Khabarovsk War Crime Trials The Khabarovsk War Crime Trials were hearings held between 25–31 December 1949, in the Soviet Union's industrial city of Khabarovsk, the largest city within the Russian Far East adjacent to Japan. There, twelve members of the Japanese Kwantung Army were tried as war criminals for manufacturing and using biological weapons during World War II .History During the trials, the accused , such as Major General Kiyoshi Kawashima, testified that, as early as 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde . These operations caused epidemic plague outbreaks. All twelve accused war criminals were found guilty , and sentenced to terms ranging between two and twenty-five years in a labour camp . In 1956, those who were still serving their sentence were released and repatriated to Japan. In 1950, the USSR published official materials relating to the trial in English. The book was titled Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons . It included documents from the preliminary investigation, testimony from both the accused and witnesses, last pleas from the accused, some expert findings, and speeches from the State Prosecutor and Defense Counsel , verbatim. The book, published by Foreign Languages Publishing House , had long been out of print , but in November 2015 Google Books determined it was now in the public domain and published a facsimile of it online, in addition to offering it for sale as an ebook. According to one bioethics expert,Despite its strong ideological tone and many obvious shortcomings such as the lack of international participation, the trial established beyond reasonable doubt that the Japanese army had prepared and deployed bacteriological weapons and that Japanese researchers had conducted cruel experiments on living human beings. However, the trial, together with the evidence presented to the court and its major findings — which have proved remarkably accurate — was dismissed as communist propaganda and totally ignored in the West until the 1980s. Historian Sheldon Harris described the trial in his history of Unit 731:Evidence introduced during the hearings was based on eighteen volumes of interrogations and documentary material gathered in investigations over the previous four years. Some of the volumes included more than four hundred pages of depositions.... Unlike the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s, the Japanese confessions made in the Khabarovsk trial were based on fact and not the fantasy of their handlers. Harris also noted the controversies unleashed by the trial, which linked Emperor Hirohito to the Japanese biological warfare program, and also the allegations that the Japanese biological warfare experiments had also been conducted on Allied prisoners of war . One of the experts used by Soviet prosecutors during the trial, N. N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov, later served on the panel of scientists, led by Joseph Needham , that investigated Chinese and North Korean allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War , conducted by the United States .Accused and their sentences 25 years' imprisonment *Gen. Otozō Yamada , former Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army *Lt. Gen. Kajitsuka Ryuji , former Chief of Medical Administration *Lt. Gen. Takahashi Takaatsu , former Chief of Veterinary Service *Maj. Gen. Kawashima Kiyoshi , former Chief of Unit 731 20 years' imprisonment *Maj. Gen. Sato Shunji , former Chief of Medical Service , 5th Army *Lt. Col. Nishi Toshihide , former chief of a division of Unit 731 18 years' imprisonment *Maj. Karasawa Tomio , former chief of a section of Unit 731 15 years' imprisonment *Sr. Sgt. Mitomo Kazuo , former member of Unit 100 12 years' imprisonment *Maj. Onoue Masao , former chief of a branch of Unit 731 10 years' imprisonment *Lt. Hirazakura Zensaku , former researcher of Unit 100 3 years' imprisonment *Kurushima Yuji, former lab orderly of Branch 162 of Unit 731 2 years' imprisonment *Cpl. Kikuchi Norimitsu , former medical orderly of Branch 643 of Unit 731
Popular articles Javier Milei - Argentine libertarian economist, author, radio conductor and public speaker sympathetic to the Austrian School of economic thought. He became widely known for his regular ...Jimmy Carter - American politician, philanthropist, and former farmer who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previ...UEFA Euro 2024 - The 2024 UEFA European Football Championship , commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2024 or simply Euro 2024 , will be the 17th edition of the UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial internationa...Argentina - country located mostly in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is also b...Sam Altman - American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the former president of Y Combinator and now the CEO of OpenAI. Early life and education. ...Rosalynn Carter - American who served as First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981 as the wife of President Jimmy Carter. For decades, she has been a leading advocate for numerou...Next Argentine presidential election - Next Argentine presidential election - presidential election in Argentina....Popular movies The Hunger Games (film) - 2012 American dystopian action thriller science fiction-adventure film directed by Gary Ross and based on Suzanne Collins’s 2008 novel of the same name. It is the first insta...untitled Captain Marvel sequel - part of Marvel Cinematic Universe....Killers of the Flower Moon (film project) - Killers of the Flower Moon - film project in United States of America. It was presented as drama, detective fiction, thriller. The film project starred Leonardo Dicaprio, Robert De Niro. Director of...Five Nights at Freddy's (film) - Five Nights at Freddy's - film published in 2017 in United States of America. Scenarist of the film - Scott Cawthon....Popular video games Minecraft - sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. Created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language and released as a public alpha for personal computers in 2...Grand Theft Auto V - 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008's Grand Theft ...Roblox - online game platform and game creation system that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Founded by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in...Baldur's Gate III - upcoming role-playing video game developed and published by Larian Studios for Microsoft Windows and the Stadia streaming service. It is the third main game in the Baldur's ...Alan Wake - action-adventure video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios, released for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story follows best-selling thri...Fortnite - online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: ...Super Mario RPG - is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996. It was directed by Yoshihiko Maekawa and Chihiro Fujioka and produced by...Popular books Book of Revelation - The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament, and consequently is also the final book of the Christian Bible. Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: apok...Book of Genesis - account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, Israel's ancestors and the origins...Gospel of Matthew - The Gospel According to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and one of the three synoptic gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, rejected and executed in Israel, pronounces judgement on ...Michelin Guide - Michelin Guides are a series of guide books published by the French tyre company Michelin for more than a century. The term normally refers to the annually published Michelin Red Guide , the oldest...Psalms - The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms , the Psalter or "the Psalms", is the first book of the Ketuvim , the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and thus a book of th...Ecclesiastes - Ecclesiastes is one of 24 books of the Tanakh , where it is classified as one of the Ketuvim . Originally written c. 450–200 BCE, it is also among the canonical Wisdom literature of the Old Tes...The 48 Laws of Power - non-fiction book by American author Robert Greene. The book...Popular television series The Crown (TV series) - historical drama web television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, created and principally written by Peter Morgan, and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Tel...Friends - American sitcom television series, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast sta...Young Sheldon - spin-off prequel to The Big Bang Theory and begins with the character Sheldon...Modern Family - American television mockumentary family sitcom created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan for the American Broadcasting Company. It ran for eleven seasons, from September 23...Loki (TV series) - upcoming American web television miniseries created for Disney+ by Michael Waldron, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shar...Game of Thrones - American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It...Shameless (American TV series) - American comedy-drama television series developed by John Wells which debuted on Showtime on January 9, 2011. It...
OWIKI.org . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.