This page was created by Michitake Aso. 

Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Conference on Biological Warfare in North Korea and China

In December 1952 and January 1953, Việt Minh representatives attended a series of lectures and an exhibition where they learned the specifics of biological weapons use in China and North Korea. A simplified version of this information is presented in a Việt Minh pamphlet but the reports collected at this time were extremely detailed and the transcripts and summaries run to over 200 pages.

Chinese scientists and medical doctors emphasized the need for careful research and laid out three reasons they suspected the United States and United Nations militaries of using germ warfare:
 
  1. Diseases that broke out were new to area and time of year;
  2. Unusual insects and materials served as vectors;
  3. Outbreaks happened after US airplanes flew by.

These scientists also pointed to the context of the US biological weapons program and borrowed the term “bacteriology upside down” from Theodor Rosebury, one of the founders of the US biological weapons program, who later published a warning about them. Finally, these reports argue that patriotic hygiene mass movement was a good way to counter effects of biological warfare. All of these themes were picked up by the Việt Minh in their own investigations. This report is contained in the Ministry of Health file 5402 held in the National Archives of Vietnam Center 3 (NAV3).

For more on Chinese and North Korean charges of US biological warfare, see the work of Ruth Rogaski.

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