In late 1930s, a large lab in northern China, under Japanese occupation, was forging ahead with a new type of weapon. It was nicknamed Unit 731. Led by General Shiro Ishii, a microbiologist by training, the goal of the lab was to not just produce but also test biological weapons on the Chinese population. Over the course of the lab's operation, plague-infested flea bags were dropped in Ningbo and Quzhou in Zhejian province. Marshes, wells and waterways were poisoned with biological weapons including anthrax. Estimates suggest that by the end of WWII, more than two hundred thousand Chinese civilians were killed through testing of biological weapons and subsequent epidemics of plague, cholera and anthrax. These numbers are similar to the deaths caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs dropped by the US.

The development of the biological weapons was not an accident. It was a deliberate, well-funded and organised effort by the Japanese Imperial army. The idea to use bacteria as a weapon was first articulated by a French chemist, Auguste........

© The Express Tribune