TO: LT COL OLSEN, OSS/ DET 66

FROM: OSS HQ

DATE: 12 DECEMBER 1944

RE: INTELLIGENCE REGARDING SUSPECTED BW UNIT IN MANCHURIA.

Attached are OSS intelligence reports regarding suspected Ishii unit. Shiro Ishii, a Maj. General in the Imperial Japanese Army is the suspected commander of the Unit. See attached photo.

Due to recent discovery of Japanese Balloon weapons on the continent, G-2 have commenced an extensive interrogation and re-interrogation of all Japanese POWs with experience in the medical service, particularly those in water purification units. Advance intelligence centers in the southwest Pacific have been ordered to take blood samples from captured Japanese to determine what diseases they have been immunized against. The findings from the SW Pacific centers are that a certain portion have been immunized against anthrax.

FROM: CAPT. JOE COOLIDGE, OSS/ DET 303

TO: OSS HQ

CC: LT. COL. HOWARD COLE

DATE: 15 OCTOBER 1944

RE: INTERROGATION OF WATER PURIFICATION UNIT PRISONERS.

Using Cpl. Arthur T. Morimitsu (DET 303) as interpreter, we interrogated several Jap POW. s captured during the Burma campaign. As requested, we were especially thorough with any Prisoners attached to a "Water Purification Unit." Discovering one junior officer attached to the Unit, we were able to extract confirmation of the existence of a Bacteriological Warfare Research Facility somewhere in Manchuria. All we could get out of him was Ishii Unit and something about Hell.

TO: LT COL OLSEN, OSS/ DET 66

FROM: OSS HQ

DATE: 1 DECEMBER 1944

RE: EXCERPTS FROM REPORTS FILED BY LT. COL. HOWARD COLE

"In early 1944 the American Chemical Warfare division called a hasty and highly secret meeting of all intelligence agencies to alert them to the fact that the Japanese were distributing 'Christmas ball' containers, by air, in a regular pattern on the border of Burma-China. They suspected Bacterial Warfare."

"Detailed recovery was difficult but it was determined that they were using bacteriological agents."

"British authorities thought the Pasteur Institute in Rangoon, now held by the Japanese, might be the Burma center for such activity since high security levels had been exercised there."

"As an Army doctor I was designated as the one to follow up on the minimal and scattered intelligence available. All activities were of course secret."

"In time I was able to definitely identify activities as truly bacteriological and the Pasteur Laboratory was indeed the Burma center for such efforts although the ramifications seemed to extend beyond Burma proper."

"Names I was able to obtain from the dark walls of the cells in the basement of the Custom House in Rangoon suggest direct exploitation of live human prisoners in grisly medical experiments. However, due to secrecy and the time element, it was impossible for me to follow through with active investigation."

"The many facts were buried and intelligence agents were not allowed to talk."

"Japanese are definitely waging BW and contemporaneous epidemics are most often brought on by direct implantation of a special bacterium, by the enemy, of the offending disease, by germ bombs or native saboteurs who had been enlisted to infect food or water supplies servicing the troops or supporters."

"Now the facts concerning the use of germ warfare have surfaced, my own results of investigation have become supported and verified. We now know that disease was intentionally used throughout Burma, by the Japanese, against British and Allied forces and that the revered name of Louis Pasteur was blemished by germs from the laboratory in Rangoon bearing his name."

"Rumors of a BW unit based in Manchuria. A POW gave information about experiments by a water purification unit at Hsinking in which a bacterial gas or fog was sprayed from the air. The agents, glanders and another organism, were then collected in gelatin trays laid out over the test site, it was stated. Cole commented that mention of a water purification unit tied the work in with 'the activities of Major-General Shiro Ishii.' An article in the Tokyo Mainichi, dated August 1943, referring to civilian defenses against a BW attack aimed at contaminating Tokyo's water supply. A captured document entitled 'How to defeat an enemy possessing superior equipment' which revealed a full range of tactics and dirty tricks including the use of plague-infected rats, malaria-infected mosquitoes, and the dropping of attractive and infected objects and garments over enemy areas. A near exact blueprint of Unit 731's Tama Unit at Nanking, drawn and compiled by captured X-ray specialist Lieutenant-Corporal Isamu Chinba. Chinba also revealed the presence of similar Ishii units at Peking and Kiukiang. G-2 considered Chinba's information reliable, and described him as 'very intelligent and sincere.'"

TO: LT COL OLSEN, OSS/ DET 66

FROM: OSS HQ

DATE: 1 DECEMBER 1944

RE: DETAILS OF BALLOON INCIDENT FROM MONTANA

Murray Sanders informed that a strange balloon, 30 feet in diameter, 91 feet round, apparently made of rice paper, has come down in Butte, Montana. The balloons are built so that they will travel across the Pacific in 30 - 60 hours at the optimum height to be carried by the prevailing winds; helium or sandbags are released to maintain desired altitude. About 10 more similar balloons are reported within hours, including one in San Diego, California, reportedly made of rubberized silk, and several in Alaska and Canada.

"The balloons were brought in, and we all stood around them, in a circle. All the scientific and military experts, all of us with our own thoughts. We examined them, and then we went away to make our own individual reports. Mine scared them stiff. The balloons had obviously come from Japan. I told them that the prevailing winds would carry most of the Japanese balloons, comfortably, to the mainland of the United States. I told them that if we found Japanese B-encephalitis on any of the balloons we were in real trouble. Mosquitoes were the best vectors -- and we had plenty of those in the States -- and our population had no defenses against B-encephalitis. We had no experience of the disease in this country. We were totally vulnerable to it. And four out of five people who contracted it would have died, in my view. . . ."

"Anthrax is a tough bug. It's sturdy. It's cheap to produce and they'd used it in China. They could have splattered the west and southwest of Canada and the United States. They could have contaminated the pastures and forests and killed all the cows, sheep, horses, pigs, deer -- plus a considerable number of human beings. The hysteria would have been terrible; one of the strengths of BW as a weapon is that you can't see it, but it kills. I was worried. . . ."