TheKhabarovsk war crimes trials were theSoviethearings of twelveJapaneseKwantung Armyofficers andmedical staffcharged with the manufacture and use ofbiological weapons, and human experimentation, duringWorld War II. The war crimes trials were held between 25 and 31 December 1949 in the Soviet industrial city ofKhabarovsk (Хабаровск), the largest in theRussian Far East.
TheSoviet Union and theUnited States gathered data and evidence from the Unit after the fall of Japan. While twelveUnit 731 researchers arrested bySoviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, they were sentenced only to theSiberian labor camp from two to 25 years, seemingly in exchange for the information they held.[1] Those captured by theUS military were secretly givenimmunity,[2] while being covered up withstipends to the perpetrators. The US was purported to have co-opted the researchers'bioweapons information and experience for use in their ownwarfare program (resemblingOperation Paperclip), so did the Soviet Union in building theirbioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from the Unit in Manchuria.[1][3][4] In 1956, those still serving their sentences were released andrepatriated to Japan.
During the trials, the accused, includingMajor General Kiyoshi Kawashima, testified that as early as 1941, some 40 members ofUnit 731air-droppedplague-contaminated fleas onChangde,China, causingepidemic plague outbreaks.[5]
Judges found all twelve accused war criminals guilty, sentencing them to terms ranging from two to twenty-five years in labour camps. In 1956, those still serving their sentences were released and repatriated to Japan.[6]
In 1950, the Soviet Union published official trial materials in English, titledMaterials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons.[7] These included documents from the preliminary investigation (theindictment, some of the documentary evidence, and someinterrogation records), testimony from both the accused andwitnesses, finalpleas of the accused, some expert findings, and speeches from the stateprosecutor anddefense counsel,verbatim.
Published by state-runForeign Languages Publishing House, the Soviet publication has long been out of print. But in November 2015,Google Books determined it was now in thepublic domain and published afacsimile of it online, also offering it for sale as anebook.[7]
Speaking to the overall judicial integrity of the proceedings,bioethics expert Jing-Bao Nie said the following:
Despite its strongideological tone and many obvious shortcomings such as the lack of international participation, the trial established beyond reasonable doubt that theJapanese army had prepared and deployedbacteriological weapons and that Japanese researchers had conductedcruel experiments onliving human beings. However, the trial, together with the evidence presented to the court and its major findings—which have proved remarkably accurate—was dismissed ascommunist propaganda and totally ignored inthe West until the 1980s.[8]
HistorianSheldon Harris described the trial in his history of Unit 731:
Evidence introduced during the hearings was based on eighteen volumes of interrogations and documentary material gathered in investigations over the previous four years. Some of the volumes included more than four hundred pages of depositions.... Unlike theMoscow Show Trials of the 1930s, the Japanese confessions made in the Khabarovsk trial were based on fact and not the fantasy of their handlers.[9]
Yet the very wealth of trial documentation that tended to confirm that the Khabarovsk proceedings were no mere show trial also led Harris to question the relatively light punishment meted out there. All of the defendants (aside from one who died in prison and another who committed suicide) had been freed by 1956, a mere seven years after the trial took place.[10] Chief trial translator Georgy Permyakov alleged that Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin may have initially feared that Japan wouldexecute Sovietprisoners of war if the Khabarovsk defendants werehanged.[10] But Harris also claimed that "the Soviets made a deal with the Japanese similar to the one completed by the Americans: Information [in exchange] for... extremely light sentences":[10]
The Soviets and their successors never released the interrogation reports of the Japanese, some 18 volumes. This leads me to believe that the Japanese did arrange a deal, did yield some information, and the Soviets settled for the best goodies they could get.[10]
Harris also noted other issues unleashed by the trial, which linked emperorHirohito to the Japanese biological warfare program, as well as allegations that Japanese biological warfare experiments had also been conducted on Allied prisoners of war.
One of the experts called upon by Soviet prosecutors during the trial, N. N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov, later served on the panel of scientists, led byJoseph Needham, investigatingChinese andNorth Koreanallegations of US biological warfare in the Korean War.[11]