Activists, scholars push to uncover Japan's chemical warfare past

TOKYO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- "Many young people in Japan do not know about the history of the Japanese military's use of chemical weapons. But I think it's something we should learn about." Migita, a 30-year-old visitor, told Xinhua recently at an exhibition on the Japanese military's production and use of poison gas during World War II.

The six-day exhibition, held in Yokohama City, near Tokyo, by a Japanese civic group, invited experts in the field to give lectures almost every day.

At the venue, display panels laid bare a complete and disturbing chain of evidence documenting the Japanese military's poison gas warfare crimes: from producing toxic chemical agents and filling them into shells, to deploying them on the battlefield, and ultimately abandoning large quantities of chemical weapons in China after Japan's defeat, leaving a legacy of harm that continues to this day.

Nobuharu Goi, a member of the exhibition's organizing committee, said that, in addition to the exhibition on poison gas warfare, he had helped organize numerous exhibitions on Japan's wartime aggression, taking part in around 15 such exhibitions in total.

Despite its modest scale, the exhibition still drew a fair number of visitors. Goi said he hopes more people will learn about this history.

Seiya Matsuno, a historian and researcher at the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University in Japan, recently uncovered new evidence about Japan's wartime production of poison gas bombs.

The findings were based on his study of the "Compilation of Reports on the Implementation of Military Mobilization," a production report covering fiscal 1941 operations at the Sone Manufacturing Plant of the Tokyo Second Army Arsenal.

According to Matsuno's research, the Sone plant was responsible for a key link in the Japanese military's poison gas warfare operations: filling artillery shells with toxic chemical agents and assembling poison gas bombs ready for battlefield use.

To meet the Japanese military's needs for overseas aggression and expansion, the facility enlarged its workforce and increased the output of poison gas bombs during fiscal 1941.

"You could say this was one of the origins of Japan's chemical warfare," Matsuno said.

The historian also noted that Japan burned, destroyed, and concealed large quantities of relevant documents at the time of its defeat, leading scholars to believe that no evidence had survived.

Matsuno's research findings have filled in a long-missing link in the chain of evidence documenting Japan's chemical warfare crimes.

However, after Japan's surrender in 1945, this culpability, which should have been fully reckoned with, was not pursued at the Tokyo Trials, and vast stockpiles of chemical weapons abandoned by the Japanese military in China have continued to pose a threat to local residents.

Statistics show that the Japanese military used chemical weapons more than 2,000 times in China during its invasion, causing more than 200,000 casualties among Chinese military personnel and civilians. The chemical weapons left behind in China after Japan's defeat have resulted in more than 2,000 casualties to date.

Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, Japan should have completed the destruction of the abandoned chemical weapons in China by 2007, but due to insufficient attention and inadequate funding, the deadline has been postponed repeatedly, leaving the disposal process seriously behind schedule.

Maiko Sugamoto, a member of a joint Japan-China fund to support the sufferers of chemical weapons, told Xinhua that although some Japanese civic groups have for years called on the Japanese government to help Chinese victims of Japan's abandoned chemical weapons access medical assistance, their efforts have yet to yield meaningful results.

As the war fades further into history, "ordinary Japanese people today have little awareness of the harm caused by Japan's abandoned chemical weapons," Sugamoto said.

She also noted that, precisely for this reason, more than 80 years after the end of the war, it is especially important for more Japanese people to once again learn about the history of aggression and the harm inflicted by the Japanese military through chemical weapons and other means.

Kazuyuki Kawamura, representative of the Association Demanding Investigation on Human Bones Discovered from the Site of the Army Medical College, gave a lecture during the exhibition.

"What we're doing now may seem insignificant, but it's very important to carefully and thoroughly examine how the war happened and bring facts to light," he said.

Kawamura told reporters that, as his father's generation had taken part in the war, he felt obliged to seriously confront that history, take responsibility, and accurately convey to the younger generations what war truly is.