Japan and weapons of mass destruction
[1] Following the international ban on germ warfare in interstate conflicts by the 1925 Geneva Protocol, Japan reasoned that disease epidemics must make effective weapons.
Japan's biowarfare experts had hoped to launch biological attacks on the U.S. in 1944 with balloon bombs filled with bubonic plague, anthrax, rinderpest, and smut fungus.
[1] A 1945-planned kamikaze attack on San Diego with I-400-class submarine aircraft carriers that would deploy Aichi M6As floatplanes and drop fleas infected with bubonic plague was code-named Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night.
[1] Researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials; they were given light sentences to the Siberian labor camp, from two to 25 years, seemingly in exchange for the information they held.
[9] The court acknowledged the existence of Japan's biological warfare program but rejected the plaintiffs' demands for compensation, saying the issue was covered under postwar treaties.
[9] Following the court decision, Japanese officials announced that their government would send a delegation to China to excavate and remove hundreds of abandoned chemical weapons, including bombs, shells, and containers of mustard gas and other toxins left over from the Second World War.
As of 2005, sixty years after the end of the war, canisters that were abandoned by Japan in their hasty retreat are still being dug up in construction sites, causing injuries and allegedly even deaths.
Like the German nuclear weapons program, it suffered from an array of problems, and was ultimately unable to progress beyond the laboratory stage before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender in August 1945.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election it was proposed by GOP candidates to allow both Japan and the Republic of Korea to develop nuclear weapons to counter a North Korean missile threat.
[15] Solid fuel rockets are the design of choice for military applications as they can remain in storage for long periods, and then reliably launch at short notice.
The ISAS director of external affairs, Yasunori Matogawa, said, "It seems the hard-line national security proponents in parliament are increasing their influence, and they aren't getting much criticism…I think we’re moving into a very dangerous period.
"[16] Toshiyuki Shikata, a government adviser and former lieutenant general, indicated that part of the rationale for the fifth M-V Hayabusa mission was that the reentry and landing of its return capsule demonstrated "that Japan's ballistic missile capability is credible.
[21] In 1939, the U.S. State Department reported that a Japanese Army physician in New York City had attempted to obtain a Yellow fever virus sample from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
[1][22] In 1951, the first of many allegations were made against the United States by the communist belligerent nations in the Korean war of employing biological warfare using various techniques in attacks launched from bases on Okinawa.
[30][31] Operation Pop Eye / Motorpool / Intermediary-Compatriot was a highly classified weather modification program in Southeast Asia during 1967-1972 that was developed from cloud seeding research conducted on Okinawa and other tropical locations.
A report titled Rainmaking in SEASIA outlines use of silver iodide deployed by aircraft in a program that was developed in California at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.
[34] The program employed cloud seeding as a weapon which was used to induce rain and extend the East Asian Monsoon season in support of U.S. government strategic efforts related to the War in Southeast Asia.
The Red Hat mission deployed additional chemical agents in three military operations code named YBA, YBB, and YBF.
[39] In 1969, over 20 servicemen (23 U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian, according to other reports) were exposed to low levels of the nerve agent sarin while sandblasting and repainting storage containers.
Operation Red Hat involved the removal of chemical warfare munitions from Okinawa to Johnston Atoll in the Central Pacific Ocean.
[40] The initial phase of Operation Red Hat involved the movement of chemical munitions from a depot storage site to Tengan Pier, eight miles away, and required 1,332 trailers in 148 convoys.
[49] The U.S. military immediately began constructing a second B-29 base and a facility for atom bomb processing in Okinawa to be completed in September 1945 that would open more targets in mainland Japan.
[50] Japanese naval warships captured by the U.S. after Japan's surrender in World War II, including the Nagato, were used as target ships and destroyed in 1946 in nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll during Operation Crossroads.
"[52] According to a former U.S. Air Force officer stationed on Iwo Jima, the island would have served as a recovery facility for bombers after they had dropped their bombs in the Soviet Union or China.
War planners reasoned that bombers could return Iwo Jima, "where they would be refueled, reloaded, and readied to deliver a second salvo as an assumption was that the major U.S.
[57] A draft of the November 21st, 1969, Agreed Minute to Joint Communique of United States President Nixon and Japanese Prime Minister Sato was found in 1994.
[57] In June or July 1959, a MIM-14 Nike-Hercules anti-aircraft missile was accidentally fired from the Nike site 8 battery at Naha Air Base on Okinawa which according to some witnesses, was complete with a nuclear warhead.
[69] A similar accidental launch of a Nike-H missile had occurred on April 14, 1955, at the W-25 site in Davidsonville, Maryland, which is near the National Security Agency headquarters at Fort George G.
[74] Since the ship was traveling to Japan from duty in the Vietnam war zone, no public mention was made of the incident at the time and it would not come to light until 1981 when a Pentagon report revealed that a one-megaton bomb had been lost.
[60][78] Very small fragments of aircraft metal from the enormous blast were "spread like confetti," leaving the crew to use a double entendre to refer to the cleanup work, calling it, "'52 Pickup.
