Khabarovsk war crimes trials
The Khabarovsk war crimes trials were the Soviet hearings of twelve Japanese Kwantung Army officers and medical staff charged with the manufacture and use of biological weapons, and human experimentation, during World War II. The war crimes trials were held between 25 and 31 December 1949 in the Soviet industrial city of Khabarovsk (Хабаровск), the largest in the Russian Far East.
Both Soviet Union and United States allegedly gathered data from the Unit after the fall of Japan. While twelve Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, they were sentenced lightly to the Siberian labor camp from two to 25 years, seemingly in exchange for the information they held. [1] Those captured by the US military were secretly given immunity,[2] while being covered up with stipends to the perpetrators. The US was purported to had co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own warfare program (resembling Operation Paperclip), so did the Soviet Union in building their bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from the Unit in Manchuria.[1][3][4] In 1956, those still serving their sentences were released and repatriated to Japan.
History[edit]
During the trials, the accused, including Major General Kiyoshi Kawashima, testified that as early as 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde, China, causing epidemic 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.
In 1950, the Soviet Union published official trial materials in English, titled Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons.[6] These included documents from the preliminary investigation (the indictment, some of the documentary evidence, and some interrogation records), testimony from both the accused and witnesses, final pleas of the accused, some expert findings, and speeches from the state prosecutor and defense counsel, verbatim.
Published by state-run Foreign Languages Publishing House, the Soviet publication has long been out of print. But in November 2015, Google Books determined it was now in the public domain and published a facsimile of it online, also offering it for sale as an ebook.[6]