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Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial
In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied intent to bring Axis crimes to light led to both the Nuremberg trial and its counterpart in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East. Yet the Tokyo trial failed to prosecute Imperial Japanese leaders for the very worst of war crimes: inhumane medical experimentation, including vivisection and open-air pathogen and chemical tests, which rivaled Nazi atrocities, as well as mass attacks using plague, anthrax, and cholera that killed thousands of Chinese civilians.
In Hidden Atrocities, Jeanne Guillemin goes behind the scenes at the trial to reveal the American obstruction that denied Japan's victims justice. Responsibility for Japan's secret germ warfare program, organized as Unit 731 in Harbin, China, extended to top government leaders and many respected scientists, all of whom escaped indictment. Instead, motivated by early Cold War tensions, U.S. military intelligence in Tokyo insinuated itself into the Tokyo trial by blocking prosecution access to key witnesses and then classifying incriminating documents.
Washington decision makers, supported by the American occupation leader General Douglas MacArthur, sought to acquire Japan's biological warfare expertise to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union, suspected of developing both biological and nuclear weapons.
Ultimately, U.S. national security goals left the victims of Unit 731 without vindication. Decades later, evidence of the Unit 731 atrocities still troubles relations between China and Japan. Guillemin's vivid account of the cover-up at the Tokyo trial shows how without guarantees of transparency, power politics can jeopardize international justice, with persistent consequences.
Contents:
Prologue: General Ishii and Germ Warfare
Introduction: Lasting Peace and the Protection of Civilians
1. MacArthur in Japan: “Punish the War Criminals”
2. Spoils of War: Secret Japanese Biological Science
3. International Prosecution Section: Toward the “Swift and Simple Trial”
4. The Investigation for Evidence in China
5. The Best Witnesses
6. Tokyo: The Rush to Trial
7. The Trial Begins
8. The Atrocities
9. The Soviet Division Versus US Military Intelligence
10. National Security Versus Medical Ethics
11. Open and Closed Trials
Epilogue: The Fallout
Acknowledgments
Source Notes
Acronyms
Principal Characters
Notes
Index
In Hidden Atrocities, Jeanne Guillemin goes behind the scenes at the trial to reveal the American obstruction that denied Japan's victims justice. Responsibility for Japan's secret germ warfare program, organized as Unit 731 in Harbin, China, extended to top government leaders and many respected scientists, all of whom escaped indictment. Instead, motivated by early Cold War tensions, U.S. military intelligence in Tokyo insinuated itself into the Tokyo trial by blocking prosecution access to key witnesses and then classifying incriminating documents.
Washington decision makers, supported by the American occupation leader General Douglas MacArthur, sought to acquire Japan's biological warfare expertise to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union, suspected of developing both biological and nuclear weapons.
Ultimately, U.S. national security goals left the victims of Unit 731 without vindication. Decades later, evidence of the Unit 731 atrocities still troubles relations between China and Japan. Guillemin's vivid account of the cover-up at the Tokyo trial shows how without guarantees of transparency, power politics can jeopardize international justice, with persistent consequences.
Contents:
Prologue: General Ishii and Germ Warfare
Introduction: Lasting Peace and the Protection of Civilians
1. MacArthur in Japan: “Punish the War Criminals”
2. Spoils of War: Secret Japanese Biological Science
3. International Prosecution Section: Toward the “Swift and Simple Trial”
4. The Investigation for Evidence in China
5. The Best Witnesses
6. Tokyo: The Rush to Trial
7. The Trial Begins
8. The Atrocities
9. The Soviet Division Versus US Military Intelligence
10. National Security Versus Medical Ethics
11. Open and Closed Trials
Epilogue: The Fallout
Acknowledgments
Source Notes
Acronyms
Principal Characters
Notes
Index
432 pages, Hardcover
Published September 26, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 28, 2017
Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial by Jeanne Guillemin is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary.
This book is very disturbing. It is amazing the horrible things that happened and the justice was covered up by the American government. Japan was horrible and most new about Rape of Nanking but there was so much more. There were terrible variety of biological warfare, chemical warfare, torture, medical experiments, and nuclear test subjects, and so much more. It was all known by America but it was eventually ignored. What a shame. There were as many killed in Asia as there was in Europe and in the Holocaust. It was a hard book to read but it was a book that is important to read.
This book is very disturbing. It is amazing the horrible things that happened and the justice was covered up by the American government. Japan was horrible and most new about Rape of Nanking but there was so much more. There were terrible variety of biological warfare, chemical warfare, torture, medical experiments, and nuclear test subjects, and so much more. It was all known by America but it was eventually ignored. What a shame. There were as many killed in Asia as there was in Europe and in the Holocaust. It was a hard book to read but it was a book that is important to read.
September 25, 2017
If using biological weapons and using human guinea-pigs to test them is both illegal and immoral, how wrong is it for a state not only to exploit the knowledge thereby gained but also to obstruct the punishment of those responsible for the original crimes?
This is the central question posed by Jeanne Guillemin’s ‘Hidden Atrocities’ which is subtitled ‘Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial’.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is far less well known that its Nuremberg counterpart. Whereas in Germany 21 high-profile defendants were tried by justices from 4 countries (the USA, the USSR, the UK and France), in Japan 25 leaders were tried by justices from 11 countries (there were actually 12 judges, with the United States represented by two).
One reason why the latter proceedings were unsatisfactory is that the Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal chose to make no real distinction between Japanese imperialism and that of the British, French, Dutch and Americans, with the result that he was willing to hand down not guilty verdicts on all those accused, making himself in the process a revered figure for Japanese militarists and revisionists down to the present day. However, the principal way in which Tokyo failed is because the United States successfully took steps to shield those responsible for Japan’s germ warfare, suppressing information which should have led to successful prosecutions in order to glean the benefits of Japanese data for its own biological warfare programme..
The nature of those crimes and the reasons for the travesty of justice regarding its perpetrators is examined in great detail in Gulliemin’s superbly researched and well-argued book. Although Gulliemin explains the political reasons why Emperor Hirohito was not indicted she surprisingly omits any discussion of the wartime roles of either the Emperor’s youngest brother, Prince Mikasa who apparently toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China or the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Takeda, who not only held executive responsibilities over Unit 731 in his role as chief financial officer of the Kwantung Army but who also allegedly attended field tests. This omission is all the more surprising because it adds to the circumstantial evidence that Hirohito was aware of what was going on and because Gulliemin’s account is otherwise as exemplary in its coverage as it is judicious in its analysis.
This is the central question posed by Jeanne Guillemin’s ‘Hidden Atrocities’ which is subtitled ‘Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial’.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is far less well known that its Nuremberg counterpart. Whereas in Germany 21 high-profile defendants were tried by justices from 4 countries (the USA, the USSR, the UK and France), in Japan 25 leaders were tried by justices from 11 countries (there were actually 12 judges, with the United States represented by two).
One reason why the latter proceedings were unsatisfactory is that the Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal chose to make no real distinction between Japanese imperialism and that of the British, French, Dutch and Americans, with the result that he was willing to hand down not guilty verdicts on all those accused, making himself in the process a revered figure for Japanese militarists and revisionists down to the present day. However, the principal way in which Tokyo failed is because the United States successfully took steps to shield those responsible for Japan’s germ warfare, suppressing information which should have led to successful prosecutions in order to glean the benefits of Japanese data for its own biological warfare programme..
The nature of those crimes and the reasons for the travesty of justice regarding its perpetrators is examined in great detail in Gulliemin’s superbly researched and well-argued book. Although Gulliemin explains the political reasons why Emperor Hirohito was not indicted she surprisingly omits any discussion of the wartime roles of either the Emperor’s youngest brother, Prince Mikasa who apparently toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China or the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Takeda, who not only held executive responsibilities over Unit 731 in his role as chief financial officer of the Kwantung Army but who also allegedly attended field tests. This omission is all the more surprising because it adds to the circumstantial evidence that Hirohito was aware of what was going on and because Gulliemin’s account is otherwise as exemplary in its coverage as it is judicious in its analysis.
August 29, 2017
Hidden Atrocities' strengths shine when it pulls back to show the significance of the post-WW2 Japanese war crimes trials in their contextual significance. The majority of the book tends to focus in detail on minutia to the detriment of the overall story. I finished it not really feeling like I had learned terribly much about the subject at hand. Sadly, the majority of the significance was found in the epilogue. As a part of a larger body of works on war crimes, this book contributes context, but on its on it struggles to stand alone.
Copy courtesy of Columbia University Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Copy courtesy of Columbia University Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
February 6, 2019
A difficult but must read topic. Well written. I highly recommend this for History buffs. The horrible things that happened.
April 16, 2026
"Hidden Atrocities" was a very informative look into the prosecution of the Japanese war criminals after World War II. It doesn't focus as much on the specific details of the crimes themselves, but rather what consequences the perpetrators faced and how chaotic the trial ended up being.
I wasn't the biggest fan of the book overall because while it's an informative book, it's NOT a fun book to read. Not even because of the dark, graphic content (which there is) but because it's such an unbearably slow read. I had to get an extension at my library for this book because it was taking me so long to get through. I think what makes the pace of the book such a bad thing too is because it's not necessarily information about the trial that's making it drag on for so long, it's a lot of interpersonal dynamics between the American government, military, and lawyers. It takes a long time to even get to the trial. And to be fair, the trial did get pushed off for a while, and it dragged on for way longer than expected, but that didn't make the book any less tiring to get through.
I think Guilleman did a good job keeping the book organized. It's primarily following the lead up to the trial and the trial itself, but there's moments where investigators were learning about things that happened years ago, and it never got confusing. I'm always very grateful when history books include references to specific months and years because I don't know a lot of important dates in history off the top of my head, so I need the extra help.
I do also really admire how thorough Guillemin was in her research. Yes I think the book was a huge pain in the butt to get through, but you can't deny how much effort she put into getting the truth. I think she also did a good job conveying the horror of the atrocities committed by the Japanese without going into too many gruesome details. Some had to be included in order to convey the severity, in particular we learn a lot about the Rape of Nanking, but I think it was handled respectfully.
To be honest, I wanted to know more about the human experimentation and what exactly was happening inside Unit 731, but that's mostly because I don't really know what happened. Not that I want to know exactly how thousands of people suffered in explicit detail, but what the hell were they doing to the victims? Did the scientists really feel nothing? How involved was the defense involved in the experiments themselves? The fact that there wasn't a single survivor of Unit 731 is absolutely mind-blowing. It's just hard to conceive of something like that ever happening (and just to be clear, it did happen).
So if you're like me and also looking for a book that goes more in depth about the kind of testing and human experiments that were done by Unit 731, you won't find that here. As I mentioned before, "Hidden Atrocities" is largely about the trial itself and how much bullshit the American government was pulling to keep things secret. When I've read about Unit 731 before, I've always thought "how could investigators be so incompetent?" But the truth is that they weren't necessarily incompetent, they just kept a lot of things secret. The "incompetence" was intentional so that they could avoid any public backlash while still getting what they wanted from the Japanese.
Definitely give this book a read if you're interested in World War II. It's absolutely not the quickest book you'll ever read, but it's informative nonetheless.
Date Read: 03/17/26 - 04/09/26
I wasn't the biggest fan of the book overall because while it's an informative book, it's NOT a fun book to read. Not even because of the dark, graphic content (which there is) but because it's such an unbearably slow read. I had to get an extension at my library for this book because it was taking me so long to get through. I think what makes the pace of the book such a bad thing too is because it's not necessarily information about the trial that's making it drag on for so long, it's a lot of interpersonal dynamics between the American government, military, and lawyers. It takes a long time to even get to the trial. And to be fair, the trial did get pushed off for a while, and it dragged on for way longer than expected, but that didn't make the book any less tiring to get through.
I think Guilleman did a good job keeping the book organized. It's primarily following the lead up to the trial and the trial itself, but there's moments where investigators were learning about things that happened years ago, and it never got confusing. I'm always very grateful when history books include references to specific months and years because I don't know a lot of important dates in history off the top of my head, so I need the extra help.
I do also really admire how thorough Guillemin was in her research. Yes I think the book was a huge pain in the butt to get through, but you can't deny how much effort she put into getting the truth. I think she also did a good job conveying the horror of the atrocities committed by the Japanese without going into too many gruesome details. Some had to be included in order to convey the severity, in particular we learn a lot about the Rape of Nanking, but I think it was handled respectfully.
To be honest, I wanted to know more about the human experimentation and what exactly was happening inside Unit 731, but that's mostly because I don't really know what happened. Not that I want to know exactly how thousands of people suffered in explicit detail, but what the hell were they doing to the victims? Did the scientists really feel nothing? How involved was the defense involved in the experiments themselves? The fact that there wasn't a single survivor of Unit 731 is absolutely mind-blowing. It's just hard to conceive of something like that ever happening (and just to be clear, it did happen).
So if you're like me and also looking for a book that goes more in depth about the kind of testing and human experiments that were done by Unit 731, you won't find that here. As I mentioned before, "Hidden Atrocities" is largely about the trial itself and how much bullshit the American government was pulling to keep things secret. When I've read about Unit 731 before, I've always thought "how could investigators be so incompetent?" But the truth is that they weren't necessarily incompetent, they just kept a lot of things secret. The "incompetence" was intentional so that they could avoid any public backlash while still getting what they wanted from the Japanese.
Definitely give this book a read if you're interested in World War II. It's absolutely not the quickest book you'll ever read, but it's informative nonetheless.
Date Read: 03/17/26 - 04/09/26
January 15, 2024
This was a very dense and detailed book full of previously unknown information. It was not what I expected because it seemed to me that the primary focus was on the logistical aspects of the trials and how those who were involved in its establishment came to be aware of the crimes that were committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. If you are looking for a book about the Atrocities themselves and a detailed account of the actual events that led to the establishment of the IMTFE, this book is probably not for you. However, if you already have a solid understanding of the events and a substantial understanding of the IMTFE and the roles of the different prosecutors and countries involved and want more details/information, I would recommend this book. It is essential that prospective readers already understand what happened. Otherwise, there is not a lot that can be gained from this book, and you will find yourself to be rather lost.
June 27, 2017
Very informative. I learned a great deal of information that was never covered in college history classes.
December 10, 2023
terrific and horrific. no interview question was asked abt it :')
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews