trial.
As you are also aware, I have just completed a series of interrogations with Lt. Gen. Ishii and Lt. Gen. Kitano and much of what was said will be of interest and relevance to Lt. Col. Morrow. However, before sharing any of our information with the IPS, I feel it is only proper to fully brief yourself and the Chemical Warfare Section. To that end, I will be sending – through proper channels – the stenographic transcripts of my interrogations with Lt. Gen. Ishii and Lt. Gen. Kitano. However, I feel it is my duty to bring some matters raised by the interrogations to your immediate attention.
The interrogations were conducted over the best part of the last seven weeks, commencing January 18, after Ishii was finally located (thanks to my ‘informant’) and brought to Tokyo from his home village in Chiba (where he had been residing all along). During this period, we have also interviewed a further twenty-five intimates of Ishii about him and his work.
I would like to note for the record, however, that it was a great pity that Ishii was not arrested and interned in Sugamo, instead of being merely asked to reside in his Tokyo house while charges against him were being investigated. I do strongly feel that had Ishii been interned in Sugamo with the rest of them, then we would have been able to gain more substantial (and damning) testimony from him. I am aware that Ishii’s health is not good (he has chronic chole-cystitis and dysentery), but I feel that should have in no way dictated the location of the interviews (his Tokyo home).