All discussion of the ultra-secret plan, first proposed toward the end of December 1944, was confined to a special tactical room set aside at the headquarters of the Naval General Staff in Hibiya, Tokyo. There were two main drawbacks to conducting this operation as a purely naval venture. One was a lack of data regarding the intended pathogens. The other was a lack of the pathogens themselves. For this, the nation’s highest authority on biological warfare was called in, and Ishii became special advisor to the top army man in the project, Colonel Hattori Takushiro. One might imagine Ishii’s
...more
