Rocky Mountain Arsenal - Japanese Involvement

Japanese Involvement

The late Ban Shigeo, a technician at the Japanese Army's 9th Technical Research Institute, left a rare and valuable account of the activities of Noborito Research Institute which was published in Rikugun Noborito Kenkyujo no shinjitsu - The Truth About the Army Nororito Institute available only in the Japanese language. Of the Japanese Army's ten numbered institutes, only the 9th Army Technical Research Institute came under the covert operations section of the Army General Staff's Second Bureau (Intelligence). On the sensitive issue of Japanese biological warfare, Ban did not shrink from including an account of his trip to Nanking in 1941 to participate in the testing of poisons on Chinese prisoners. One of his book's contributions is to further tie Noborito to the Japanese Army's infamous Unit 731, which participated in biomedical research. When the war ended, the US Army quietly enlisted certain members of Noborito in its efforts against the communist camp in the early years of the Cold War. The author notes near the end of the book that Ban led the "chemical section" of a US clandestine unit hidden within Yokosuka naval base during the Korean War, and then worked on unspecified projects inside the United States from 1955 to 1959, before returning to Japan to enter the private sector. Evidence that Japanese continued to assist the United States Chemical and Biological warfare program efforts continued after the Korean war into Vietnam includes a visit to Rocky Mountain Arsenal in September 1962 by Japanese delegation I-63. Among many other activities, from January 1962-October 1969, Rocky Mountain Arsenal “grew, purified and biodemilitarized” plant pathogen Wheat Stem Rust (Agent TX), Puccinia graminis, var. tritici, for the Air Force biological anti-crop program. TX-treated grain was grown at the Arsenal from 1962-1968 in Sections 23-26. Unprocessed TX was also transported from Beale AFB for purification, storage, and disposal. Trichothecenes Mycotoxin is a toxin that can be extracted from Wheat Stem Rust and Rice Blast and can kill or incapacitate depending on the concentration used. The “red mold disease” of wheat and barley in Japan is prevalent in the region that faces the Pacific Ocean. Toxic trichothecenes, including nivalenol, deoxynivalenol, and monoace tylnivalenol (fusarenon- X) from Fusarium nivale, can be isolated from moldy grains. In the suburbs of Tokyo, an illness similar to “red mold disease” was described in an outbreak of a food borne disease, as a result of the consumption of Fusarium- infected rice. Ingestion of moldy grains that are contaminated with trichothecenes has been associated with mycotoxicosis.