History of Japanese Biological Weapons
The Việt Minh pamphlet partially presented in the gallery above begins by presenting the Chinese and North Korean accusations of US germ warfare. It next presents the well-document biological weapons program developed by the Japanese military, including Units 731 and 1000. This history is key to the charges of US germ warfare as it connects a proven case of germ warfare with an unproven instance of germ warfare. As the next set of images shows, the US military let those responsible for the Japanese biological warfare program go in exchange for the information that they had gathered from their experiments, including on Chinese and Soviet soldiers. This gathering of information, in combination with the United State's own research in biological weapons before and during World War II, provided two circumstantial pieces of evidence for the US use of these weapons in the Korean war. Finally, imperialism served as an overarching logic linking Japan and the US. From the perspective of many in Vietnam, including the leaders of the Việt Minh, it seemed obvious that imperialist nations would use biological weapons if they were available.
For a set of documents from the Soviet Union that details their realization that the specific evidence for US germ warfare in North Korea and Northeast China was weak and had possibly been fabricated, see the Woodrow Wilson website. Note that the first note from a Soviet official concerning fabricated evidence came in April 1953, over a year of the first charges of germ warfare. It is possible then that the coverup took place once the researchers involved realized that the charges that originally seemed true, and in any case eminently believable, turned out to be false.
Presumably such evidence was not available to Vietnamese leaders - relevance to situation in Northern Vietnam.
