UK KFA Statement on US Imperialism's Germ Warfare

UK KOREAN FRIENDSHIP ASSOCIATION

Today the UK Korean Friendship Association issued the following statement about
US imperialism's Germ warfare in Korea.Recently Al Jazeera TV exposed the fact that
the US imperialists had indeed did use biological weapons against the Korean people
during the Korean war.At the time,in the 1950s this fact was exposed by international investigators from the International Association and the Womens
International Democratic Federation.International investigators included renowned
British scientist Joseph Needham and lawyer Jack Gaster.
Al Jazeera whilst being critical of the DPRK nevertheless confirmed the DPRK's
findings and those of the international investigators.

Thus US imperialism stands condemned of the most horrendous crime ever against
humanity;attempted genocide through biological warfare.UK KFA says that the
US must be made to pay dearly for this crime.

For reference the section on Germ warfare from the book "The US imperialists Started
the Korean War" is reproduced below.




) US Imperialism’s Germ Warfare

In the Korean war the US
imperialists employed various inhuman tactics such as "murder",
"scorched-earth" and "strangulation" operations, but they could not
bring the Korean people to their knees, nor escape the doom of defeat
nor save the shattered prestige of the United States of America. In a
des­perate attempt to patch up the exploded myth of their "mightiness",
the US rul­ing circles now recklessly resorted to the strength of germs
to exterminate the Korean people and break through the fixed front. The
dear leader Comrade Kim Jong II said:
"The US imperialists mobilized
for the Korean war their vast army, navy and air force armed with
modern weapons and the latest equipment as well as the armies of their
15 satellites, and conducted the most cruel and brutal war­fare." (Kim
Jong II, Let Us All Live and Struggle like Heroes, Eng. ed., p. 5.)
The
facts of crimes committed by the US aggressors in the Korean war, using
bacterial and chemical weapons in a "practical warfare" as "ideal
weapo­ns for containment", were disclosed by the statements of the US
air force offi­cers captured by the People’s Army in the act of germ
warfare and were con­firmed by the "investigation reports" of various
international investigation commissions and other material evidences.
Employing
microbe weapons as the main means of "mass destruction operations", the
US ruling circles foolishly dreamed to easily attain the strate­gical
goal which they had failed to carry out through the "scorched-earth" and
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‘strangulation" operations of their air force.*
*The
use of bacterial and chemical weapons was strictly banned by the law of
nations as the most barbarous, inhuman mass-destruction weapons.
However, the US aggressors strenuously insisted on the use of bacterial and chemical
weapons from before the Korean war.
On
June 15, 1946, Orden White, head of the germ warfare branch of the US
aggressor army, prattled: "I believe germ warfare, as a practical form
of warfare, is quite within the bounds of possibility" (Hershel D.
Meyer, The Modern History of the United States, Kyoto, p. 248.) In
1949, Truman refused the discussion in Congress of the Geneva Proto­col
outlawing germ warfare. The US imperialists took over the Japanese
"731st Unit" and other germ warfare research institutions. They
employed Ishii Shiro and other Japanese germ warfare criminals as well
as those germ warfare criminals including Schreiber who served with the
germ warfare command of fascist Hitler. They conducted experiments and
researches on germ warfare in top secret in Japan and in the "Research
and Development Command" in Baltimore, Maryland, and in the Detrik
bacteriological research centre in Frederick, the US mainland.
About
the objective of germ warfare the US imperialists pursued in the Korean
war, the US air force prisoners said in the following vein: It was,
above all, intended to "influence" the armistice negotiations by this
plan (germ warfare plan) and thus bring about a satisfactory "result",
and specifically, "cause lack of manpower for the front units and the
rear through spreading of epidemics, which would surely shake the
morale of the people to the extreme to get them to give up the ground
for operations" and "outlive the failure in the ‘strangulation’
operations of the air force".*
*Docutnents on Atrocities of the US Aggressors in
Korea, Pyongyang, p. 107.
To
summarize their testimonies, it may be said that in waging the germ
warfare the United States wanted to "wipe out" more effectives and
retrieve itself from the ignominious defeat in the "strangulation"
operations in the Korean war by employing bacterial weapons as "ideal
weapons for contain­ment" that do not invite the "attention" of the
world public.
To this end, the US drew up a plan for criminal germ
warfare. The plan was prepared officially by the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff in the autumn of 1950. According to it, germ warfare was to be
waged in two stages-the stage of
220
experimental development and
that of regular operations. In the first stage tar­gets for the
effective dropping of germ bombs would be chosen and the meth­ods of
dropping and the tactics of germ warfare developed. In the next stage
areas to be contaminated would be defined and concentrated bombings
carried
out.
According to what deputy chief of the executive
office for the US Secre­tary of the Air Force Til told to US Flight
Colonel Walker M. Mafurin, in the autumn of 1950 Chairman of the US
Joint Chiefs of Staff Bradley, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force
Vandenburg, Chief of Staff of the United States Army Collins, Chief of
Naval Operations Sherman and other war-mongers huddled in conference
and decided to develop the bacterial weapons, which had proved to be
effective, and employ them in the Korean war at the "experi­mental
development stage".*
*/bid..p. 105.
Under the bacteriological
operational plan of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US aggressors
produced germ bombs in considerable quantities first in Camp Detrick in
Frederick, Maryland, which was the bacteriological research centre.
Then they applied them to the Republic’s prisoners of war to test their
effectiveness.
As is widely known, the US army’s butcher boat No.
1,091 built for germ warfare was anchoring off Wonsan in March 1951
while putting the germ weapons to the test against our POWs.
Afterwards, it committed similar blood­curdling atrocities on our POWs
in the camps on Koje and other islands.
Even according to a UP
report, the US imperialists took matters needed for germ culture out of
the bodies of prisoners of war and conducted 3,000 experiments in the
laboratory of the boat, infecting 1,400 with serious diseases and 80
per cent of the rest with other diseases.*
* UP, May 18, 1951.
On
the basis of the experiment results on the germ bomb effectiveness made
on the prisoners, in October 1951 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff gave out
a directive for the start of regular germ warfare in Korea and its
gradual promo­tion from the experimental stage to regular operations.
According to the testimony of Colonel Frank H. Schewable, Chief of Staff
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of
the First Wing of the US Marine Corps, who was captured by the DPRK
side as his plane was shot down on July 8, 1952, "the general plan for
the bacterio­logical warfare in Korea was directed by the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff in October 1951". Then the Joint Chiefs of Staff "gave
an order" to Ridgway, Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Command, "to
detail persons for the purpose and begin germ warfare in Korea to be
gradually escalated from the initial small-scale test stage". This
order was conveyed by Ridgway to Wayland, Commander of the US Far East
Air Force in Tokyo, Japan. To execute the order, he summoned Everest,
Commander of the US Fifth Air Force in Korea, and the Commander of the
19th Bomber Wing on Is. Okinawa which was under the command of the US
Far East Air Force for conference respectively and gave them the
directive to extend the criminal atrocity of germ warfare to
operational action.*
* "Testimony Given by Frank H. Schewable,
Colonel of the US Marine Corps, on Decem­ber 6, 1952" (Documents on
Atrocities of the US Aggressors in Korea, Pyongyang, pp.
130-31).
According
to the directive given by Wayland, Commander of the Far East Air Force,
the Headquarters of the US Fifth Air Force gave orders to the wings
under its command to make sure that their squadrons drop germ bombs ten
times on a monthly average over designated areas beginning with January
10, 1952, in the experimental stage of the germ warfare. Concerning
this Colonel Mafurin of the US Air Force stated: "Beginning with
January 10, 1952, we received from the Headquarters of the Fifth Air
Force regular directions as to performing germ-dropping missions. While
serving with the 51st Wing we were ordered for ten germ-dropping
missions on a monthly average, and two or three of them were carried
out north of the Amnok River. After performing all these germ-warfare
missions, airmen notified the intelligence service where germ
containers had been dropped, and the information was conveyed to the
Headquarters of the Fifth Air Force."*
*  "Testimony Given by Colonel Walker M. Mafurin of the US Air Force on May 10,
1953" (Ibid., pp. 228-29.)
In
the first stage of the germ warfare, the US aggressors attempted the
fol­lowing experiments: the spread and infectiousness of diseases,
efficiency of vari­ous types of germ weapons and containers, their
adaptability to various types of
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planes in transport, their
effectiveness in diverse natural features and terrains (mountainous
areas, fields, highlands, isolated and connected areas, towns and
countryside and others), their reaction on seasonal temperature, and
the effective­ness in the coldest and warmest seasons. At the same
time, the experiments were designed to develop the method of dropping
and the tactics of germ warfare.*
* "Testimony Given by Frank H.Schewable, Colonel of the US Marine Corps, on
Decem­ber 6, \952"(Ibid.,pp. 131-32).
The first stage flights started in November 1951. The germ bombs were
dropped in the night by B-29s over the northeast and northwest areas of Korea.
Between January and March 1952 alone, for example, germ bombs were
dropped
concentrically on the areas of Inchon, Cholwon, Phyonggang, Kumh-wa and
the regions east of the Pukhan River in Kangwon Province; the areas of
Sohung, Jaeryong, Hwangju and Suan in Hwanghae Province; Pyongyang
City; the areas of Taedong, Junghwa and Phyongwon, the areas of Anju
and Kaechon and the areas of Kangdong, Sunchon and Yangdok in South
Phyon-gan Province; Pakchon in North Phyongan Province; and others.
Besides, germ and gas shells were showered by fire arms over the front
areas.
The germ bombs dropped by the US aggressors contained to
their utmost limits flies, fleas, spiders, bedbugs, mosquitoes, lice,
beetles, grasshoppers and other noxious insects infected with vicious
epidemic bacilli such as cholera, pest and typhus.*
* According to
the "Report of the Commission of the International Association of
Democratic Lawyers on US Crimes in Korea" made public on March 31,
1952, differ­ent kinds of insects were found in 169 areas of north
Korea. The following table shows the kinds of insects infected with
epidemic bacilli as confirmed in the 15 typical locali­ties:
No.Date (1952)     Localities     Insects   
1 Jan.28     Phyongfang County,    Kangwon Province    Flies, fleas And spoders    
2 Feb. 11     Cholwon County,    Kangwon Province     Flies, fleas  And
mosquitoes   
3 Feb. 17     Phyongwon County,  Kangwon Province      Spiders   
4 Feb. 18     Anju County, S.  Phyongan Province      Flies and fleas    
5 Feb. 23     Phyongwon County, S.  Phyongan Province      Flies    
6 Feb. 25     Munchon County,  Kangwon Province     Spiders and other  insects    
7 Feb. 26     Taedong County, S.  Phyongan Province      Flies and spiders    
8 Feb. 27     Kangdong County, S.  Phyongan Province      Flies    
9 Feb. 27     Hwanghae Province  (military unit)      Lice    
10 Feb. 27     Sunchon County, S.  Phyongan Province      Flies    
11 Feb. 29     Suan County,  Hwanghae Province     Flies and other  insects    
12 Mar. 1     Cholsan County, N.  Phyongan Province      Flies and fleas    
13 Mar. 1     Yangdok County, S.  Phyongan Province     Flies and other  insects   

14 Mar. 2     Kowon County, S.  Hamgyong Province     Fleas and other  insects    
15 Mar. 4     Central District,  Pyongyang      Flies    
"Report
of the Commission of the International Association of Democratic
Lawyers on US Crimes in Korea" dated March 31, 1952 (Ibid., p. 363).
There
broke out cases of pest and typhus never known before, to take a toll
of precious lives of people, in the places which were made victims of
the US atrocity of germ warfare.
* "Report of the International
Scientific Investigation Commission on Atrocities of Germ Warfare
Committed by the US Imperialists in Korea" dated August 31, 1952 says
in part: "The Korean and Chinese people are made the very targets of
bacterial weapons. "The bacterial weapons were employed by US units by
different methods. Some of them seem to be the improved ones of the
kinds employed by Japanese troops in World War II....
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"The
Commission was obliged to bow before evidences and bear testimony to
the fact that such inhuman methods were actually used in spite of the
general censure of the world people." (Documents on Atrocities of the
US Aggressors in Korea, Pyongyang, p. 447.)
According to the
criminal plan for germ warfare, the US aggressors went gradually over
from the experimental stage to the operational stage. They schemed to
extend its scope to most of the northern half of the Republic.
In
late May 1952, Berkers, Commander of the US Fifth Air Force, who had
taken the place of Everest gave instruction to Jerome, Commander of the
First Wing of the US Marine Corps, to further escalate the germ warfare.
Jerome
immediately summoned staff members of the First Wing for confer­ence to
execute the directive of Berkers. At the conference he said, "I was
just given the directive to make a great change in this action (germ
warfare-Quoter)." Referring to the plan for the operational stage of
the germ warfare, he added: "General Berkers urged us to create the
infected belt running across the central part of north Korea, The First
Wing of the Air Force of the Marine Corps is assigned to the left
flank, to which belong Sinanju, Kunu-ri and their neighbour­hood and
the section between them. The Air Force is assigned to the rather
bigger section of the central part ranging from Kunu-ri to the spot 30
miles away from the east coast. The Navy takes charge of the right
flank".*
^"Testimony Given by Frank H. Schewable, Colonel of the US Marine Corps, on
Decem­ber 19, 1952" (Ibid., pp. 139-40).
Upon
the directive of Berkers, Commander of the US Fifth Air Force, the US
aggressors planned to develop the germ warfare on an operational stage
by concentrated strikes on the fixed areas of the northern half and the
repeated contamination of them at an interval of ten days.
The US
aggressors fixed these areas along line running across the central part
of the northern half of the Republic, because they wanted to paralyze
and cut the supply line to the front. This plan fully revealed the
miserable image and vulnerability of the US imperialists who tried to
retrieve themselves from the defeat at the front on the strength of
insects and bacilli, as their air force had no chance of success in the
"strangulation" operation.
At the operational stage, they set
numerous squadrons in motion. In 1952 alone, they mobilized the 3rd and
17th Light Bomber Wings of the US Air Force, the 4th and 51st
Fighter-bomber Wings, the 8th, 18th, 49th, 58th and
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474th
Fighter-bomber Wings, and the 1st Wing of the Air Force of the Marine
Corps for the atrocious germ warfare. The mission of germ bomb dropping
was carried out by B-29 and B-26 bombers, F-51, F-80, F-84 and F-86
fighters and fighter-bombers of the US Air Force of Marine Corps.*
* Documents on Atrocities of the US Aggressors in Korea, Pyongyang, p. 108.
In
November 1952, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force Vandenburg him­self
flew into Korea to direct the general course of germ warfare and
inspect its results together with Barkers, Commander of the US Fifth
Air Force.
To cover up their germ warfare crime, the US aggressors,
on Vandenburg’s directive, waged the germ warfare mainly by night. In
this, they combined the dropping of germ bombs with reconnaissance and
bombings. They kept all mat­ters related to the microbe war in top
secret and had all the battle reports coded.*
* Ibid., p. no.
Germ
bombs were mainly dropped over the most vulnerable targets such as
densely populated areas, areas stationed by troops, traffic junctures,
roads, railways and bridges. They made no scruple to commit crimes by
dropping them on rivers and reservoirs, too.
Sinanju is a town most
severely affected by the atrocious germ warfare of the US aggressors.
They made a germ attack on Sinanju for five successive days from
January 10, 1953, mobilizing, on an average, 480 planes every day.
Thus, they were the first to launch the disgraceful largest-scale germ
warfare in the war history of the world.
The US aggressors openly
launched chemical warfare along with the germ one. Between May and
June, 1951, three B-29s dropped gas bombs on Hupho-ri, Jukdong-ri,
Ryongjong-ri and Ryongsu-ri of Samhwa Sub-County around Nampho, causing
1,379 casualties. Gas bombs were also dropped on Yong-song-ri and
Wonchon-ri in Hwanghae Province on August 1 and on Hakson-ri north of
Wonsan on January 9, 1952, thus committing a criminal atrocity of
killing innocent people.
The US germ warfare outrages were
perpetrated with the active support of the Japanese militarists, who
had "experience" of germ warfare.
The Japanese militarists rendered
active assistance to the US aggressors in the drawing up of a barbarous
bacteriological war plan. They turned the territo-
226
ry of
Japan into an attack and supply base for conducting germ warfare and
provided the Americans with information on the "experience"* they had
gained in their research into germ weapons and in the production of
germ bombs and on methods for conducting bacteriological warfare and
their latest achievements in that field.
* During the Second World
War the Japanese aggressors perpetrated the criminal act of using germ
weapons for the first time in history to massacre Chinese, Russian and
Korean people in northeast China. For this purpose, they organized such
germ weapon research organs as "Unit 731" and "Unit 100", special army
units, in northeast China, headed by Ishii Shiro, army surgeon
lieutenant-general of the former Japanese army. In the name of a
"medical research centre1’, the special units had libraries,
laboratories, plants for the manufacture of germ weapons and prisons,
all requirements for research into bacteriology and experiments on it.
Thus they cultured cholera, typhus, pests and other germs in rats,
fleas and other insects and animals and used POWs in experiments for
their war of human butchery. Their "special plants" near Haerbin and
Changchun produced many types of bacteriological weapons including
fabbit to use them in germ warfare. They served to be the wherewithal
of US imperialists in their germ warfare.
(Data of the Trials of the
Servicemen of the Former Japanese Army Accused on the Charge of
Preparation and Application of Germ Weapons, Moscow, the Foreign
Lan­guages Publishing House, 1950 edition, pp. 130-31.)
As they
admit, with neither germ nor chemical warfare could the US aggressors
bring the Korean people to their knees or retrieve themselves from
ignominious defeat.*
* In his book entitled The United States
Defeated, Yoshitake Yojo wrote: "The germ war­fare waged by the US
imperialists only proved complete military defeat of the UN troops.
Bacterial weapons, before being denounced for inhumanity, immorality
and barbarity, are lethal weapons for the defeated militarily. What
awaits ahead of those who use them is the judgement of military defeat"
(Yoshitake Yojo, The United States Defeated, Tokyo, p. 98).
Upholding the order of the Military Commission issued by President Kim II Sung,
the entire Korean people launched a powerful mass movement to cope with
germ warfare. They placed observation posts and anti-epidemic corps in
different parts, discovered germ bombs and germ carriers scattered by 227 the US aggressors and thus prevented possible damage in good time. This foiled the aggressive schemes of the US imperialists to massacre our people and cut off the supply line to the front. Their inhuman atrocity of germ warfare was made the target of the world people’s unanimous curse and denunciation and thus they met ever more serious political
and moral defeat.
The report of the Commission of the International Association of Democrat­ic Lawyers on US Crimes in Korea dated March
31, 1952, denounced the US imperialists, saying: "The use of such inhuman weapons as germ weapons must be taken to indicate a new degree of savagery in the conduct of so-called civilized states which must
threaten every man, woman and child".*] In their joint state­ment on April 2nd, 1952, home and foreign journalists vehemently denounced
them: "We call on the conscience of the whole world to demand the cessation of such horrible crimes against humanity, which contain the
seeds of destroying all people, and the punishment of the criminals responsible for it."*2
*1. Documents on Atrocities of The US Aggressors in Korea, Pyongyang, p. 391. *2.
Ibid., p. 398.
As
their aggressive scheme to bring the Korean war to a close in reliance on their military and technical superiority was doomed to failure, the US aggressors could not but resort to such a most barbarous and inhuman
means of war as germ warfare which was banned by international law.
This atrocity was clear proof of their last-ditch struggle. At the same time, it showed that they were so weak and barbarous as to try to find
a way out with the help of insects. It also revealed once again before the whole world that the US aggres­sors, descendants of the murderous founders of the United States of America, were no other than cannibals of the 20th century and two-legged beasts in the guise of a "civilized nation" who had no scruples of employing any brutal methods and means
of war to achieve their aggressive aim.*
* David W. Conde wrote that
of the 38 US prisoners of war who had confessed to their participation in the atrocious germ warfare in Korea, ten openly retracted their
confession in their letters sent after their return home to the UN Secretary-General on October 26, 1953. But he added with scorn that "at
that time some observers held that if all the 38 pris­oners had made similar statements the position of the United States would have been
firmer". (David W. Conde, An Untold History of Modern Korea, Tokyo,
Vol. II, p. 411.)