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Japanese Chemical Bomb Unearthed in North China

Posted on: Monday, 18 June 2007, 15:00 CDT

Japanese chemical bomb unearthed in north China

HOHHOT -- A Japanese wartime chemical bomb has been unearthed in Bayannaoer City in north China's Inner Mongolia, Chinese military experts said here Friday.

The rusty bomb, about 81 centimeters in length and buried seven meters under ground, was unearthed at a construction site when workers were laying the groundwork for a residential building with a tracked excavator.

Liquid began to leak from the bomb after it was cracked by the excavator and workers who smelt the liquid began to feel nauseous and dizzy, local sources said.

Local authorities quickly sealed off the construction site and workers were rushed to hospital.

Chinese military experts, who scrutinized the construction site and the bomb, believed that the bomb, filled with mustard gas, was dropped by the Japanese air force during its war against China.

The bomb failed to explode and lay buried underground for decades, the experts said.

An oily, volatile liquid, mustard gas is corrosive to the skin and mucous membranes and causes severe, sometimes fatal respiratory damage. It was used in World War II as a chemical warfare agent.

Local sources said that the Chinese authorities will ask the Japanese government to destroy the bomb.

All the people who were exposed to the bomb are now out of danger, according to local sources.

Chinese military experts said that the Japanese army used toxic chemical weapons during its invasion of China, killing many Chinese soldiers.

In one of the darkest secrets of World War II, the Japanese Imperial Forces set up Unit 731 -- specialized in chemical warfare - - in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Under the leadership of the callous Shiro Yishii, Unit 731 conducted biochemical experiments mainly on Chinese civilians to develop ghastly germ warfare weapons that could spread bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera.

Chinese official statistics show Japan abandoned at least two million tons of chemical weapons at about 40 sites in 15 provinces at the end of World War II, mostly in the three northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

China and Japan joined the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Two years later, they signed a memorandum obliging Japan to remove all weapons by June 2007 and provide all necessary funds, equipment and personnel for their retrieval and destruction.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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