A Political and Economic History of China Addendum: Critics of the Atomic Bomb, Part 1 of 4

Click here to read the original Cautious Optimism Facebook post with comments

6 MIN READ - By tackling this subject the Economics Correspondent is straying a bit from the current series’ core topic of Chinese history.

However there is a connection to our previous columns. The atomic bombings quickly ended the war in China along with the mass killing of millions of its civilians.

Our last article’s subject—General Douglas MacArthur’s decision to grant immunity to Unit 731 scientists, a notorious Japanese biological weapons program based in China that committed horrific experiments against live civilians—in exchange for their research is also tangentially related. 

Today many critics slam MacArthur and the United States as greedy biological weapons peddlers when in fact the immunity deal’s real motivation was a threat by Japanese scientists to hand over their data to the Soviet Union if they were prosecuted.

Likewise President Harry Truman is criticized as wicked for ordering the needless use of the atomic bomb.

As the topic still remains controversial today, as opinions vary even within CO Nation, and as Cautious Optimism doesn’t censor civil discourse, comments and opinions are welcome.

IMPERIAL JAPAN IN MID-1945

Whenever debate resurfaces over America’s decision to use the atomic bomb most Americans maintain the view it was a tragic but necessary evil to end World War II quickly.

The Japanese not only refused to surrender, they also employed the “Shosango” strategy of bleeding the U.S. with massive casualties to discourage invasion of the home islands in hopes of a more favorable negotiated peace. Furthermore the Japanese war cabinet’s later plan “Ketsugo” was inspired by the ancient bushido code, preferring to fight fanatically to the death over surrender while ordering millions of Japanese civilians to either die in battle or commit mass suicide.

But the Economics Correspondent has also heard plenty of condemnation of America’s use of the bomb, usually by far-left “America is evil” liberals, or from “always blame America” styled libertarians. To support these denunciations the critics have offered up a litany of reasons why dropping the bomb was not only unnecessary but also an immoral act since, according to them, there were better options available to the Allies that would have achieved peace with far less loss of life on both sides.

The Correspondent wishes to address these criticisms, none of which he believes hold merit with one possible exception on practical grounds which he’ll discuss in the last installment.

We’ll start this first column with the single most complicated criticism to rebuke:

1) “Dropping the bomb was unnecessary because Japan was just about to surrender. Harry Truman used the bomb anyway because he stubbornly insisted on nothing short of unconditional surrender.”

This argument is usually rebuked by people who remember that Japan still refused to surrender even after Hiroshima was destroyed by the “Little Boy” atomic bomb. If the Japanese government was one breath away from surrendering before Hiroshima, why did it refuse to surrender after?

Historians have also long known that after the second atomic attack on Nagasaki and Soviet declaration of war on Japan, the imperial cabinet was still divided fifty-fifty on the question of surrender. After a stalemate Emperor Hirohito finally stepped in and broke the deadlock, ordering Japan’s capitulation to avoid, as he stated in his surrender radio broadcast, “an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation.”

 This small fragment of history alone dispels the myth that Japan was just one breath away from surrendering before the Enola Gay destroyed Hiroshima.

But there’s more evidence, perhaps less commonly known, that disassembles what is effectively the “just about to surrender" fable.

Let’s start at the beginning.

By the summer of 1945 the Japanese war cabinet knew they were losing badly, but the so-called “Big Six” cabinet members—comprised of the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, War Minister, Navy Minister, and Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff—wanted to achieve a face-saving resolution that offered favorable terms to Japan.

U.S. President Harry Truman demanded an unconditional Japanese surrender, but one high ranking Japanese official devised a compromise suggestion which he floated by the Big Six. Lord Privy Seal Koichi Kido, one of Hirohito’s more dovish advisors, proposed the following counteroffer of revised surrender terms to the Allies, dubbed the "four conditions”…

1. The Emperor shall retain his throne as head of state.
2. No war crimes trials will be conducted.
3. No Allied soldiers shall set foot on Japanese soil.
4. The Allies will not disarm the Japanese military. Rather, the Japanese military will disarm itself.

There was a fifth condition that wavered slightly and is not part of the bigger four:

5. Japan will keep all of its conquered territories.

However at times Kido considered concessions on this last condition including one that Japan might consider returning “former Western colonies,” implying the relinquishment of Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines (which Japan had already effectively lost), Burma (also effectively lost), and possibly Vietnam and Indonesia.

Anyone reading the “four conditions,” with or without the fifth, can tell it was not a surrender. 

It was a ceasefire proposal, and one with no change in the Japanese war government’s disposition, no accountability for any war crimes, no respite for the hundreds of millions of Asian civilians still suffering under Japan’s murderous occupation, and in practice no enforceable disarmament.

And despite such ridiculously favorable terms for Japan, the Big Six rejected Kido’s proposal for being too generous to the Allies.

So much a second time for the “just about to surrender” legend.

(the Economics Correspondent recommends CO readers consider a simple Google search on “Japan four conditions” to corroborate these little know surrender terms)

Nevertheless the Emperor asked Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to contact Moscow and probe Soviet willingness to act as mediator for prospective peace talks with the Allies.

Unbeknownst to Japan, Joseph Stalin had already committed to break his neutrality pact and invade Manchuria, a pledge he made to late U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt going back to the Cairo and Yalta Conferences. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov stretched out peace discussions using delay tactics, giving Japan false hope with no intention of ever brokering a peace.

After the revelation of the atomic bomb and August 6th destruction of Hiroshima the Japanese war cabinet reconvened to discuss their deteriorating position. Kido floated his “four conditions” surrender idea again. They were completely unchanged from his first proposal.

Once again the Big Six rejected the terms. 

And once again, the “Japan was just on the cusp of surrendering before Hiroshima” fable is refuted. 

So much too for the “Japan only objected to unconditional surrender” argument, since they also objected to war crimes trials, military disarmament, any Allied presence on Japanese soil, and giving up their conquests in China, Korea, Taiwan, and conceivably other countries.

And all this after Hiroshima.

On August 9th the “Fat Man” atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki while the Soviet Union simultaneously invaded Manchuria, overrunning Japan's dilapidated Kwantung Army.

The war cabinet convened yet again. Given the increasingly hopeless prospects for face-saving peace, the subject of unconditional surrender was finally discussed seriously.

Yet the Big Six were still divided, deadlocked three against three.

Despite the total destruction of two cities, the threat of more atomic bombs raining down on Japan, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, prospects of the USSR invading Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, and Hokkaido (the first two ultimately materialized, the third did not), War Minister Korechika Anami, navy chief Soemu Toyoda, and army chief Yoshijiro Umezu still argued for fighting on.

On the possibility of Japan being completely destroyed by atomic bombs War Minister Anami argued the complete annihilation of the Japanese race was preferable to the dishonor of surrender. 

Reflecting the fanaticism of the bushido code prevalent in WWII Japanese militarism, Anami likened the extinction of all Japanese people in nuclear fire to a delicate flower wilting in the flames of an inferno. “Would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?” he asked. 

The cabinet ultimately reached an impasse.

Side note: Five days later Anami signed the instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri and committed seppuku suicide the next morning.

From here the story becomes better-known again. The emperor stepped in to break the deadlock, ordering an unconditional surrender. 

Deferring to the infallibility of imperial edict the cabinet complied but managed to preserve a single condition that the emperor remained head of state. Luckily for both the war cabinet and citizens of Tokyo—which Truman considered as a target for the third atomic bombing—the Allies accepted the sole remaining condition.

In Part 2 we’ll discuss prospective casualty numbers from a conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Trump's Tariffs are *not* Smoot-Hawley. Here's Why.

Click here to read the original Cautious Optimism Facebook post with comments

Photo: Typical media headline warning 2025 tariffs will start another Great Depression

8 MIN READ - The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs chimes in detail on Trump’s retaliatory tariff policies, strictly from a historical point of view. This might take a few minutes so have a seat.

Donald Trump’s strategy of using retaliatory tariffs to pressure America’s trading partners to lower longstanding protectionist barriers has launched a firestorm of controversy and debate, even here on the Cautious Optimism page.

While the Economics Correspondent’s position on Trump’s strategy tends to lean towards in favor, much more so in the case of China, the crosshairs of this article will be aimed squarely at critics who have compared Trump to Herbert Hoover signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.

Those who have resurrected the ghost of Smoot-Hawley include most of the usual suspects who will criticize Trump for anything: suddenly self-anointed tariff experts at CNN, Paul Krugman at the New York Times—who urged tariffs against China when Obama was president, but now scathes Trump for them—and the rest of the Trump Derangement crowd.

But the Correspondent has read many free market economists—people he reads, follows, and respects—liken Trump’s tariffs to Smoot-Hawley as well. 

For example, 150 free market economists recently signed the “Trade and Tariffs Declaration: A Statement on the Principles of American Prosperity" opposing Trump. Their names include Don Boudreaux (co-author), David Henderson, Ben Powell, and Deidre McCloskey, and the declaration warns Trump’s policies “repeat the catastrophic errors of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930.”

The Economics Correspondent maintains a large degree of respect for all these economists, some of whom he’s communicated with and learned from over the years. But he’ll argue here that comparing Trump’s tariffs to Smoot-Hawley is not only a faulty parallel. He’ll go even further by contending that the 1930 tariff and Herbert Hoover’s trade policy were near-mirror opposites of Donald Trump’s.

2025: SMOOT-HAWLEY IN REVERSE

Back in 2018 the Correspondent wrote a three-part detailed history of Smoot-Hawley as part of his larger Great Depression series. For those who wish to revisit those columns, links are available at the end of this article.

Before getting into why Trump’s tariff policy is nearly the opposite of Herbert Hoover’s, the Economics Correspondent wants to agree with the consensus on one major aspect of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff: although the tariff and the international response were major contributors that made the Great Depression worse, it did not “cause” the 1930’s downturn.

The Correspondent agrees the Federal Reserve’s failure to stop nearly 10,000 banks from failing, the resulting monetary contraction, Herbert Hoover and FDR’s attempts to artificially boost prices and wages with widespread government price controls, and the two presidents’ fiscal policies were all larger factors.

For example, Herbert Hoover doubled federal spending in real terms and raised the top income tax from 25% to 63% in the middle of a major depression. FDR then raised the top rate to 79% in 1936, and both presidents raised tax rates for income earners at all levels.

All of these were far larger factors than trade. The Correspondent’s rough estimates are that America’s decline in international trade accounted for at most 13%-14% of its fall in GDP. The other 86%-87% was attributable to other factors.

However the Correspondent repeats: Trump’s retaliatory tariffs are n͟o͟t͟ Smoot-Hawley, and in many ways they’re the exact opposite for a variety of reasons. 

Let’s go through them one-by-one.

1) In 1930 Herbert Hoover really did start a trade war—by initiating (the key distinction here being “initiating”) the Smoot-Hawley Tariff against other countries who were not doing the same to the United States.

In Donald Trump’s time trading partners in the European Union, Asia, and China in particular initiated the trade war by launching protectionism policies against the United States, sometimes literally for decades. These have included: tariffs, central bank foreign currency exchange rate intervention, import quotas, and intellectual property theft.

For the “Trade and Tariffs Declaration” to be historically accurate, it should accuse many of America’s trading partners of repeating the mistakes of Smoot-Hawley, not the USA and Donald Trump.

2) After launching Smoot-Hawley, America’s trading partners quickly retaliated with their own tariffs, leading to a slowdown in international trade. 

In response to those retaliations many of the economists who’ve signed the Trade and Tariffs Declaration correctly fault Herbert Hoover to this day while maintaining a “Well, of course they [America’s trading partners] were going to retaliate” position.

In 2025, by being the country that’s retaliating to longstanding foreign tariffs, the United States is playing the role of Canada and Europe in the 1930’s, the same countries most economists absolve in the Smoot-Hawley story. Yet the Correspondent has yet to hear a single economist say “Well of course the USA is going to retaliate against decades of overseas protectionism,” all while fallaciously comparing Trump to Herbert Hoover.

(For the record the Correspondent does not support retaliatory tariffs imposed, perhaps erroneously, on zero tariff countries that don’t restrict U.S. imports such as Singapore)

Again, the Smoot-Hawley analogy completely reverses roles, and blame, here. 

3) In 1930 the United States was a huge trade surplus country and the European nations ran huge trade deficits. This is all the more reason Smoot-Hawley was a terrible idea: putting up protectionist barriers to expand the USA’s already large trade surplus.

However in 2025 the United States is a huge trade deficit country. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean tariffs are an automatic no-brainer, but a large reason the USA runs such an oversized trade deficit is tariffs and other protectionist policies long-imposed by its trading partners. Meanwhile China, the largest trade surplus country in the world, has continued with its nearly half century of protectionist barriers, also a terrible idea.

Once again, the USA and Donald Trump in 2025 are playing the exact opposite role of Herbert Hoover in 1930.

4) In 1930 the United States was a huge creditor nation and most of its trading partners were indebted to it. The main reason was World War I. To foot the huge bill to fight history’s first-ever world war the European Allies borrowed heavily from what was by then the world’s largest economy: the USA.

In 2025 the United States is a huge debtor, not creditor, country.

For a fourth time, the United States in 2025 represents the anti-Smoot-Hawley position.

5) In 1930 most of America’s trading partners needed to run trade surpluses to repay war debts to the United States. Therefore choking off their exports with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was a particularly bad idea.

Today the U.S. government owes a great deal of money to foreign governments and investors. While today’s debt is mostly the result of reckless domestic spending rooted in Washington DC itself, not a world war, a more balanced trade arrangement would increase domestic GDP—GDP being the sum of consumer, investment, and government purchase spending plus net exports—and make repaying that debt a little easier (provided Washington politicians don’t simply find new ways to spend the money).

Yet another diametric opposite Smoot-Hawley correlation.

Side note: If anyone is wondering why European countries running a trade surplus in 1930 to repay the USA was a good thing, keep in mind that Americans would hand over cash (converted to gold in the early 1930’s) for those European exports, and the Europeans would hand that cash (converted to gold) right back to the United States as a debt repayment. So when the smoke cleared America was effectively being repaid with free goods and services. Smoot-Hawley cut off that repayment mechanism.

6) Herbert Hoover launched the Smoot-Hawley Tariff even as the United States, in fact the entire world, was clearly entering a historic depression.

Today the United States and the world are neither in nor already entering a major depression. In fact, the Economics Correspondent would argue if Donald Trump looked around at the state of the economy today and it mirrored that of July 1930, he would put his trade policy on hold.

7) Finally, one of the only Smoot-Hawley analogies that holds up but which is never mentioned.

When Canada and European trading partners retaliated with their own tariffs in the 1930’s, America felt the painful impact on its exports immediately.

In fact the effects were so pronounced that one of incoming President Franklin Roosevelt’s first policy initiatives—after addressing the 1933 banking crisis—was to send Secretary of State Cordell Hull from country to country to negotiate bilateral removals of tariffs and trade barriers, successfully eliminating Smoot-Hawley and restoring America’s relationship with the world to the far freer trade environment of pre-1930.

In other words, retaliation by trading partners succeeded in getting the tariff initiator—the United States—to abandon its protectionist policies, i.e. it worked.

This is what Donald Trump has repeatedly said his motivation for introducing reciprocal tariffs has been all along, another example of Trump playing the role of 1930’s Canada and Europe. But the fact that the 1930’s retaliation worked is never mentioned in the Smoot-Hawley allegory which instead focuses on framing Trump as Herbert Hoover.

TWO MORE THINGS....

A couple of final words on the subject of retaliation.

First, there are those who believe Trump is really only adopting a free trade position as a cover to protect American workers. Some believe if one day he gets free trade but feels the smaller deficits are still too big—deficits defined as goods deficit + services surplus + investment flows surplus +  unilateral transfers + reserve currency benefits—then he will abandon free trade and adopt naked protectionism instead.

The Economics Correspondent won’t rule out this possibility, but right now who cares what Trump might do if and once he’s successful achieving global free trade?

Pressuring much of the world to return to a trade barrier-free arrangement is a laudable goal worth supporting. The Economics Correspondent believes Trump’s critics are wrong by fighting to preserve worldwide unilateral protectionism all because of what he “might try to do” after he’s achieved free trade. 

Now if Trump was actually successful in getting most or all trade barriers removed across the board—something the Correspondent is skeptical he can achieve in full in just three and a half years—and he tried to launch new, unilateral protectionist tariffs, the critics would then have a point, but only then.

And the Economics Correspondent would probably join them.

Second and lastly, some might argue “Well those Europeans and Canadians retaliating in the 1930’s gave us the Great Depression. It’s not worth another Great Depression just to get trade barriers reduced.”

But as the Economics Correspondent has already pointed out, the world’s economic conditions today are not those of the 1930’s. Retaliatory tariffs may temporarily hurt trade, but arguing they’d usher in another Great Depression is just irrational scaremongering.

In the 1930’s the U.S. banking system literally collapsed due to anti-branching unit bank laws that no longer exist.

The Federal Reserve, which had nationalized the lender of last resort function from the private sector, not only sat on its hands when the crisis came, it actually deliberately “punished” many banks straight into failure (its policy was named “Direct Pressure”).

Tax rates were raised from 25% to 79%. 

Real government spending doubled from 1929 to 1933 (Barack Obama increased real federal spending by 16% from 2009 to 2017). 

Prices fell by 30%.

(Which in itself isn’t Great Depression-inducing as evidenced by the 40% deflation in 1839-43 where GDP grew by % a year)

…but Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt imposed strict and inflexible price and wage floors that ballooned unsold products and unsold labor, i.e. mass unemployment.

The list of government screwups and other non-comparable factors during the Great Depression goes on, but the larger point is anyone who claims U.S. retaliatory tariffs designed to stimulate bilateral reductions in trade barriers will result in Great Depression 2.0 either doesn’t know Great Depression history or is simply exaggerating for scare effect.

A more detailed history of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff can be read on the Economics Correspondent’s archive at:

https://www.cautiouseconomics.com/2018/03/the-great-depression-09.html

https://www.cautiouseconomics.com/2018/05/the-great-depression-10.html

https://www.cautiouseconomics.com/2018/06/the-great-depression-11.html

A Political and Economic History of China, Part 35: Japanese Atrocities in World War II

Click here to read the original Cautious Optimism Facebook post with comments

7 MIN READ - The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs discusses Japanese atrocities in China during World War II, including a giant one the liberal left loves to blame on America.

(Photo: General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito cut a postwar deal)

CO Nation has probably heard that the Japanese army (IJA) committed many atrocities during its occupation of Manchuria (1931-1945) and mainland China (1937-1945).

The most famous of these is the Rape of Nanking (Chinese: Nanjing da tusha, or “great Nanking massacre”), where Japanese soldiers went berserk on the civilian population as they occupied the Nationalist capital.

However the Nanking massacre is just a microcosm of the same sadism the IJA inflicted throughout most of China. For example, the “Three Alls” campaign of 1941-42 (“Kill all, burn all, loot all”) targeted civilian populations the same way in northern China and killed 2.7 million people, compared to “only” 300,000 in the capital.

Then there’s retribution for the 1942 Doolittle Raid. When fifteen U.S. carrier-launched B-25’s bombed Japanese cities in a more symbolic than strategic attack, the Japanese government lost face. Having previously boasted their home islands were invulnerable, the enraged Japanese combed the eastern China countryside searching for the Doolittle airmen who were forced to crash land when they ran out of fuel.

They only captured eight of the 75 flyers—executing three with a fourth dying in captivity—but they slaughtered about 250,000 Chinese civilians during the search. Villages “suspected” of aiding or even witnessing American pilots were massacred and burned down.

UNIT 731

Another notorious atrocity that we’ll focus on for the remainder of the article was biological experiments on civilians in the “Unit 731” program.

Emperor Hirohito was fascinated by biology and the potential for weaponizing it, and he personally approved Japan’s Unit 731 program. With access to such plentiful state resources it quickly became the most advanced biological weapons project in the world.

Based in the extreme northern Manchurian city of Harbin and euphemistically named “The Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department,” Unit 731 didn’t limit its research to animals. An estimated 14,000 Chinese and a smaller number of ethnic Russian civilians perished in gruesome experiments, usually conscious and without anesthesia.

Another 200,000 civilians are estimated to have died “in the field” to outdoors Unit 731 experiments. For example, one of the tests dropped planeloads of fleas infected with bubonic plague on Chinese population centers. Another was “inoculating” villagers with vaccines that actually contained anthrax to observe its effects on live humans.

Once again, if the Correspondent typed out all the gory details Facebook would probably censor this post. However readers can get a quick overview of the sadistic activities at this Wikipedia link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Weapons_testing

The Correspondent suggests reading from the link through the end of the “Other Experiments” section.

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: “WAR CRIMINAL”

But changing gears for a moment, the Correspondent wants to focus on an allegation surrounding Unit 731 that is often leveled against the United States, usually by left-wing liberals and some “always blame America” style libertarians: that the USA granted immunity to Unit 731 scientists from war crimes prosecution in exchange for their valuable biological weapons research data.

Any time you find an online article or YouTube video about Unit 731, or Japanese atrocities in general, there will usually be comments angrily condemning the evil United States because General Douglas Macarthur let Unit 731’s officers off the hook for their war crimes.

The story goes something like this: 

”Unit 731 performed horrific experiments on Chinese and ethnic Russian civilians, but Douglas Macarthur wanted Japanese research data in order to establish a sophisticated American biological weapons program at Camp Detrick. In return he granted all Unit 731 directors, officers, and scientists full immunity from war crimes prosecution and proceeded to cover up the program’s existence, a crime against humanity as evil as the sadistic experiments themselves.”

“Unit 731 Director Shiro Ishii and his men lived in comfort into old age and died of natural causes while the cries of betrayal ring from the graves of the Chinese victims, directed at the duplicity of the United States.”

Terms you will see describing the USA’s policy, usually in a self-righteous tone, include “shameful” and “history’s most morally bankrupt bargain hunting spree.”

By the way, Chinese state-run media runs similar commentary to paint the United States as a greedy war criminal nation that preaches human rights while hypocritically letting Japanese war criminals free. CCP propaganda is particularly effective since most Chinese are already aware of Unit 731’s reputation.

Well most of this tale, as it’s told, is actually true. On its face it’s hard to argue that “this is a lie.”

But as is usually the case when dealing with anti-U.S. historical revisionists, they leave out critical pieces of the story that would undermine their desired narrative. 

Here’s the more complete version:

Unit 731 was based in Harbin, China, a far northern Manchurian city about 300 miles from the Russian border.

In late 1944 and 1945 as the tide of the war turned against Japan, Unit 731 Director General Shiro Ishii was becoming concerned that he and his staff would be tried as war criminals if Tokyo surrendered to the Allies. So nearly a year before war’s end he already devised a plan to save himself from prosecution.

Ishii instructed his scientists to gather all data from their research. When the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria in August 1945 they quickly reached Harbin, so Unit 731 staff blew up their buildings, destroyed whatever evidence they could, burned corpses of the victims, and fled. 

Ishii went into hiding by faking his own death and many of his men fled to Japan with samples of their research data.

When Douglas Macarthur’s occupational army landed on the Japanese home islands they didn’t have to look hard to find Unit 731 war criminals. Instead the scientists eagerly sought him out.

A representative of Ishii approached American officers within a week of their arrival and presented a proposal: Grant immunity to all Unit 731 officers and scientists and in return we will give you our research data. But if we’re not granted immunity, the data “might” fall into the hands of the over one million Soviet troops in Manchuria right now.

Ishii’s men skillfully and deliberately played on American fears that the research could be handed to the USSR instead of the West.

MacArthur and his staff analyzed the sample data and were appalled at the sadism and indecency of the crude experiments, but they feared the prospect of Joseph Stalin procuring and weaponizing research from the most advanced biological program in the world.

Despite their disgust at the idea of granting amnesty to Ishii’s men, MacArthur and the War Department took the deal. Once his amnesty was secure Ishii came out of hiding.

Once the USA possessed the research data, they weren’t just going to destroy it. The information was integrated into the postwar Operation Paperclip program and used to set up Fort Detrick’s biological warfare center in Maryland. Weaponization was studied, as were defensive and vaccination/treatment options for the civilian population against likely offensive agents.

But the primary motivation for the amnesty deal wasn’t to start a leading bioweapons program as much as it was to deny Stalin one.

To protect the scientists, information was withheld from the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. Years later the judges were outraged upon hearing of the coverup.

The War Department wanted research data withheld from the tribunals because any public disclosure would alert the USSR not only to the existence of the Unit 731 program, but also clue in the Soviets that the USA likely had obtained valuable research data which in turn would give Moscow impetus to start their own program.

That’s the end of the more complete story.

The CCP and left-leaning western critics of the United States both omit the Soviet threat to boost their “American is evil” thesis. The coverup story is also used by critics to “prove” the alleged moral bankruptcy of the United States, again leaving out the USA’s concerns about alerting the Soviets.

THE SOVIETS IN MANCHURIA

As it turned out, in their hurry to retreat from the Red Army’s rapid advance, Ishii’s men missed destroying some of their data and the Red Army stumbled across sporadic research notes here and there.

With what little information they found the Soviets did exactly what MacArthur and the Pentagon predicted: started up their own competing biological weapons program albeit far behind the USA’s which enjoyed a head start. However during the Cold War the Soviets threw enormous resources and many of their own scientists into the program which eventually caught up with America’s.

Ultimately the world condemned biological weapons as too dangerous and inhumane. In 1972 the United States and USSR signed a treaty to ban further research and development and destroy their biological weapons stockpiles—the Biological Weapons Convention.

However today we know that the USSR secretly continued developing biological weapons, effectively “cheating,” and an accident occurred at one of the original postwar labs: the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak.

Due to a maintenance misstep with the ventilation system, weaponized anthrax spores were accidentally released into the air outside the lab and killed about 65 local townspeople. Since the Soviets were officially not supposed to be conducting weapons research in 1979, they concocted a cover story involving livestock, sanitized the area, and constructed a Potemkin Village staged area for visiting western scientists.

The scientists, headed by Harvard microbiologist Matthew Meselson, were fooled and reported the Soviet cattle story was completely “plausible and consistent with what is known from medical literature and recorded human experiences with anthrax.”

When the Cold War ended, the Soviet official responsible for the 1979 coverup publicly admitted that the USSR had lied and fabricated the elaborate deception for western observers.

His name was Boris Yeltsin.

But back to the original Unit 731 story, there’s no shortage of people in the West and the Chinese Communist government who tell only half the story in order to portray the American government as an immoral biological weapons peddler that sold out the victims of Japanese atrocities. The western comments in particular often pose as sophisticated observers of America’s villainous history, far more educated than those naïve Americans whose patriotism blinds them to realizing the USA is the most evil country in history.

But they always leave out the Soviet factor. MacArthur didn’t grant immunity out of some lust for weapons research data. He could have prosecuted the Unit 731 war criminals and we would all feel cleaner and morally superior for it, but then Joseph Stalin would have possessed by far the most advanced biological weapons program in the world while the USA would get nothing. It would be like handing Stalin a working atomic bomb while America was still struggling to refine uranium ore.

Read on for a few words on sources.

Over two decades ago the Economics Correspondent read about Douglas MacArthur’s concerns regarding Soviet procurement of Unit 731 research data, but all these years later can’t find the exact book.

But there's still no shortage of online sources, for those actually motivated to look for the fuller story, mentioning how fear of the Soviets factored into the USA’s decision to cut a deal with Unit 731 officials and scientists for exclusive access to their data. A few include:

1) As if it’s that difficult for the critics to glance at Wikipedia:

“After reviewing the data provided by those involved in Unit 731, [Colonel Murray] Sanders presented the findings to MacArthur, stating that he believed the data to contain valuable information that must not end up in Soviet hands. Knowing that the physicians had fled their headquarters in order to avoid prosecution by the Soviets for war crimes, Sanders suggested that MacArthur grant the physicians involved legal immunity against any war crimes charges in exchange for their data, stating, 'My recommendation is that we promise [Unit 731 Lt. Colonel Ryoichi] Naito that no one involved in [bioweapons] will be prosecuted as war criminals.'”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Sanders#Unit_731_cover-up

2) ”Keeping the information secret, the United States secured this data with a price tag, i.e., not prosecuting those responsible for the operations, such as Emperor Hirohito. The Soviet Union later joined in hiding information, since the secrets of successful biological warfare provided both superpowers massive new weapons of destruction.”

https://www.pacificatrocities.org/book-unit-731-coverup-the-operation-paperclip-of-the-east.html

3) “U.S. authorities were torn between the desire to deny the Russians access, even at the cost of an international incident, and their suspicion that allowing the Soviets to interrogate the Japanese with Americans present could reveal useful tips about the Soviets’ current knowledge of bacteriological warfare.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4487829/

4) “After Japan's surrender in World War II, the United States gave immunity from prosecution to many of Unit 731’s top scientists in exchange for their research, which they wanted to keep out of Soviet hands, according to U.S. government records.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/for-japanese-unit-731-survivor-speaking-truth-carries-a-cost-/7841643.html

5) “The Americans were not acting on behalf of the Allied nations, rather, unilaterally to protect their own self-interests. It was imperative that they obtained Ishii and his research data, as opposed to allowing it to fall into the hands of another nation, none more so than the Soviet Union.”

“MacArthur was clear to [Colonel Murray] Sanders: draw out the information at all costs to avoid it falling into the hands of the Soviet interrogators.”

“The seeds had been sown for an immunity deal and [Shiro] Ishii will have known that, at that time, this route was his best option to survive any impending prosecution. Ishii will also have known that it would be far more preferable to assist the Allies than to fall into the hands of the Soviets.”

https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/48605/1/Dyson%20-%20Final%20Thesis%20-%20Master%20Copy.pdf