Sheldon Harris, 74, Historian Of Japan’s Biological Warfare - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/04/us/sheldon-harris-74-historian-of-japan-s-biological-warfare.html
La folie de l’armenent biologique et chimique touche toutes les nations qui peuvent se payer les laboratoires de production nécessaires. An notre époque c’est pire car on peut simplement en acheter. Le phantôme des tranchées de 14/18 nous hante encore, ses irruptions provoquent désolation et rire sardonique.
Sept. 4, 2002, by Paul Lewis - Sheldon H. Harris, an American historian who helped establish that the Japanese army conducted biological warfare experiments in occupied China during the Second World War and that the United States knew about this but tried to cover up the evidence, died on Aug. 31 in Los Angeles. He was 74.
...
Four days before Dr. Harris died, a Japanese court ruled that Japan had, in fact, conducted germ warfare in China but rejected compensation claims by the victims, thus ending decades of official obfuscation and denial.
In 1994, Dr. Harris published ’’Factories of Death: Japanese Secret Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-Up’’ (Routledge), in which he set out the findings of two decades of research, including 12 field trips to China.
Factories of death : Japanese biological warfare, 1932-1945, and the American cover-up, page 163
▻https://www.worldcat.org/title/factories-of-death-japanese-biological-warfare-1932-1945-and-the-american-cover-up/oclc/781209271
à télécharger ici : ▻https://the-eye.eu/public/concen.org/Sheldon%20H.%20Harris%20-%20Factories%20of%20Death%20-%20Japanese%20Biological%20Warfare%2C%201932-1945%2C%20and%20the%20American%20Cover-Up%20%28pdf%29%20-%20roflcopter2110%20%5BWWRG%5D/Sheldon%20H.%20Harris%20-%20Factories%20of%20Death%20-%20Japanese%20Biologic
Throughout the 1930s, and long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Western racist attitudes resisted the notion that Japanese scientists operating on their own initiative would be sufficiently accomplished to produce anything significant. Japanese technology, in the opinion of many officials, was simply
incapable of achieving the technical expertise required for developing an effective BW program. The Japanese stereotype in the West was that of an industrious people who were hard-working and disciplined, but lacking in imagination or creativity. They did not innovate. They copied the achievements of others. Japan was known for producing shoddy merchandise and cheap gimcrack items. Most Western analysts believed that Japanese technology lacked the sophistication required to mass-produce quality goods.
It seemed unlikely that Japan could develop a corps of scientists capable of creating advanced weapons.
Enfin la paranoïa triomphe sur le racisme.
The diligence of the FBI in its hunt for possible Japanese BW saboteurs is perhaps best exemplified by an incident that occurred in Ecuador in the closing months of 1942. An agent in Guayaquil learned that a Japanese national possessed laboratory facilities and “knowledge.” The agent was given permission by the Ecuadorean government to search the laboratory’s premises, but found no evidence there of BW preparations. Consequently, the agent concluded that “Subject had advance information on proposed search of laboratory...indicating a leak in the office of Security.”
It was subsequently discovered that this Japanese national, apparently “Ecuador’s only Japanese,” had another laboratory in the remote flea- and mosquito-ridden community of Maldonado. Another agent was dispatched on horseback to Maldonado, with instructions to search the reported laboratory. One misadventure after another struck the FBI agent. Trying to save time, he ordered the rental of horses in the town of Torfino, along with the requisitioning of supplies of canned food, blankets, and other necessities. The agent rented a taxi to take him to Torfino, but the taxi became “stuck in a mud hole and after long and futile efforts to extract it culminating with the failure of three yoke of oxen” to loosen the taxi, “agent proceeded a [on] foot until a hacienda was reached that would rent horse for Torfino.” The delay forced the dedicated agent to spend the night in Torfino, “sleeping on the floor of the Tomiente Politico’s office.”
The agent eventually made his way to Maldonado. Here, he found the alleged Japanese BW scientist. However, the person was not what the agent expected. The unfortunate individual turned out to be a half-starved Japanese national who was living in one room of a tiny house inhabited by a large family. The “scientist” was in such dire straits, the agent reported, that he was “living on the charity of this family, for he is absolutely without funds.” The agent reported that the suspect “has absolutely no laboratory equipment of any kind.” He did have an improvised bunsen burner that he used to illuminate his room. He owned only one book, a Japanese-English grammar, and since he could find no work, he spent most of his time studying English.
The purpose behind his intensive study of his enemies’ language was “in hopes of getting into a concentration camp in the US.” The man was “heartily sick of Maldonado [a village of eight houses stuck midway up a canyon wall] and is very desirous of getting to a concentration camp in the US where he has learned that the Japanese are well treated.” He saw in the FBI his salvation and urged the agent to arrest him. Otherwise, he threatened to go to Tulcan “and get himself thrown in jail. He stated that one would be better off in jail than Maldonado.” 9 The poor man did not get his wish. The FBI agent returned alone to Guayaquil, leaving him to find his destiny in either Maldonado or a Tulcan jail.
▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Traven
C’est une histoire digne d’une adaptation comme Le Trésor de la Sierra Madre par B Traven et John Huston
#impérialisme #guerre #B_Traven
