plague –
PLAGUE, even then, PLAGUE.
I told them about the man who headed the Jap BW project, though I could not yet name him. I told them about the Jap BW headquarters (which I then believed to be in Nanking). I told them about the prisoner-of-war statements which mentioned a bacillus bomb (the Mark VII, Type 13, Experimental Bacillus Bomb). I warned them of possible targets, possible means of dispersal, possible biological agents & diseases. I told them about Jap attempts to get a strain of yellow fever virus from the Rockefeller Institute in New York & about a similar attempt in Rio de Janeiro. I told them it was quite possible that the Japs now had the virus through Germany. I warned them of the threat to our cattle & livestock from rinderpest, that rinderpest kills & spreads rapidly, that we were 100 percent vulnerable to rinderpest. I warned them that one single balloon could be crossing the Pacific that very minute, carrying enough cholera to start an epidemic, that we were 100 percent vulnerable to cholera.
I told them & I warned them because I KNEW, Peggy, I KNEW, even then, I KNEW.
But then, of course, the call came from MacArthur & that was the last time I saw you, the last time I saw the children, that last time before I ended up here in THIS PLAGUED CITY.
I know now for sure, Peggy, that they’d already been told about me before I even set foot in this place, that was why they were waiting for me, why they had my photograph!
That photograph of me in Camp Detrick is another thing I keep coming back to, over & over, again & again. How had the Japs got hold of that photograph? I know that our own guys, our own G-2, must have given it to the Japs, that G-2 must have already made contact with NaitÅ & the top men in the Jap BW program & that was why he was waiting for me, why he had my photograph in his paws, why he knew I wasn’t up to the job because THEY HAD TOLD HIM, because THEY HAD ALREADY MADE THEIR DEAL.
Of course, I knew even then that I could not & should not trust them but I see now that I personally was far too ready to believe all that I was told. So I believed that the Kwantung Army operated on the mainland with a high degree of independence from the military leadership back in Tokyo & I believed that, within the KA, Ishii was a law unto himself, that the Army Medical Department exercised no control over Ishii & his operations.
I realize that I became obsessed with Ishii, believing Ishii, & Ishii alone, to be the one who should bear sole burden for their BW program. I realize now that this was what I wanted to believe.
Now I believe more than ever that the deal (deals? Who knows how many deals were made?) was a mistake. But I swear to you, Peggy, that I did not know that human guinea pigs had been used when I suggested the arrangement to MacArthur, Willoughby & Compton. And now we know about the bacillus & anthrax bombs & their use on American prisoners of war & Chinese civilians, now we have the evidence, there is still time to prosecute Ishii & all the other guilty Japs at the Tokyo Trial. But no one here or in Washington takes my claims about the human experiments seriously or, should I say, no one wants to take them seriously because it does not suit them & what they (wrongly) believe to be ‘our best interests’.
But in years to come future generations will ask, who knew? Who knew and who made the deal? And the answer is, they all knew. They all knew, myself included. We all knew and so we are all guilty, guilty of the things we did, and guilty of the things we did NOT do.
I cannot bear the thought that George or Emily might one day read of all this & know that their own father knew, know that their own father was guilty (which I am), & that he did nothing.
All that I now plan to do, I do for our children.
Perhaps I should not tell you this, Peggy, but there are days here when I wake, my eyes still closed, & I can hear the voices of the children & I believe, for just one moment, I