THE ROAD TO WUHAN: The Monster from Ping Fan

Among the many K-dramas currently available on Netflix, I found  The Gyeongseong Creature, a series set in Seoul during August 1945. The story begins after the Soviet Union has attacked the Japanese forces occupying Manchuria. The Japanese military was forced to retreat from areas around Harbin, a cosmopolitan city in Manchuria which now has a population of over 10 million. Along with their retreat, the Japanese troops brought with them a terrible secret to the unsuspecting capital of Korea this country had since 1905 been occupied by Japan and became in 1910 an integrated part of the Japanese Empire.

Harbin was once a small, inconspicuous provincial town, but it began expanding rapidly in 1898. A large influx of people followed the railroad that reached the city that year. The Russian Empire had ambitious plans to transform Harbin — despite its location in China — and turn it into the centre for its “oriental” expansion. A polish engineer, Adam Szydłowski, planned the city's layout, a grand railway station was built, and became the administrative centre for the Chinese Eastern Railway Company, which was connected to the Trans-Siberian Railway, soon stretching its net across much of northeastern China.

Besides the Russian railway officials, engineers, and Chinese labourers and merchants who settled there, people flocked from across the Russian Empire, including Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Georgians, Jews, Balts, Armenians, and Tatars. They found greater freedom and better economic opportunities in Harbin than in the rest of Russia. The Russian government encouraged the growth of Harbin, among other initiatives it offering incentives for the settlement of educated and entrepreneurial citizens. Many minority groups, who faced persecution in Russia, took advantage of these opportunities. By the early 1920s, Harbin was for example the  home of around 20,000 Jews and had several synagogues.

Even before the October Revolution, Harbin had modern buildings, boulevards, and parks, not only planned by Russian architects, but also by Italians and Swiss. The city had a distinctly European feel, and with the growing railroad connections, more and more people arrived from the Russian Empire. Harbin became a key hub for trade, especially with the increasing agricultural output of the surrounding fertile lands, which had attracted tens of thousands of Han Chinese. Harbin and its agricultural surroundings  quickly turned into becoming "China's breadbasket" and the town itself was industrialized much faster than the rest of the country. By 1917, Harbin had more than 100,000 residents, of whom 40,000 were of Russian origin. These Russian speaking citizens enjoyed the service of several churches, including the large St. Sophia Cathedral, several Russian-speaking theatres, a symphony orchestra, a music academy (the oldest in China), and an opera house.

During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), Harbin became the command centre for Russian military operations in Manchuria. After Russia’s defeat, Harbin experienced a decline but quickly rebounded as the Russian retreat led to an influx of people from various countries seeking to capitalize on the city’s wealth and strategic location. Immigrants from the United States, Germany, and France arrived, and by the early 1920s, 16 different countries had consulates in the city, while hundreds of foreign-connected industrial, banking, and commercial companies had set up shop. Harbin now also had Lutheran and Catholic congregations, in addition to the Russian Orthodox ones, each with their own churches. Chinese investors established large trading houses and industries, primarily in brewing, food production, and textiles.

Despite its growing prosperity, Harbin remained divided into three distinct areas: the Concession, an electrified and well-maintained district mainly inhabited by Russians, other Europeans, and Americans; Chinatown, where affluent Han Chinese lived; and surrounding, unhealthy slum areas, home to poor workers and day labourers living in squalid conditions.

In 1917, the Bolsheviks took control of Harbin. The Russian railway administrator Dmitry Horvat was deposed, and Bolshevik militia attempted to ensure that the entire railway network came under Soviet control. However, Horvat managed to rally Russian opposition to the Bolshevik regime, bolstered by refugees from the revolutionary Russia and its Red Army. With the support of Chinese military forces, they succeeded in driving the Bolsheviks out.

As a result, over 100,000 defeated White Russian soldiers and refugees flocked to Harbin. Unlike the situation in Europe, where fleeing Russians had sought refuge in cities like Paris, Prague, and Berlin, they did not become a minority in Harbin. The city developed into the largest Russian enclave outside the Soviet Union, complete with Russian newspapers, publishing houses, primary schools, technical colleges, and universities. The city's connection to southern Chinese ports facilitated the import of a wide range of European and American luxury goods. Harbin became the centre of Chinese fashion, with a vibrant nightlife, and jazz orchestras. For a time, Harbin even had more influence as a hub of Western “decadence” than cosmopolitan port of Shanghai.

The Russian elite in Harbin saw it as their mission to preserve pre-revolutionary Russian culture by supporting a variety of theatres, symphony orchestras, libraries, and two large opera companies. However, tensions soon emerged between anti-Bolshevik, yet still socialist, circles and a rising conservative-fascist opposition. This opposition rejected the liberal tolerance that had accepted homosexuality and other, in their view, morally corrupting trends, not least a growing Chinese influence.

When Japan invaded Manchuria in September 1931 and established the puppet state of Manchukuo under China's dethroned emperor Pu Yi, the Japanese army and its Manchurian turncoats began a close cooperation with militant anti-Soviet fascists, whose ideology was fanatically anti-socialist and anti-Semitic. The Japanese Kwantung Army sponsored and financed the Russian fascist party, and its supporters played a significant role in attacking opposition and various minorities. Most of Harbin's Jewish population fled south, and when the Soviet state in 1935 sold the railway network to the Japanese, a large number of Russians also fled.

Many of those who fled to the Soviet Union met with a grim fate. No fewer than 43,000 “Harbin Russians” were arrested during Stalin's purges between 1936 and 1938, accused of being “Japanese spies.” Fearing the Soviet regime, many Russians and Jews, instead of fleeing north, sought refuge in Shanghai, from where they emigrated to Australia and the United States. By the end of the 1930s, Harbin's population had shrunk from around 500,000 to 30,000 inhabitants.

Ironically, by the late 1930s, a number of Jews fleeing from the Baltics and Ukraine had arrived in Harbin via the Trans-Siberian Railway. There the Japanese authorities took them in and helped them settle in several cities in western Japan, where, for example, Kobe came to host Japan's largest synagogue.

Although Japan was allied with Nazi Germany, the Japanese government and individual citizens played a role in rescuing many refugees from the European Holocaust. Japan's policy toward Jews was entirely different from that of their allies. Japanese authorities, who were responsible for Jewish refugees, did not know much about Jewish customs and practices, but they acted under the belief that Jews were a highly influential group of people. This view had been influenced by the activities of Jacob Schiff, a Jewish financier who during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 had raised economic support for Japan's war effort.

Jacob Schiff, who had immigrated to the U.S. from Frankfurt, had made his fortune through Kuhn, Loeb & Company, which financed railway construction in both the U.S. and Japan. His successful business ventures led him to sit on the boards of several major American banks. Outraged by the senseless and often covertly government-supported pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and Belarus, Schiff believed that the repressive Tsarist regime should be overthrown, and thus he supported the Japanese in their war against Russia. The poster below illustrates how Jews were forced to flee as Russian troops, led by “Death’s minions,”. i.e. antisemitic Cossacks, invading their traditional settlements in eastern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine – the Pale.

When the Japanese, through the so-called Manchuria faction, i.e. the officers of the Kwantung Army, established to protect the Manchurian railway network with Russian consent, seized Manchuria on their own initiative, its leaders, Yasue Senkoo and Inuzuka Koreshige, believed that in order to develop the vast resources of the newly founded puppet state of Manchukuo, they needed to treat the White Russians, Germans, and Sephardic Jews well. They hoped that the Jews could persuade their influential fellow Jews in the U.S. to help finance the loans they needed to wage a war against China, this was some time before Japan had decided to wage war on the U.S.. However, it was not merely cynical speculation that led the Japanese to support Jewish refugees; many did so for humanitarian reasons as well.

Manchukuo, however, suffered terribly under Japanese rule, and the most gruesome aspect of the abuses was the infamous Unit 731. This horrific chapter of Japanese warfare had its origins in Harbin’s history before the Japanese arrived.

Harbin-s rapid growth in the 1910s posed a significant challenge to its healthcare system. A large influx of immigrants had through the railway arrived in the city, and initially the city administrators were unable to meet the sanitary demands that arose. When a plague of pneumonia spread through the city from the port city of Manzhouli in the late autumn of 1910, it killed five percent of the city’s population in just a few months. This was only the beginning of what became known as the “Manchurian pandemic,” which in less than a year claimed 60,000 lives.

The Government in Peking sent Dr. Wu Lien-teh, of Malaysian origin and educated in London, to Harbin. Through autopsies, which were hardly used in China at the time, he quickly discovered that the plague was airborne and introduced the mandatory wearing of a face mask he had invented. After some of his colleagues, including a famous French doctor, Gérald Mesny, mocked him, refused to wear the mask, and subsequently died, Dr. Wu’s measure gained widespread acceptance. Through this, along with curfews, strict quarantines of infected individuals, and the cremation of all plague victims, Dr. Wu and his team succeeded in bringing the epidemic under control.

Dr. Wu's contributions and the epidemic research he initiated, including the founding of Harbin’s Medical University, as well as the improvement of preventive medicine (when another epidemic threatened, Dr. Wu arranged for 60,000 face masks to be distributed), and his promotion of public health, would have a significant impact not only on Chinese medicine, but also globally. The medical facilities and advanced research already in place in Harbin were one of the reasons why the Japanese Unit 731 was stationed in the city.

Just as Nazis, in August 1939, disguised as Polish soldiers, occupied the Gleiwitz radio station and used this fabricated event as an excuse to launch a full-scale attack on Poland, Japanese soldiers from the Kwantung Army detonated a small bomb near the railway in Mukden (which didn’t even damage the rails).

This fabricated Mukden Incident was blamed on the Chinese central government and made the Kwantung Army occupying all of Manchuria. The officers of the Kwantung Army acted on their own initiative, and it wasn’t until they had taken control of Manchuria that the Japanese government accepted the fait accompli and gave its approval. Despite this, the Kwantung generals continued to act as the true rulers of the puppet state of Manchukuo.

It was here that Japan’s future top war leader, Hideki Tojo, cemented his power. In 1937, he was promoted to be Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army and began a close friendship and an intimate collaboration with Yōsuke Matsuoka, the staunchly conservative and ultranationalist CEO of the Manchurian Railway, and Nobusuke Kishi, the deputy industrial minister of Manchukuo, who effectively controlled the country’s entire economy. This made Tojo thoroughly informed about the atrocities occurring in Ping Fan, the headquarters of Unit 731.

In principle, Manchukuo was an independent state under China’s last emperor, with its own flag and army, but the “nation” was entirely under the control of the Kwantung Army. Every senior official had a Japanese “advisor” who oversaw his activities.

The Japanese military police Kempeitai, which, alongside the army, maintained a force of 18,000 men, terrorized the population both through direct surveillance and its more or less secret HUMINT division, which engaged in espionage, infiltration of resistance movements, and torture. HUMINT collaborated with Chinese criminal syndicates; opium cultivation had become one of Manchukuo's major income sources, although the Kwantung regime also controlled the mining industry and other important sources of revenue.

The secret cooperation with drug cartels stemmed from Japan's desire to maintain the façade of being a benevolent steward of Manchukuo’s economy. Japan had signed and ratified all international conventions regarding the cultivation and trade of opium. Manchukuo’s claimed, but false independence thus became for the Kwantung leaders a convenient opportunity to engage in a global drug trade while blaming the completely powerless leadership of the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1937, it was by the League of Nations pointed out that 90 percent of all illegal opium trade in the world originated from Japan.

A grim aspect of Manchukuo’s Kempeitai was that its personnel, along with Russian fascist units, were responsible for the delivery of human test subjects, known by the code name of marutas, timber logs, to the Kwantung Arm’s biological warfare unit, two miles south of Harbin. The facility was code-named “Ping Fan’s sawmill”, thus the idea of naming its human laboratory test objects timber logs. The test subjects sent to their certain death at Ping Fan were gathered in a Kempeitai location inside Harbin, where those selected for “medical treatment” were carefully selected by Ping Fan’s medical doctors. The victims were mostly Chinese men, generally from the domestic opposition or partisans, but also some Manchurians and Russians, particularly those accused of communism, as well as Soviet prisoners of war captured during skirmishes along the Soviet border to the north. A few “timber logs” could even be ordinary “criminals” who had been sentenced to be taken to Ping Fan after summary trials. Upon request from the doctors at Ping Fan, women and children could also be delivered there.

In general, the prisoners were wrapped in straw bundles, tightly tied with ropes, and then transported by train or truck down to Ping Fan, where they were carried on stretchers to holding cells, where they were properly fed to be in good condition for the horrific experiments that would follow.

Several Japanese officers who had been trained in the Manchurian Kempeitai went on to hold high positions in the Imperial Japanese Army. Most notably, Hideki Tojo, who became Japan’s wartime leader, but also Toranosuke Hashimoto, who became Vice Minister of d+Defense, and Shizuichi Tanaka, who became Governor of the Philippines during World War II. However, Japan's most infamous officer from Manchuria had built his military career based on scientific and organizational merits.

Ishii Shiro was born on June 25, 1892, in the village of Chiyoda-Mura, where his ancestors had long practiced a form of feudal rule over the village and several surrounding smaller communities. He was of average height, intelligent, extremely meticulous, and obedient to his superiors. He also had a sharp, shrill voice and could unexpectedly exert a near-hypnotic charisma on those around him. Ishii’s almost inhuman memory allowed him to quickly memorize long texts, and this ability served him well throughout his schooling and university years, where he quickly became a favourite of his professors. He had a violent energy and seemed tireless in his efforts to make an impression on others and advance in his various fields of interest. However, several of his classmates and even close colleagues later testified that they found him to be arrogant, brazen, and tyrannical. Towards teachers and authority figures, Ishii was calculatedly submissive, and throughout his life, many considered him to be a "cold-blooded chameleon."

Ishii trained as a medical doctor, but it quickly became clear that he was more fascinated by research than patient care. It is striking that during the time Ishii studied at Tokyo’s Imperial University there was no instruction on ethics and the newly graduated doctors did not swear a Hippocratic oath to work for the benefit of the sick and avoid unnecessarily harming them.

After his examination Ishii was employed at Tokyo's army hospital, where he focused on research in bacteriology and pathology. He demonstrated am impressive ability to win supporters among influential individuals, but at the same time, he gained a solid reputation as a night owl, partygoer, drinker, and womanizer; becoming a well-known visitor to Tokyo's Yoshiwara district.

Despite his extravagant nightlife, Ishii remained a diligent researcher, capable of charming influential academics and high-ranking military officers. As a promising young researcher at the Imperial University, the young Ishii won the favour of its rector and married his daughter. At the same time, Ishii advanced in the military and attained the rank of captain. He was now well-known among the higher officer corps, who regarded the ambitious young man as a reliable soldier and respected researcher. However, it did not sit well with many of the senior officers that Ishii, often somewhat grandiloquent, began to increasingly advocate for biological warfare. The use of such simple, gruesome warfare methods went against the well-established bushido morality of many high-ranking officers.

However, Ishii did not give up, and from an unknown source, he received substantial financial support to embark on a round-the-world journey during which he visited an astonishing number of countries – Singapore, Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland, the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, Canada, and the USA. Everywhere, he took the opportunity to visit medical and biological research institutes that were interested in the curious, open-hearted, exotic, and knowledgeable visitor. Ishii kept his ears and eyes open, and with the help of his phenomenal memory, he gathered a wealth of valuable information and knowledge that would serve him well during his Japanese campaign for biological weapons.

Ishii's global journey had convinced him that countries like Germany, the USA, and the Soviet Union had already made significant progress in the development of chemical and biological weapons. This allowed him, with much greater success than before, to advocate to his Japanese military colleagues the importance of Japan developing such cheap and effective weapons. At the very least, specific and successful research should be funded to counter hostile biological and chemical attacks.

Much research remained to be done, especially in immunology, and Ishii succeeded in establishing a well-funded immunological research institute at the Army Medical School in Tokyo. It was only fitting that the now-famous Captain Ishii Shiro was appointed as its omnipotent professor and director. It was clear that certain factions within the army, under the guise of immunology and water purification, intended to develop biological and chemical weapons, and Ishii eagerly and enthusiastically embraced the task. His emotional coldness and fanatical belief that everything he did was in support of the divine Empire made him, in what he perceived as his unscrupulous execution of duty, utterly indifferent to any human considerations.

Ishii was not entirely satisfied with what he and his research team had accomplished, and he muttered:

There are two types of research in bacteriological warfare. A and B. A is offensive research, and B is defensive research. Research on various vaccines falls into category B and can be done in Japan. However, type A research can only be conducted abroad.

Ishii was eventually understood appreciated. The self-willed Kwantung leaders who had conquered Manchuria were by his side; considering that biological and chemical warfare actually was the new, economically viable melody of the time. Ishii got everything he wanted and became a king in his own kingdom.

Harbin had, through Dr. Wu’s more humane efforts obtained a medical university with a solid tradition of immunity research, skilled staff, and a good infrastructure. Naturally, Dr. Ishii benefited from this, but he needed more than that – especially absolute secrecy and a specific Japanese personnel selected by him.

He was now free to realize his dream – to test his theories on living material through practice, i.e., experiments on living humans; men, women, and children, both on a small and a large scale. Shortly after the city’s conquest, Ishii and his handpicked research team settled in Harbin and immediately began to, what they had already done on smaller scale and in strict secrecy in Tokyo, “work with human material.”

It soon became impossible for Ishii to carry out such a repulsive activity in central Harbin, and his laboratories to be moved to the Zhong My fortress, located in the isolated village of Beiyinhe north of Harbin. The fortress was already equipped with three-meter-high walls and could house up to a thousand prisoners. Within its walls, Ishii had laboratories constructed, a modern and highly efficient crematorium for “used” animal and human bodies, offices, a staff canteen, and a parking lot for military vehicles, which were discreetly used to transport the necessary material and the “bandits” to be used in the medical experiments, primarily guerrilla members and other resistance fighters.

Ishii personally focused mainly on researching how bacteria such as anthrax, glanders, and plague affected humans and how these bacteria could be mass-produced for use in warfare.

Anthrax, in untreated form, has a mortality rate of up to 97 percent and can affect all mammals, including humans. Pigs are almost completely free from the disease, but can be carriers. The disease is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Since 1914, anthrax bacteria have been used in biological warfare and terrorism. The bacteria can easily be spread via aerial spraying and also used by “saboteurs” to contaminate food and animal feed.

Glanders is a very rare bacterial disease, but when it occurs, it is highly contagious among equids, such as horses, mules, and donkeys, but it can also affect humans and, in general, if not treated in time, lead to death. It is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia Mallei.

The deadly plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestisPneumonic plague infects the lungs and causes shortness of breath, coughing, and chest pain; bubonic plague affects the lymph nodes, causing them to swell; and septicemic plague infects the blood and can cause tissues to turn black and die. Bubonic and septicemic forms are usually spread through flea bites, or the handling of infected animals. Pneumonic plague is typically transmitted between humans through the air via infectious microscopic droplets.

Plague has a long history as a biological weapon. Most often through the use of infected animal bodies, such as cows or horses, and human corpses, which have been used to contaminate enemy water supplies or in various ways carried into their settlements. During the twentieth century, plague bacilli have been spread through the mass production of infected fleas, which have been used to kill, weaken and/or terrorize civilian populations.

Dr. Ishii and his assistants used various methods to infect their “subjects” and then looked for ways to cure them. Every day, the infected test subjects had 500 cubic centimetres of blood drained from them, while their symptoms were carefully observed and recorded. Even if any of their human victims were “cured,” they were nevertheless killed and cremated. No one survived Ishii's and his henchmen's “medical” operations.

Bacteriological research was only one part of the operations carried out at Beiyinhe’s testing facility. It was also tested how different forms of gas and electrical voltage affected humans:

Phosgene gas – after the gas had been introduced into a brick-lined room, the subject was still alive after one day of inhalation but was then struck by pneumonia.

Potassium cyanide – the subject was injected with 15 mg and lost consciousness 20 minutes thereafter.

An electrical shock of 20,000 volts is not enough to kill a human, so the injection of poison is necessary.

5,000 volts is also insufficient for a fatal outcome, but if the treatment is repeated regularly, the subject is burned to death.

The Japanese army had, in fact, for a few years before the establishment of Unit 731, intensely focused on research and development of chemical weapons. The largest production facility was located on the island of Okunoshima off the coast of Hiroshima and employed, before production was moved to Manchukuo, over 6,000 workers. Accidents were frequent, and the place came to be known as "The Island of Great Torments."

However, Ishii's main interest lay in medicine and microbiology. In addition to all the experiments with various microbes, vivisections played a significant role in the activities of this hell on earth, one purpose was to ensure the “freshness” of organs, another to investigate how various operations could be performed in the field without anaesthesia. In such cases, the “subjects” were inflicted with various injuries that could occur in battle and were then operated on without anaesthesia.

It is unknown how many victims were required in Beiyinhe, but after all but ten of the “subjects” managed to escape during one of the staff's “drinking binges,” the entire operation was shut down. Most of the escaped prisoners had been slowed by their heavy chains and were quickly slaughtered by the guards, but sixteen of them managed to escape and were able to tell about what was happening within the walls of Zhong My. However, Kempeitai managed to track down fourteen of them, and only two escaped, taken in by Chinese partisans.

In the long run, Ishii benefited from the incident. Instead of closing down the horrific operation, it was expanded and made more efficient. The highest command of the Kwantung Army had found the results from the research in Beiyinhe to be “highly valuable” and invested heavily in its continuation. The central Government in Tokyo and the highest military leadership had also been won over to Ishii's side.

Throughout his time in Manchukuo, Ishii retained his professorship at the Army's medical school and frequently visited the Empire's capital, where he gave well-attended lectures on his scientific achievements in Manchukuo. Ishii was promoted to lieutenant general, and large funds were allocated for a major research facility in Ping Fan, two and a half miles south of Harbin.

The project was a high priority. Japan’s war efforts had steadily increased. Japan had  in 1869 annexed the large island of Hokkaido in the north, the Ryukyu Kingdom in the south, with Okinawa as capital, in 1872, Taiwan in 1895, and the Joseon Empire (now Korea) in 1910. After occupying Manchuria, Japan initiated the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, a war that led to the deaths of four to eleven million Chinese and three to three and a half million Japanese soldiers. Japan had plans to expand the war, and in September 1940, French Indochina was invaded, spreading the war south and west. The large complex in Ping Fan had been completed by mid-1939.

In the autumn of 1936, all villages within a 6-square-mile area were evacuated, guarded by units from the Kempeitai and Manchukuo’s army. A no-fly zone was established over the area, and any planes that violated this rule were shot down. Passenger cars passing through the nearby southern railway were monitored, and their curtains were drawn. Large tracts of land were designated for fruit and vegetable production, including a number of greenhouses.

When the facility was completed, it was surrounded by a five-meter-high wall that surrounded a number of laboratories, some equipped with pressure - and gas chambers, as well as freezing  chamrs for studies of frostbite, three crematoria, animal barns, and sealed rooms for mice and rats, along with a local power station. Railway tracks from the main line led into the facility.

The staff was provided with modern, electrified, and heated housing, a movie theatre, a swimming pool, meeting halls, a Shinto temple, and a brothel staffed with so-called comfort women, forcibly brought sex slaves from Manchukuo and Korea. Centrally located was an administrative building with archives and display rooms for visitors. It is the only building that has been restored after the widespread destruction by the end of World War II and it now houses a museum.

Within Unit 731, there was also an “industrial facility” with four large pressure cookers for sterilization and/or the production of bacterial cultures, as well as thirty cultivators specially designed by Ishii for mass production of microbes. They could, during a “production cycle,” produce 30,000,000 trillion microbes, or 30 kilograms of cell mass. If necessary, 40,000,000 trillion pathogenic bacteria could be extracted from the cultivators.

Lice and fleas infected with bacteria were produced in large quantities. This occurred in special incubation chambers, each capable of producing 45 kg of fleas during “one cycle.”

Unit 731’s facility in Ping Fan was constructed by underpaid workers and slave labourers, who, depending on the season and tasks, numbered between 100,000 and 150,000. They lived in tents behind barbed wire and had to gather every morning to salute the Japanese flag. Those who failed to show up were thrown to the ferocious guard dogs. There was no medical care available for the workers, and the mortality rate was high.

The prisoners who underwent and were killed in the vile experiments were called “marutas” (lumber logs), and numbered from 0 to 1,500. Once the last number was reached, new prisoners were assigned numbers starting from one. The influx of new marutas never ceased, and not a single one survived World War II. If any maruta survived the horrific experiments, they were usually executed through intravenous injection of potassium cyanide.

Marutas were housed in shared halls, or individual rooms, within two specially built structures. The conditions were relatively bearable – the goal was to keep them alive and in good physical condition for the experiments. Building Ha housed male marutas, while Ro housed women and children. The prison buildings were connected via underground tunnels to the various laboratories and the administrative building. Outside their rooms or sleeping quarters, marutas were shackled with handcuffs and leg irons.

Unit 731’s staff consisted of around 3,000 personnel. Some of the maintenance and guard personnel were well-paid Koreans or Manchurians, collaborators or fanatics, specially recruited for the most labour-intensive and mentally demanding tasks, much like the Nazis used Latvians and Belarusians in their concentration - and death camps.

Marutas and “workers” were supervised by Ishii's brother, Chiyoda Mura, who in his service had trusted assistants from their shared hometown. Medical doctors and researchers numbered around 500. They were handpicked by Ishii, and many of them were among the elite of Japan’s microbiological researchers. Most of Japan’s microbiologists were in one way or another linked to Ishii's research.

Unit 731 also had an educational section. Many of its students were recruited directly from high school, while others were medical students. It is believed that the educational section of Unit 731, and its various branches, trained hundreds, if not thousands, of microbiologists with different capabilities and in various fields during its existence.

Ishii himself did not reside in Ping Fan. He and his family lived in a former Russian manor in Harbin’s most fashionable district. It was almost a palace equipped with a garden and lush salons. Ishii's daughter, Harumi, later recalled:

"It was truly a graceful house, like something out of a romantic film, one like Gone with the Wind."

Despite his family’s presence, Ishii did not abandon his previously extravagant nightlife and was often a drunken guest at Harbin's brothels, but that did not stop him from showing up the next day, in a spotless lab coat, to oversee the research work in Fang Pin’s laboratories, checking that the facilities were in exemplary condition. When Ishii interacted with visiting officers, or other VIPs, he was always dressed in an immaculate uniform, with a samurai sword attached by its side.

Below is a photograph of Ishii with his family, taken when his parents visited him in Harbin in 1938.

It was not only the aforementioned bacterial diseases that were studied by Unit 731. The researchers also focused their attention on diseases like botulism, caused by a bacterial toxin from Clostridium botulinum, which is found in soil, animal excrement, and bottom sludge in water bodies. Its spores are generally spread through food and are destroyed by boiling, but the toxin is so potent that a single shot of pure botulinum toxin would be enough to kill an entire population of ten million.

Brucellosis, caused by Brucella melitensis, spreads via unpasteurized dairy products and raw meat. The disease does not usually kill but can last for months and is sometimes complicated by joint and bone infections, myocarditis, and meningitis.

Gangrene occurs when tissue in a part of the body dies, often due to frostbite causing insufficient blood flow to toes, feet, legs, fingers, and hands. If gangrene is caused by an infection, which is common if a frostbite has left open wounds, or by cuts, gunshot wounds, and similar injuries often occurring in war, bacteria thrive in the wounds and produce toxins that quickly poison the blood flow, leading to the affected body parts needing to be amputated.

Tetanus is caused by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, which normally occurs in soil and in the intestines of certain animals and spreads primarily through food. Left untreated, tetanus often leads to death.

Tularaemia, caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis, thrives among rodents and is spread to humans via mosquitoes, dust, contaminated water, and direct contact with infected carriers. The disease leads to pneumonia and formation of internal wound, but is generally not fatal.

Typhus also played a significant role in Unit 731's research. The disease is caused by Rickettsia prowazekii, which is transmitted between humans by body lice, and Rickettsia typhi, which is spread by fleas. Left untreated, typhus can have a mortality rate of up to 70 percent.

In addition to all these bacterial diseases, Unit 731 also conducted research on various viral infections and animal toxins (e.g., from pufferfish, venomous snakes, and certain spider species). The effects of large amounts of plant toxins were also studied – heroin, Korean bindweed, and castor bean seeds.

Bacteria, toxins, and viruses were used to infect the marutas, and the course of the diseases was carefully documented. It was also tested and recorded how marutas reacted if transfused with blood that did not match their blood type. Venereal disease were also studied, and both female and male marutas were infected with gonorrhoea and syphilis. Venereal infected pregnant women and their foetuses were autopsied to determine fatal damage.

Each laboratory had large wall posters where daily observations were noted and then documented in various ways. It was also common to photograph and film the progression of diseases.

In pressure chambers equipped with peepholes, the effects of oxygen deprivation and/or low air pressure on humans were studied, as well as how they were harmed or died. Similar processes were studied and documented in cold rooms (research on frostbite was a notably significant part of Unit 731's operations) and gas chambers. Other forms of torture were also explored, such as how long it would take for a person to be harmed and/or die if s/he was hung upside down or forced to stand upright for several days. Research was also conducted on human pain thresholds, while vivisections were continuously performed. Particularly disturbing is the fact that children were subjected to several of these grotesque experiments.

The inventiveness was vast, and researchers were given, in addition to specific tasks set by Ishii, some freedom to do what they wished with the marutas. Nakagawa Yonezo, professor emeritus at Osaka University, testified much later that he had been well aware of what was going on at Unit 731 and that he had heard from several colleagues who had worked there that there had been a certain “playfulness” connected with some of the experiments:

Some of the experimental work had nothing to do with gaining better knowledge about bacteriology and its use in warfare, or medicine in general. There was also an element of professional curiosity: “What would happen if we did this and that?” What medical purpose did decapitations serve? None at all. It was purely a way to play, to satisfy curiosity. Even professional people like to have fun.

The question is to what extent such “playfulness” characterized much of the terrifying torture that several marutas were subjected to – their skin burned through various methods and with different objects, limbs crushed under heavy objects, electrodes attached transmitting different levels of electrical voltage to assess damage and lethal currents. Marutas were dried out with heat fans, starved to death, placed in centrifuges, injected with urine, seawater, and animal blood, exposed to lethal doses of X-rays, and buried alive.

Bacteria and poisons were injected into fruits and other foodstuffs, or into bread and chocolate truffles. Marutas were often unknowingly made to drink milk contaminated with typhus or eat poisoned porridge. Sweets, cigarettes, and other items were poisoned to be tested on marutas and then spread among an unsuspecting population, often affecting children who eagerly picked up candy they found, or were given.

A large amount of fruit was grown in greenhouses within the area. For example, typhus bacteria were injected into melons. After the contamination process, the fruit’s bacterial density was measured, and once it reached a desired level, the infected fruit was given to a small group of marutas to check if they all became fatally poisoned. If this was the case, the melons were distributed to local markets, and statistics on the spread effect were recorded.

At Unit 731, every dose of poison and bacterial infection was carefully recorded, how it was decreased and increased, while the effects on each maruta exposed to the infection were meticulously observed. Researchers also worked on perfecting various water purification systems, hence the official name of Unit 731 – Kwantung Army's Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department.

Ping Fan had its own airport, and materials and marutas for experimentation purposes were flown to a hermetically restricted area outside the city of Anda, north of Harbin. Ishii often flew there himself in his private plane, he was an excellent pilot.

The vast fields outside Anda were the site of Ping Fan's “field studies.” A common occurrence was that marutas were tied to stakes at fixed distances from detonating remote-controlled grenades loaded with bacteria, infected fleas and lice, as well as various chemicals and gases, in order to assess the spread and effect of the infection. The victims were transported by air transported  back to Ping Fan for examination, the dead were generally autopsied on site. Various types of flamethrowers were also tested in a similar manner.

In Anda, various methods for the spread of biological and chemical substances through aerial spraying and bombing with capsules filled with microbes, poisoned seeds, and infected lice and fleas were also tested. It was soon discovered that metal casings were unsuitable for these bombs, and Ishii personally determined that porcelain casings he created and introduced were the most effective way to distribute deadly substances from the air.

Lessons learned and practical results were almost immediately applied to terrorize the civilian population of Manchukuo and were soon used in warfare against China and on other battlefronts. A first instance of this activity was in July 1940 when a heavily guarded freight train left Ping Fan heading to the popular vacation resort and port city of Hangzhou. A tightly sealed freight car transported containers with 70 kg of typhus bacteria, 50 kg of cholera bacteria, and 5 kg of infected fleas. This deadly cargo was then dumped into water reservoirs and wells. Shortly after disease spread in Hangzhou, “medical personnel” were sent there to prevent further spread and thus prevent a threatening pandemic. Similar scenarios played out in many other cities and rural areas.

Pest-infected fleas, bred in Unit 731's laboratories, were spread by low-flying planes over Chinese fields and cities, such as the port cities Ningbo and Changde in the Hunan Province. These operations killed tens of thousands through bubonic plague pandemics. An attack on Nanjing spread typhus and paratyphoid bacteria into wells, wetlands, and residential areas in the city. Epidemics broke out shortly after, and Unit 731's researchers, upon hearing the news, concluded that the spread of paratyphoid fever was clearly “the most effective” biological weapon available to them.

The deadly operations quickly expanded. Saboteurs spread infected rats and mice, and/or poisoned seed. Planes were successfully used to spray microorganisms. At least eleven Chinese cities were attacked with biological agents. An attack on Changde in 1941 resulted in about 10,000 casualties. Unfortunately, poorly prepared Japanese troops in the area were also affected, and 1,700 of them fell ill with cholera.

Throughout the war against China, Japanese army units continued using direct biological attacks and hidden contamination of agricultural areas, reservoirs, and wells until 1945. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by plane to areas of China not yet occupied by Japanese forces. Additionally, poisoned food and sweets were distributed to unsuspecting victims in borth unoccupied and occupied areas, while Japanese medical teams were in areas controlled by their army sent in to halt outbreaks of epidemics. The results of such interventions were studied and meticulous statistics were forwarded to Unit 731 in Ping Fan, or to one of its branches. At least 400,000 Chinese civilians are estimated to have been killed through these operations.

It was far from unknown that the epidemics were caused by Japanese warfare; both American medical personnel and missionaries, as well as Chinese Republican health authorities, reported what was happening, and detailed reports were sent to their respective governments.

During World War II, Unit 731’s activities expanded, and its horrific experiments and research were doubled within other units, such as Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and Unit 9420 in Singapore. Smaller branches were also active in other parts of China, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, and Indonesia. Japanese doctors and professors were attracted to join these operations, both due to the rare opportunity to apply their theories and research findings through experiments on “human material,” and the strong financial support provided by both the Army. It was through these researchers and other staff that shocking testimonies about the horrifying experiments reached the public. Several of those involved were repulsed and wracked with guilt over what they had done, but surprisingly many of them were able to put it all behind them. As mentioned earlier, only the two early escapees from the Beiyinhe experimental facility were the sole survivors of the grotesque experiments.

Estimates vary regarding how many were killed, but a widely accepted view is that between 1936 and 1945, approximately 14,000 men, women, and children were murdered in grotesque forms at Unit 731's facility in Ping Fan. Meanwhile, the victims of Japan's biological warfare are estimated to have numbered between 300,000 and half a million.

Shortly before Soviet troops reached Harbin in August 1945, all of Unit 731’s facilities in Ping Fan were destroyed by its personnel to hide the crimes against humanity committed there. However, a large amount of documentation was saved by fleeing scientists, in the hope that it could be used to convince the victorious powers about the value of their work and thus save their lives, and possibly even secure employment.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States immediately gathered as much data as they could lay their hands on concerning Unit 731’s activities. Twelve prominent researchers from Unit 731, who had been arrested by Soviet forces, were in Khabarovsk in December 1949 put on trial, accused of war crimes. Ten of them were sentenced to between 10 and 25 years of forced labour, but the carrying out of their sentences were unusually mild, and none served more than seven years. By that time, they had already collaborated with the Soviet scientific community, which was working on biological and chemical warfare and general disease control. After sharing their knowledge, all the condemned researchers were in 1957 sent back to Japan, except for Takahashi, who had been the head of Unit 731's veterinary division who had died in captivity in 1951 at the age of 64, and Karasawa, the head of one of Unit 731’s several “medical divisions," who committed suicide shortly before the released prisoners’ departure for Japan.

Although several Soviet prisoners of war had ended their lives as marutas in Ishii's hell, Stalin was willing to forgive the human demons who eagerly had participated in their master's crimes against humanity. Most of them had loved Ishii because of his enthusiastic personality, bold and carefree attitude, as well as his outstanding intelligence and intense loyalty to Japan and its emperor. The fact that Ishii had been a drinker and a womanizer, were considered to be minor flaws that his men overlooked, or even applauded. Most of them were hardly troubled by his utter contempt for his victims; many shared it, and for them Ishii had been an inventor, a charismatic leader and skilled organizer – an extraordinary personality. The only thing Stalin regretted was not being able to get his hands on Ishii and his knowledge to apply it within the biological and chemical warfare facilities that the Red Army had begun building in Sverdlovsk in 1948.

Unlike Stalin’s other show trials, the trial in Khabarovsk was unusually reliable: Despite its strong ideological tone and apparent flaws, such as the lack of international participation, the trial established beyond reasonable doubt that the Japanese army had prepared and deployed biological weapons and that Japanese researchers had conducted cruel experiments on living human beings. However, the trial, along with the evidence presented to the court and its key results – which have proven to be remarkably accurate – was by most of the rest of the world dismissed as communist propaganda and until the 1980s almost completely ignored in the West. The Japanese confessions made during the Khabarovsk trial were actually firmly based on facts and not the imagination of their handlers.

The eighteen large volumes compiled with interviews and documents were condensed and edited into a reliable book that was translated into many languages and distributed worldwide by the Soviet Union's Foreign Languages Publishing House. The Soviet authorities used the reports from Khabarovsk as an accusation against the USA, a country “that had poured TNT, atomic bombs, and deadly bacteria over the world, and now was protecting Japanese war criminals.”

Allied military commissions held trials in various Asian cities against 5,700 Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans for war crimes. Around 4,300 were convicted, nearly 1,000 sentenced to death, and hundreds received life sentences. The most publicized accusations were related to the so-called Rape of Nanking, where the Japanese military leadership staged an orgy of murder, rape, looting, and arson. Modern, objective estimates suggest that at least 200,000 people were murdered. Other obvious crimes against humanity included the Bataan Death March, which led to the deaths of 18,000 Filipinos and 650 Americans, as well as the Manila massacre, when at least 100,000 people were murdered.

The United States also staged a trial against Japanese war leaders, following the pattern of Nuremberg. Like the Nuremberg trials, the United States wanted the Tokyo trials to be strictly neutral and internationally organized. Seven of the accused were sentenced to death, and sixteen to life imprisonment.

While the Nuremberg judges came from four countries, the Tokyo judges came from eleven: the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, China, the Philippines, the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, India, and the Soviet Union. The chief judge was Australian, the chief prosecutor was American, and besides Delfin Jaranilla from the Philippines, Mei Ju-ao from China, and Radhabinod Pal from India, the judges representing Asian peoples were Dutch, British, and French. The Koreans, who had suffered from Japanese aggression longer than any other people, had no judge at all.

Radhabinod Pal regarded the entire trial as a show trial staged by the USA. He believed none of the accused should have been convicted since the trial was largely controlled by colonial powers and thus should be considered illegitimate.

Mei Ju-ao sincerely believed the trial would create a more peaceful and democratic world order but had the unenviable task of promoting this idea while his nationalist government was quickly being overwhelmed by Mao Zedong’s communist forces. Mei had little support from the nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who tended to view trials of Japanese war criminals as a distraction from his struggle against the communists. Mei did his best to focus attention on Japanese atrocities in China. If General Douglas MacArthur considered the attack on Pearl Harbor a murderous war crime, Chinese claims were far more convincing – more than twenty million Chinese had died between 1937 and 1945 due to Japan's ruthless war against their nation.

Strangely, the Tokyo trial did not address the Kempeitai’s murderous activities both in Japan and in the occupied territories. Unit 731 and its various branches were not mentioned, nor was the Imperial Army’s organized forced recruitment of Chinese, Korean, and other Asian women into sexual slavery.

The Tokyo trial was much more of an American concern than the tribunal in Germany had been. While Japan was under Allied occupation until 1952, control was almost exclusively in the hands of General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of the Allied forces.

MacArthur actually wanted the Tokyo trials to focus solely on Pearl Harbor and not Japan's far greater war crimes committed against other Asians, particularly the Chinese. Another difference from what had occurred in Nazi Germany was that Japanese military units and organizations like the Kempeitai had indeed behaved exceptionally brutally and ruthlessly, but the fact was that there was no real Japanese equivalent to the Nazi party and no dictator like Hitler.

Several of the political leaders who were convicted in Tokyo had at various occasions tried to stop the militarists from committing crimes against humanity and/or going to war. However, this did not prevent some of the military leaders who were tried from being brutally war-hungry and indifferent to the crimes against humanity they and their subordinates had committed, if not outright encouraging them to behave as they did.

What ultimately skewed the entire legal process, according to observers, was the perceived immorality of the proceedings being led by a nation whose firebombing of Tokyo from March 9 to 10, 1945, was the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, with between 70,000 and 150,000 civilian casualties, as well as the horrific atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with between 90,000 and 166,000 civilian deaths in Hiroshima and between 60,000 and 80,000 in Nagasaki, followed by the most horrific images and testimonies.

What made the entire trial lopsided was also General Douglas MacArthur’s refusal to accuse Emperor Hirohito and his powerful relatives. It was actually Hirohito who held the highest decision-making power, and no Japanese would have gone against his views and decisions. There was no doubt that Hirohito had been well-informed about the atrocities committed during his reign, not least the activities of Unit 731 and the vast majority of Japan's politicians and military leaders had been completely subservient to their emperor. Ishii Shiro, for example, suffered a nervous breakdown upon hearing of Hirohito's abdication and, although otherwise in good health, fell ill and was bedridden for a time.

In his private quarters in the Imperial Palace, Emperor Hirohito had set up a special war room where he closely followed the progress of the war, and on several occasions, he reprimanded his generals for mistakes made, according to him. That his unconditional surrender to US forces occurred without any opposition from his subordinates indicates that if the emperor had previously had a desire to start or stop the war, it would have happened without opposition.

Several of Emperor Hirohito’s closest relatives, who enjoyed full immunity from prosecution, had been directly involved in crimes against humanity. For example, Prince Asaka, married to Hirohito’s aunt, Princess Nobuko, was the commander of the troops that ran amok in Nanjing, and thus had the ultimate responsibility for the atrocities committed there. Below is a photo of Prince Asaka during the victory parade in Nanjing, shortly after the horrific massacres. Hirohito rewarded his uncle with a pair of valuable, specially designed silver vases, and when Prince Asaka returned to Japan, he and the emperor resumed their usual golf rounds.

The microbiologically and chemically interested Hirohito was certainly also informed about the activities of Unit 731. Prince Chichibu, Hirohito's younger brother, was an ardent supporter of the ultra-right-wing militarists who, during the immediate pre-war period, had increasingly influenced Japanese politics. Prince Chichibu often visited Ishii Shiro’s lectures and vivisection demonstrations and became one of Japan's foremost advocates for biological warfare research. Meanwhile, the emperor's youngest brother, Prince Mikasa, personally visited Manchukuo’s facilities for experiments on human beings.

Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, also married to one of Hirohito's aunts, Princess Yasu, served as one of the emperor's most trusted advisors. Prince Naruhiko had received his military training in France and, as a member of Japan’s general staff he was well-informed about Manchukuo’s “biomedical facilities,” where he personally witnessed experiments conducted on humans. Prince Naruhiko had also ordered the use of various lethal gases in the war against the Chinese.

One of Hirohito’s cousins, Prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi, was the financial chief of Manchukuo’s Kwantung Army and had the executive responsibility for Unit 731. During his inspection tours, he often visited its facilities, and it was Prince Takeda's office that issued the permits required to visit the death factories.

The charismatic and highly popular, yet simultaneously arbitrary and narcissistic General MacArthur, rightly advocated for a progressive approach to Japan’s reconstruction, especially by asserting that all occupations tend to end badly. His goal was to transform Japan into a mirror image of the United States, which in MacArthur's view was a Christian, tolerant, and progressive democracy. To achieve this, he considered it of utmost importance to win the emperor’s support and avoid humiliating him or his relatives in front of the Japanese people. Although MacArthur had recognized Hirohito’s complicity in and ultimate responsibility for crimes against humanity committed under his reign, his strategy to protect the emperor from prosecution at all costs and place the ultimate blame for the war and crimes against humanity on the war leader Hideki Tojo was undoubtedly a successful strategy.

Tojo was a harsh and humourless man, known for his brusque manners, obsession with etiquette, and impenetrable coldness. Those who knew him personally considered Tojo to be a rather unintelligent and unimaginative person. What made him repugnant in MacArthur's eyes was that Tojo, like several other Japanese officers, deeply disliked the influence of Western culture on Japan. He believed that it had led to ero guro nansensu, eroticism, grotesqueness, and nonsense. Instead, Japan should stand above other nations and “spread its moral principles across the world”; a dictatorial imperial rule with a divine mandate was the true path to such an ideal. As the fanatic he was, Tojo believed that the ends justified the means, no matter how ruthless they might seem.

Tojo had in fact been a “dictator” in the narrow sense from September 1942, when he had generally been able to impose his will on the Government without seeking consensus from politicians and military leaders. In reality, however, Tojo’s authority was entirely based on the support of the Government, and it was the emperor who held ultimate power.

Totally submissive to his emperor’s will, Tojo accepted Hirohito’s unconditional surrender to the Americans. In order to avoid having to testify against his emperor, Tojo tried to take his own life. When U.S. military police arrived to arrest him, Tojo shot himself in the chest, but the bullet missed his heart, and he was saved by American doctors.

During the trial, Tojo took full responsibility for the war:

It is natural that I bear full responsibility for the war in general, and I am of course ready to do so. Consequently, now that the war has been lost, it is probably necessary that I be judged so that the circumstances of the time can be clarified and the future peace of the world can be guaranteed.

The researchers from Unit 731 who had escaped the Soviets and fled to Japan were captured and interrogated by the American military. However, all of them were released and secretly given full immunity for their crimes.

After ensuring that Ping Fan had been completely destroyed, Ishii boarded a Japanese military plane and returned home to Tokyo. At the same time, his family took important documentation and other materials from Ping Fan and travelled by train through Korea, which was still under Japanese control, and from there took a boat to Japan.

When he was first contacted and interrogated, Ishii was unwilling to provide more than cryptic answers to the questions asked. He harboured an unreasonable hatred for the United States and had, during his time in Ping Fan, contemplated how his porcelain bombs with deadly microbes could be dropped over the American West Coast. However, when Ishii learned that the Soviets had officially requested his extradition and were relentlessly pressuring the Americans to hand him over, his attitude softened. When Ishii received a guarantee from MacArthur’s staff that if he agreed to cooperate unconditionally with the American occupation forces, he would be guaranteed full immunity for his crimes and not be handed over to either the Soviet Union or China, whose governments had persistently demanded his extradition or, at the very least, his execution as a war criminal, Ishii agreed to cooperate. He went to his flower garden, dug up all the materials he had buried there, and immediately handed them over to the American authorities.

Germany was occupied by several victorious powers, especially the Soviet Union, which had conquered a large part of the country. The defeated Germans had shown a willingness to share all documentation, and the various countries' prosecuting authorities had basically equal access to it, even though there was some smuggling and deception going on. In Japan, however, the situation was entirely different – there, the USA was the sole master of the field, and Douglas MacArthur’s opinions carried enormous weight.

It had been decided that the Allies were entitled to all the information they requested from the American occupation authorities, provided their requests were reasonable. However, the problem lay in the last phrase. MacArthur had decided that “unreasonableness” meant requests for information that, according to the American Supreme Commander, responsible for all actions, could “jeopardize U.S. security or deviate from the U.S.’s intention to promote scientific research and development.”

Obviously, the last statement referred to the material Ishii had brought with him, i.e., the forbidden fruit that American microbiologists were now eager for, especially since they, like the rest of the world’s microbiologists, had been strictly forbidden from causing other people suffering through such horrific experiments like those conducted within Unit 731’s facilities. Without fully clarifying how revolutionary they were, Ishii's developments in protective gear, water purification systems, and vaccines were praised by U.S. researchers, furthermore claiming that he had developed vaccines against 18 unspecified diseases.

The Russians constantly pressured MacArthur for their right to interrogate Ishii. The question is whether they were aware of all the material he had taken out of Ping Fan. Finally, Soviet scientists were in the summer of 1947 given an opportunity to interrogate the by then carefully prepared Ishii, and he openly discussed things that later came to light during the Khabarovsk Trials. However, Ishii kept his cooperation with the Americans secret, as well as the fact that he had handed over the extensive materials his family had brought from Ping Fan.

Ishii Shuri was able to quietly live out his life, just like Hirohito, as a peaceful old man. He converted to Catholicism, opened a clinic where he offered examinations and treatments without charge. Since Ishii now enjoyed a generous state pension, he had no great need for money. He died of throat cancer at the age of 67 on October 9, 1959. Below is a photo showing Ishii being honoured by former colleagues from Unit 731.

Ishii Shuri’s tainted memory has been preserved in China, and requests for compensation from the survivors of the consequences of Japan's heinous biological/chemical warfare have not ceased to trouble Japanese authorities, as well as those in the U.S. and China which have chosen to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by Unit 731.

Several documentaries about Unit 731 have been made and presented in Europe, China, Japan, and the USA. Some feature films have also been made, but they have generally been dismissed as violent exploitation films due to their disturbing levels of detail. This is certainly the case with the poorly made and extremely repulsive Philosophy of a Knife, a Russian-American horror film from 2008, poorly written, produced, filmed, edited, and directed by Andrey Iskanov. While it includes painful documentary segments with interviews and archival material, the recreations of the experiments performed in Unit 731 are so horrifically vile that the entire film has to be dismissed as an example of extremely distasteful and violent pornography.

Men Behind the Sun has generally also been referred to as “violent pornography” and “sexploitation”. It was a low-budget film directed by Mou Tun-fei, filmed both in Hong Kong and on the Chinese mainland. It was Mou’s original intention to depict as accurately as possible what happened within the walls of Unit 731, but the film met with scathing criticism and was widely dismissed as exploitative violence. It was completely banned in Australia and had a very limited release in Europe, where it in many countries was heavily edited, and the same happened in the USA. However, in some Asian countries it became quite successful. In Japan, Men Behind the Sun was labelled as unsubstantiated anti-Japanese propaganda and Mou received several death threats.

While the film at times is indeed painful to watch, it is in my opinion, underrated. It is certainly a B-movie, and it shows, but still — at least to the best of my understanding — all details are portrayed accurately; the hopelessness, the coldness, the experiments conducted, and the executioners’ total lack of empathy and emotion. Even the framing story with a group of innocent Japanese high schoolers subjected to the madness of Unit 731 is historically accurate; such groups of boys and young men were present in Ping Fan. Ishii's completely emotionless demonstrations and lectures, his drunkenness, and his “correctly impeccable” demeanour are also made clear, and the actor playing Ishii gives a portrayal that credibly matches the image one might have of him. What, however, in my opinion, worsens and destroys the film is the incredibly poorly done English dubbing.

This now brings us to The Gyeongseong Creature, the 2023 South Korean Netflix series, which is set largely in Seoul (formerly known as Gyeongseong under Japanese occupation) six months before Japan’s surrender – Korea is still occupied by Japan.

The Gyeongseong Creature reminds me of the adventure/horror films I loved as a child and in my early youth. It is very much a representative of what is known in English as swashbuckling movies. A swashbuckler is a heroic character skilled in fencing, acrobatics, and cunning. A handsome young man with unbeatable physical prowess and chivalrous ideals. Heroic, daring, and idealistic, he saves women in distress, protects the oppressed, and in violent struggles defends his and his lady’s honour, while avenging wronged comrades. This leads to exciting, romantic adventures. A swashbuckler is an elegant gentleman, often dressed in an extravagant and/or highly refined manner. He is a man with taste and charm, and we know him from d'Artagnan to James Bond.

The strange word swashbuckler finds its origin in the 16th century, derived from the combination of swashing, to do a swiping movement with a sword, and buckler, a small, round shield.

In the Korean series, the swashbuckler-s name is Jang Tae-sang, and lover, Yoon Chae-ok, is equally, if not more, heroic, handsome, strong, skilled, and smart than the male hero.

The world-wise and rich charmer Jang Tae-sang will, like his counterparts Sir Percy Blakeney (The Scarlet Pimpernel), Don Diego de la Vega (Zorro), and Bruce Wayne (Batman), develop a dual character that he hides from the occupying Japanese. Like many other heroes, Jang Tae-sang also has a sidekick, a slightly comic yet warm-hearted and loyal character, common in several excellent adventure novels — like Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza, Phileas Fogg’s Passepartout, Sherlock Holmes’ Dr. Watson, Frodo’s Samwise Gamgee, and Harry Potter’s Ron Weasley, just to name a few of them. Jang Tae-sang’s sidekick is Gu Gap-pyeong, who works at his pawnshop.

The pawnshop is the source of Jang Tae-sang’s wealth, and is supervised by a version of the good substitute mother — Mrs. Nawol, with literary counterparts like “Mammy” from Gone with the Wind, or Betsey Trotwood from David Copperfield, trustworthy, insightful and caring truth-tellers.

A swashbuckler also needs a worthy, often intellectual opponent, sometimes a demonic doctor and/or scientist. Bond has Dr. No and Holmes has Dr. Moriarty, while Jang Tae-sang faces the Japanese microbiologist Dr. General Kato. Demonic doctors/scientists are also common in film and literature—Dr. Moreau, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Dr. Mabuse, Dr. Octavius/Octopus, Dr. Strangelove, just to name a few.

Behind the scenes, a malevolent, demonically eroticised and deeply wicked femme fatale is often required to pull the strings. Already in the Bible we find Delilah and Salomé, but the line continues unbroken through Morgan Le Fay, Lucrezia Borgia, and Milady de Winter, to operatic figures like Kundry, Carmen, and Lulù, and onto film icons like Gilda and Sylina Kane (Catwoman). In the case of Jang Tae-sang, it is the Japanese noblewoman Yukiko Maeda, a variant of a specific film cliché – The Dragon Lady, strong, deceitful, dominant, mysterious, and generally sexually alluring. On the silver screen, such a woman was often portrayed by Anna May Wong.

A female swashbuckler and the protagonist’s beloved generally do not require as large a cast of characters, but a common standard figure is the good father, with literary counterparts such as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables or George Eliot’s Silas Marner. In Yoon Chae-ok’s case, it is her self-sacrificing father who, together with her, searches for her missing mother, whom they find in the clutches of the cold-hearted Dr. Kato.

In The Gyeongseong Creature, all actors are in place, similar to those in adventurous masterpieces like The Three Musketeers and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. What the is needed is a carefully researched and skilfully depicted historical setting. In the case of The Gyeongseong Creture it was Seoul in 1946, where the fictional characters, just as in the aforementioned novels, are woven into a reality-based adventure, spiced with gothic horror.

Before Japan integrated Korea into its empire in 1910, Japanese scholars had studied how the English, French, and Germans had constructed and managed their empires, just as Japanese authorities during the Meiji period thoroughly had researched German and British army and industrial practices. They were particularly interested in how England had integrated Wales and Scotland, how Germany had handled Alsace-Lorraine, and how France had “transformed” Algeria from being a colony to become part of France, with the same constitution and subdivided into departments, just like the mother country.

Like the previously conquered Ryukyu Kingdom, Taiwan, and the northern island of Hokkaido, Korea was to become part of Japan, with its inhabitants trained to become Japanese. This was to be achieved through schools, universities, dams, industries, and railways, alongside intense an encouragement of Japanese investments, tourism, and immigration. The elites of Korea, Ryukyu and Taiwan were considered, despite differences in language and tradition, to be possible to integrate into Japanese ideology and society without much difficulty, while the indigenous people of Hokkaido and Taiwan were to be treated separately and supposed to become “civilized,” much like Native Americans in the U.S. and the descendants of black slaves. Formally, there was no “racial” discrimination between Japanese and their “subordinate” peoples; for example, intermarriage between Koreans and Japanese was officially encouraged.

Naturally, the Japanese rulers faced resistance from many Koreans, with numerous small uprisings and resistance movements being ruthlessly crushed. A certain discriminatory difference was also maintained between Koreans and the Japanese immigrants (800,000 in 1945) who dominated the upper class, though many Korean collaborators were favoured and worked with the Japanese in trade, industry, and the military.

During World War II, the situation worsened, especially due to forced recruitment of workers and soldiers and the army’s use of comfort women, female sex slaves (Japanese prostitution was not accepted within the army). The Kempeitai banned all anti-Japanese activities, forbade Korean-language publishing and newspapers, and persecuted the opposition through violence, informers, and torture.

It is in this environment that The Gyeongseong Creature introduces a fictional Unit 731 and revives it in a hermetically sealed experimental area within Seoul’s Ongseong Hospital, guarded by Japanese army units and led by the sadistic scientist Kato, who shows many similarities to the young Ishii Shiro.

Within Ongseong Hospital, a duplicate of the Manchurian Unit 731 is maintained. Numerous marutas are imprisoned in underground cells and continue to be helpless victims of Japanese torturing scientists. A twist on the madness is that in these secret laboratories, the marutas are infected with a previously unknown parasitic microbe that turns its victims into grotesquely murderous, indestructible monsters, which, when threatened, release clouds of deadly anthrax spores.

Considering that some of you have seen the series yet, I won’t reveal any further details of its plot, especially since I, as an avid fan of adventure and horror films, enjoyed The Gyeongseong Creature and would recommend it to like-minded viewers. However, the second part of the series was a disappointment as it devolved into a somewhat cliché vampire story set in modern-day Seoul. Interestingly though is that Ongseong Hospital’s Unit 731 has now evolved into a multinational pharmaceutical company, Jeonseung Biotech, which in its highly sophisticated, but hard-to-reach research departments, hides deadly and further-developed relics from Unit 732.

This brings us back to the legacy of Unit 731. What happened to the inheritance of this grim institution? Most of the researchers who returned to their home country from Unit 731 became respected citizens and many built successful careers in universities, healthcare, and pharmaceutical companies.

Yujiro Wakamatsu who had been the chief veterinarian at the Kwantung Army and as such ad1minsitered Unit 100, a large and similarly secretive facility as the one in Ping Fan. Unit 100 had also relied on a continuous supply of human marutas, who before being killed had been subjected to a multitude of brutally merciless experiments. Unit 100 was officially intended for the medical treatment of horses and livestock, but its primary focus was on research into Zoonotic pathogens, i.e . bacterial, viral or parasitic diseases transmitted from animals to humans. After his return to Japan, Wakamatsu cooperated with the Americans and often worked for JNIH, Japan's National Health Institute.

All leaders of Japan's National Institute of Health (JNIH), after the war and up until 1983 (with one exception), had been active in Unit 731. During the postwar period, JNIH was involved in numerous scandals, several of which concerned experiments with drugs and infectious agents on unsuspecting soldiers, prisoners, and mental patients. One of the scandals that was uncovered late was that JNIH had been negligent in screening the blood it supplied to hospitals, sometimes with fatal consequences. Some of JNIH's vaccination campaigns had also, in fact, been tests of undeveloped vaccines.

Several pharmaceutical companies, dis also after the war, employ researchers and medical doctors who had worked in Unit 731 and its various branches. Among these was Green Cross, a pharmaceutical company that supplied hospitals with various blood-based products. A major scandal erupted when it was revealed that 1,500 patients had been infected with HIV through blood provided by Green Cross.

Given what occurred within Unit 731 and the subsequent cover-up of its inhumane activities, it is essential to emphasize that microbiological research plays an incredibly significant role in combating many deadly diseases, finding vaccines and preventing epidemics. It is also vital for developing effective serums against toxins, as well as remedies for injuries caused by gases, and radiation exposure. However, such research is also a double-edged sword since it can also lead to the development of biological and chemical warfare substances, new poisons, and other horrifying witch’s brews. Both cures and harmful substances must often be tested on living beings, and might also spread invisibly, poisoning our world — a phenomenon that has occurred multiple times.

For example, in 1984, gas leaked from a pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. At least 520,000 people were exposed to the gases. The official death toll was 2,559, but a more realistic estimate suggests that at least 8,000 people died within the first few weeks of the disaster, and the aftermath brought the death toll to at least 20,000 victims, not counting those who suffered permanent injuries.

The release of methylmercury by the Chisso Corporation in Japan poisoned fish over a thirty years’ time and as a result fatally poisoned at least 2,000 people and left thousands more with deformities. The pollution was confirmed in 1965, but deformities and deaths continued long afterward. In these two examples, the disasters involved the release of toxic waste from chemical industries, and there are countless other examples, many of which remain unidentified or were concealed by corporations and authorities.

Some similar accidents have been linked to research facilities focusing on both combating epidemic diseases and developing chemical and biological weapons. Some of these have had direct ties to Unit 731’s murderous activities. For instance, the large biological/chemical research unit in Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union, was largely built on a knowledge base derived from Unit 731’s findings. The new facility was named the Scientific Research Institute of Hygiene of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Soviet Republics and became operational in 1949.

On April 2, 1979, the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), with its population of over a million, was struck by an accidental release of anthrax bacteria, which officially killed at least 68 people (as in many other similar cases, this figure is likely a low estimate). Nevertheless, Soviet/Russian research on further development of chemical and biological weapons continued and, evidently, still does. The use of the radioactive nerve agent Novichok has drawn significant attention. Developed between 1971 and 1993, Novichok has reportedly been used on several occasions to poison and kill Russian dissidents.

As mentioned above, the United States made efforts to keep Unit 731’s researchers and their findings out of the hands of both allies and enemies. The aim was to monopolize the scientific data obtained through human experiments to advance the U.S. biological warfare program. The U.S. government has never issued a public statement acknowledging its cover-up of Japan’s medical atrocities, let alone offered a public apology for its actions.

Most of Unit 731’s material was taken to the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, where it was further developed. The facilities at Fort Detrick were shut down in August 2019 (curiously enough three months before the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported from China). The reason for the closure was cited as “a risk of severe threats to public, animal, or plant health, as well as animal or plant products.” No further details were provided.

The Korean War (1950–1953) intensified the conflict between the United States and the communist regimes of the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The U.S. was accused by North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union of using bacteriological weapons against both military and civilian targets. An international scientific commission (led by Joseph Needham, a prominent English biologist who had written extensive and excellent studies on Chinese philosophy and the history of science) confirmed the accusations. The U.S. denied everything and demanded a more “impartial” investigation. The Red Cross and WHO suggested convening a special expert commission, but the proposal was rejected by China and North Korea.

To a much greater extent than the open use of biological weapons, the United States became known for chemical warfare (another area of Unit 731’s operations). One example of an effective and frequently used chemical weapon is napalm, developed in 1942 at Harvard University. It is an oil-based incendiary substance that, when thickened into a sticky gel, burns with an intense, nearly inextinguishable flame while clinging to objects and people. Napalm was used with great “success” during the horrific firebombing of Tokyo and later became widely used in Vietnam, particularly in firebombs and flamethrowers.

Another chemical weapon used in Vietnam was Agent Orange a herbicide used to kill vegetation believed to conceal enemy forces. It got its name from the orange stripe on its storage barrels. Over 76 million litres of Agent Orange were used to spray vast areas. The spraying caused extensive and lasting damage. More than 3,100,000 hectares of forest were defoliated, and Vietnam’s Red Cross has estimated that over a million people have suffered severe disabilities, cancer, birth defects, and numerous other health problems. This has, of course, been denied by the U.S. government but is contradicted by various U.S. veterans' organizations that have documented numerous studies indicating leukaemia, Hodgkin's lymphoma, and various types of cancer in military personnel who handled Agent Orange.

Around the world, numerous scientific institutions store and experiment with deadly microbes and viruses. Of course, this is done for the benefit of humanity, but as we have seen, it can also have more macabre aspects. Sometimes, some of this deadly material has leaked from laboratories; perhaps not too often, but the risk is always present, and small leaks do occasionally occur.

Laboratory staff might also, on rare occasions, have been poisoned by smallpox, anthrax, Ebola, Novichok, or other deadly chemicals and biological substances due to accidents like needle sticks. It is also worrying what all this research could lead to.

The Dutchman Ron Fouchier is known for his research on respiratory viruses, how they can mutate, and spread through zoonosis from animals to humans. His research is also evidence of how viruses and microbes can be manipulated and altered in laboratory environments. In 2003, at the annual meeting of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza, held this time in Malta, several hundred microbiologists listened as Fouchier described how he transferred avian (bird) influenza from one ferret to another, making the virus significantly more contagious.

Bird flu is one of the diseases that has proved to be zoonotic, meaning that the virus mutates in such a way that it can be transmitted from one animal species to another. In 1997-98, 18 people contracted the bird flu virus, six of whom died. In 1984, 100,000 Swedish minks contracted bird flu and had to be culled. In 1990, 30,000 horses died in China, and in 2003, 89 people in the Netherlands were infected, one of whom died. This might explain Fouchier’s interest in avian influenza.

Fouchier and his colleagues mutated the genetic sequence of the avian virus in many different ways, until, as Fouchier later put it, “someone convinced me to do something really, really stupid.” He spread the virus by allowing it to mutate in the nose of a ferret and then implanting its nasal fluid into the nose of another ferret, and so on. After ten such manipulations, the virus began to spread by itself among the ferrets and several of them died within a few days.

Fouchier found five new mutations of the virus and managed to combine them into a single virus that turned out to be far more deadly than the original avian virus. Fouchier had thus achieved something that could probably also happen in nature – a virus mutates when transferred from one animal to another and during its journey from one species to another, it becomes increasingly deadly. And what happens in nature can also be done much faster and more efficiently in a laboratory. Fouchier’s virus is now securely stored in an underground facility in Rotterdam. But – are there other such deadly laboratory-created viruses, and can we be entirely sure they won’t leak out? What do I know? I'm not a microbiologist, and I'm not particularly convinced by conspiracy theories, but...?

On good grounds what happens within microbiological laboratories is secret, and the public is effectively excluded. Most of us don’t know what is being developed inside, what is stored there. Strict regulations and safety measures have been issued by national health authorities and international health organizations.

China is the country that so far has suffered the most from biological warfare and its terrible consequences. When the facility in Ping Fan was destroyed and some of its researchers were captured by the Russians, while others fled to the United States, the Chinese may not have had much interest or time to focus on the scientific murders from Japan's Biological – and Chemical warfare programmes. The country was torn apart by violent fighting between Chiang Kai-shek’s republican forces and Mao Zedong’s communists. But despite this, there were branches of Unit 731 in Chinese-controlled areas, whether they were controlled by republicans or communists. The largest facilities were in Beijing, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, and Chinese forces likely succeeded in securing some of the material from these installations and probably even captured some researchers who had been working there.

After the war and the victory of the communists, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ facilities in Beijing became the centre for the country's microbiological research, with branches soon being established throughout the vast country. Wuhan’s microbiological laboratory was founded in 1956 and initially focused on research concerning zoonotic transmission of viral diseases.

The so-called Hong Kong flu was a pandemic that struck China in the summer of 1968 and spread to Hong Kong, where half a million people fell ill, and the disease then spread worldwide, killing more than a million people. This served as a warning for the Chinese authorities, who, despite the general chaos reigning in the country, discreetly began cooperating with international epidemiologists. This cooperation deepened over the years. Wuhan’s laboratory eventually developed an intimate collaboration and exchange with researchers and students from Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas, Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory, and Centre international de recherche en infectiologie in Lyon, France

The SARS virus, a group to which the later deadly coronavirus belongs, first appeared in November 2002, causing a relatively mild epidemic with about 8,500 cases, of which 800 died. It was a group of researchers from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology who found that China’s horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the SARS-like coronavirus. Wuhan's researchers took samples from thousands of horseshoe bats across China and isolated over 300 bat coronavirus sequences. In 2015, an international team, including two researchers from the institute, published their successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect a human cell line. They had constructed a hybrid virus that combined a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus, which was then adapted to grow in mice and subsequently replicate human diseases. It was found that this hybrid virus could infect human cells.

We are still stuck on the question – where did SARS-CoV-2 originate? Can it be traced all the way back to Unit 731? Probably not. Did it come from a bat? It is very possible. Did it leak from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology? This continues to be an open question and I avoid it by referring to the prestigious British scientific weekly journal Nature, which, in early December 2024, stated that most researchers agree that SARS-CoV-2 has its origins in animals. However, since the virus’ definitive origin has not yet been traced to any animal, some researchers continue to claim that the virus may have leaked – either by accident or intentionally – from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology.

In July of the same year, and editorial in the equally prestigious British medical journal The Lancet called for an end to all unscientific conspiracy theories about the virus leaking from Wuhan's research laboratory. It stated that:

SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus that found its way into humans through mundane contact with infected wildlife that went on to cause the most consequential pandemic for over a century. While it is scholarly to entertain alternative hypotheses, particularly when evidence is scarce, these alternative hypotheses have been implausible for a long time and have only become more-so with increasing scrutiny. Those who eagerly peddle suggestions of laboratory involvement have consistently failed to present credible arguments to support their positions.

Despite this rather definitive statement, the Lancet editorial writer could not avoid inserting a caveat at the end of the article with, in my non-scientific opinion, an all too convoluted and non-committal formulation:

A worrying potential consequence of this saga is that it might have a chilling effect on the pursuit of answers in the future on both COVID-19 and new potential threats. With researchers unwilling to ask questions freely for fear of being persecuted when facts lead to inevitable refinement or revision of earlier conclusions. So, while we should defend the right to ask awkward questions, we should also defend the right to change our minds. In summary, although the finer details of the events leading to the COVID-19 pandemic will take time to uncover, the story is one of a series of largely unremarkable steps coalescing to produce a momentous event—a perfect storm if you will. Those arguing for other explanations have their reasons, but none of these are public safety.

Anonymous (2024) “Editorial: COVID-19 origins: plain speaking is overdue. The Lancet, Microbe, Issue 8, August. Buruma, Ian (2023) “What the Tokyo Trial Reveals About Empire, Memory, and Judgement,” The New Yorker, October 16. Caprio, Mark E. (2009) Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Clausen, Søren and Stig Thøgersen (1995) The Making of a Chinese City: History and Historiography in Harbin. London: Routledge. Gao Bei (2013) Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees during World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, Sheldon H. (2002) Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-1945, and The American Cover-up. New York: Routledge. Harris, Sheldon H. (2004) “Japanese Biomedical Experimentation during the World-War-II Era,” in Pellegrino, Edmund D. (ed). Textbooks of Military Medicine, Vol. 2. Washington D.C.: United Sates Government Printing Office. Mallapaty, Smriti (2024) “Sick animals suggest COVID pandemic started in Wuhan market,” Nature, 4 December. National Library of Health https://www.nlm.nih.gov/ Specter, Michael (2012) “The deadliest Virus”, The New Yorker, March 4. Summers, William C. (2012) The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911: The Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

BLOG LIST

  It is one of those rare Swedish summers when it seldom rains. The sunshine, the heat and the liberty demand swims in the lake and relaxation in the hammock. Furthermore, this year I have the pleasure of having parts of my family around me. However, as so often in Sweden, "to have a...
  Det är en av dessa sällsynta svenska somrar då det sällan regnar. Solen strålar, värme och frihet yrkar på bad och avkoppling. I år har jag också haft glädjen av att ha delar av min familj omkring mig. Emellertid, som så ofta i Sverige, innebär ”att ha det skönt på landet” hårt...
  It is a hot summer in Hässleholm. We are at my mother´s place and life is somewhat strange, as always. Our summer house is rented out to a Dutch couple and their kids, we can thus not enjoy a swim in the lake or walks through the forest, instead we are cleaning up the second floor of...
  Det är en varm sommar i Hässleholm. Vi är hos min mor och livet är märkligt, som alltid. Vi har hyrt ut vårt hus till holländska sommargäster och tillbringar därför inte tiden på bryggan i sjön eller med cykelturer genom skogen, utan städar istället hos min mor. Genom åren har...
Somewhat over a month ago, I was sitting with my friend Örjan in the garden outside the house  in Bjärnum. We had just eaten an extensive dinner and enjoyed the presence of the nature all around us. In the mild twilight breeze after a day with clear blue skies we were talking amongst lush...
  För lite mer än en månad sedan satt jag tillsammans med min gode vän Örjan i trädgården utanför huset  i Bjärnum. Vi hade avslutat en omfattande middag och njöt i fulla drag av naturen omkring oss. Mätta och belåtna samtalade vi bland prunkande rhododendronbuskar, i ett milt...
  I'm on my way, sitting on the train to Copenhagen´s International Airport, from where I will fly to my family in Rome. Looking out of the window thinking that an external trip is also an internal one. I am mentally preparing myself for the arrival. My thoughts have already reached...
  Jag är åter på resa och sitter på tåget mot Kastrup, därifrån skall jag ta flyget till min familj i Rom. En yttre resa är samtidigt en inre färd. Mentalt förbereder jag mig inför ankomsten. Mina tankar har redan nått målet och kretsar kring de kommande veckorna. Mer eller mindre...
  Several Roman harbor an exaggerated fear of drafts, few of them dare to sleep with an open window open and as soon as the air is saturated with moisture and cold  they cover  themselves up with layers of clothing and scarves and only reluctantly leave their overly heated...
  Flera romare hyser en överdriven fruktan för drag, få av dem riskerar att somna med öppet fönster och så fort luften mättas med fukt och kyla byltar de på sig ordentligt och lämnar motvilligt sina överdrivet uppvärmda hem, bilar och kontor. I Rom lever fortfarande fruktan...
Items: 301 - 310 of 332
<< 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 >>

Contact

In Spite Of It All, Trots Allt janelundius@gmail.com