Assessing the Japanese deployment of a plague weapon against the Chinese city of Changteh early in the war, an admiring U.S. Army report notes that “one of Ishii’s greatest achievements . . . was his use of the human flea, P. irritans. . . . This flea is resistant to air drag, naturally targets humans, and could also infect the local rat population to prolong the epidemic. . . . Within two weeks [of the attack] individuals in Changteh started dying of plague.”
