June 6, 2009 marked the 65th anniversary of the massive invastion of the Normandy beaches by Allied forces that led to regaining control of France and ultimately led to the defeat of Germany and Italy during the Second World War. This was why recently there was a lot of international media spotlight on the Normandy coast of France, highlighted by a ceremony attended by world leaders including President Barack Obama.
While we are remembering the history of WWII, it is important to point out another significant event that occurred shortly after the single largest defeat in United States military history, the 99-day Battle for Bataan in the Philippines that ended on April 9, 1942. This resulted in the surrender of more than 76,000 American and Filipino troops under American command. However, the end of the Battle of Bataan marked the beginning of one of the cruelest episodes in the history of modern warfare, the little known Bataan Death March. It is important to know what happened in the aftermath of this battle to the heroic soldiers who fought, and then died or survived this battle and subsequent imprisonment, including many shipped to Japan’s massive biological/chemical weapons factory in Northeast China. Also, as we will discuss later in this article, a significant remembrance of this event occurred recently during its 67th year anniversary.
Japan’s Biological and Chemical Warfare in China during WWII
Rotten Leg Villages
Even today in just one small village of Caojie, near Jinhua in the province of Zhejiang in China, there are hundreds of victims of biological warfare still suffering from painful wounds originated more than 60 years ago when their village was decimated in 1942 by Japan with glanders, anthrax, and other biological weapon agents. Ruan Shufeng, shown below with his wife, is one such victim who suffers with a festering, open, ulcerous and extremely painful wound in his right leg, That is why Caojie and several other similar villages are called “rotten leg villages”
Read More »