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.

All twelve defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to twenty-five years, to be served in Siberian labour camps. Those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.^[1] The United States covered up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.^[2] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much like what had been done with Nazi German researchers in Operation Paperclip.^[3]^[4] In 1956, those still serving their sentences were released and repatriated to Japan.

^ Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p. 109.
^ Kristof, Nicholas D. (17 March 1995). "Unmasking Horror – A special report. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 20, 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2017.
^ Harris, S.H. (2002) Factories of Death. Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-up, revised ed. Routledge, New York.
^ Brody, Howard; Leonard, Sarah E.; Nie, Jing-Bao; Weindling, Paul (2014). "United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency". Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 23 (2): 220–230. doi:10.1017/S0963180113000753. ISSN 0963-1801. PMC 4487829. PMID 24534743.

[Gold_2003_p109-1] Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p. 109.

[:1-2] Kristof, Nicholas D. (17 March 1995). "Unmasking Horror – A special report. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 20, 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2017.

[3] Harris, S.H. (2002) Factories of Death. Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-up, revised ed. Routledge, New York.

[4] Brody, Howard; Leonard, Sarah E.; Nie, Jing-Bao; Weindling, Paul (2014). "United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency". Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 23 (2): 220–230. doi:10.1017/S0963180113000753. ISSN 0963-1801. PMC 4487829. PMID 24534743.

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