Not even the Nazis went far as the Japanese in the development and deployment of biological warfare agents. Unit 731 was a top secret installation approved by the Japanese Emperor located in Harbin, Manchuria. There Japanese military personnel under the command of Lt. General Shiro Ishii, developed germ weapons, including bubonic plague, that were used against Chinese civilians during World War II killing a million or more Chinese. Vivisections without anesthesia were performed on infected prisoners of war (termed "logs" by the Japanese) to study the anatomical effects of their germ agents and develop more lethal strains. More despicable than the immunity afforded Nazi scientists working in the German missile program ("Operation Paperclip"), was the American government's decision to not prosecute Unit 731 researchers as war criminals in return for their unique data. Unable to obtain Ishii from US custody, to its credit the Soviet Union captured and prosecuted twelve of these war criminals in 1949. The Khabarovsk trials which ended in convictions and life sentences were denounced as "communistic propaganda" by Occupation Commander Douglas MacArthur. Some of the rescued experimenters from Unit 731 were employed by the United States and went on to enjoy prestigious careers in post-war Japan.This History Channel documentary the Japanese government's inhumanity to man:
The information obtained from the Japanese was used by the US Army in its biological weapons program at Ft. Detrick, Maryland. Although biological warfare was dropped by 1969, testing of chemical agents such as LSD continued under the auspices of the CIA ("Operation Artichoke") into the 1970's. The Ft. Detrick program included human testing on volunteers who were mostly conscripts with religious scruples against combat. During "Operation Whitecoat" the human guinea pigs were exposed to Q fever and tularemia as well as vaccine studies for encephalitis, plague, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever other diseases.