Slate Wiper
By Lewis Perdue
Page 1
SLATE WIPER
A Novel
By Lewis Perdue
The human sequence [of genes] is the grail of genetics. It will be an incomparable tool for the investigation of every aspect of human function. -- Walter Gilbert, Harvard geneticist and winner of the Nobel Prize.
Many have said that the tools which will emerge from mapping the human genome will be the most important and powerful that science has ever provided, resulting in changes even greater than those brought by atomic power or the computer revolution. I don't think those are overstatements. -- Vice President Al Gore Jr.
[A] gigantic slaughter house, a molecular Auschwitz in which valuable enzymes, hormones and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth. -- Erwin Chargaff, Columbia University biochemist and one of the world's pioneer researchers on DNA.
PREFACE
This book is based on events.
Some of these events have happened,others are not yet inevitable.
The events that are not yet inevitable will govern the use or abuse of what we can -- or should not -- do with the molecules that underpin the very nature of our humanity, our genes.
The United States, Japan and the European Community have embarked on a multi-billion-dollar mission that has been likened to the biological equivalent of the Manhattan Project: the Human Genome Project. This multi-national research program has as its goal nothing less than decoding the book of life: determining the molecular sequences of every gene that makes up a human being.
What we know about, we can lay our hands on. We are nibbling away -- once again -- at the tree of knowledge. Knowledge has blinded humankind before, and the results have been the stuff of nightmares. The world's top experts in biomedical ethics can cite substantial evidence that the conditions that produced the medical atrocities of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan still exist today, stalking laboratory aisles and high-tech containment rooms of the world's human genetic research institutions.
This book is based on actual events. Dr. Shiro Ishii, the "Japanese Mengele" you will read about in the Prologue was a Lieutenant General in the Japanese army, Dr. Ishii headed an official government program that authorized medical atrocities on Allied POWs and Chinese civilians, atrocities equal to the Nazi's worst medical evils. Yet few people know about Dr. Ishii.
Why have we forgotten?
We remember that the Nazis murdered more than ten million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, retarded and handicapped people, political dissidents and others judged undesirable by the Third Reich. Yet few people know that the Japanese slaughtered more than six million innocent civilians during World War II. This, too, puts them on a par with the Nazis.
Why have we forgotten?
In the Balkans Civil war of the 1990s, the Serbs were internationally condemned for making rape an instrument of war, but we've forgotten that the Japanese institutionalized rape as part of their military policy more than half a century ago. They forced world hundreds of thousands of women into organized Army-run brothels so that Japanese troops could come each day and take comfort from raping them again and again.These women were forced to service the basest needs of the Imperial Japanese Army were mothers, wives, sweethearts, daughters and sisters?
Why have we forgotten them?
Why did the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials so firmly etch the horrors of Nazi Germany into our consciousness while few people are aware, even today, of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials that saw war criminals equally evil?
What does all this have to do with the Human Genome Project?
Everything.
PROLOGUE
Camp Detrick, Maryland. November 30, 1946
"Hell got hungry, gentlemen. This is where it fed."
The speaker, a tall Army Air Force major with a chest covered in theater ribbons and a head of prematurely gray hair leaned on a polished mahogany cane and paused to let his words sink in.
Behind him, a hastily-erected projection screen flickered with black-and-white horrors, the room's crypt-like silence was broken only by the clacking of the 16-millimeter projector and the nervous coughs of men who mistakenly thought they had been hardened by the horrors of war. Nothing had prepared them for this.
Fog banks of cigarette smoke drifted through the projector's light. The screen showed a rutted dirt street lined with metal-sided buildings, palm trees in the distance.where an automobile with flags on the front fenders trailed dust.
The major shifted his weight back onto his good leg and used his cane as a pointer.
"This is one of the -- " he cleared his throat with a short cough " -- facilities run by Unit 731 of the Japanese Army from whom most of this footage was captured. As your briefing papers indicate, Unit 731 had at least three other such...facilities..."
He swallowed hard against the dryness that comes from 90 minutes of non-stop talking and against the raging anger that choked him each time he forced himself to euphemize. Facilities? They were death camps, slaughter houses, torture pits, painful scraps torn from the fabric of hell.
But, he had learned painfully, you got nowhere by telling the truth to politicians. Although blinded by the projector's light, the major knew that Politician Number One, Harry S Truman, was out there in the darkness surrounded by the syncophantic little parasites that populated the world of politics.
The room was filled with civilians from the War Department, scientists from secret facilities the major had never heard of before and a scattering of the president's friends, mostly wealthy men who had made large campaign contributions.
"At least three other facilities that we know about."
On the screen, the automobile, now clearly identifiable as a Mitsubishi, filled the screen and drew to a halt in a fog of dust. The Rising Sun flags on the fenders fluttered forward for a moment and then settled slowly. The chauffeur sprang from the car.
"That's Dr. Shiro Ishii," the major said as the Mitsubishi's first passenger emerged from the rear seat. "He's the lieutenant general and Japanese Army surgeon selected by the Emperor to run Unit 731." The Major paused as the camera focused on the second passenger exiting the Mitsubishi. "That's Lt. Colonel Miyata, Ishii's top staff officer at Unit 731. He's also known as Prince Takeda. The Emperor's son."
The screen cut to a file of prisoners being marched by soldiers into a field. General Ishii was recognizable in the distance. The prisoners, some wrapped in blood-stained bandages, were dressed in tattered military uniforms. Their hands were tied in front of them.
"This is the area used for testing fragmentation and gas dispersal munitions," the major continued in what had become a raspy monotone. "Note in the close ups the unit patches that clearly identify these men as captured Allied pilots, mostly American but some Australians as well."
The major bit his lip against the pain as his own emaciated face filed across the screen. There was no reaction from his audience; no one connected the walking cadaver on the screen with the apparently healthy soldier facing them.
The camera closed in as the POWs were bent over sawhorse-like supports, their legs spread-eagled, each ankle tied to one of the sawhorse legs.their hands bound to a stake fixed in the ground in front of them.
In the distance, one Japanese soldier could be seen joking and using a board to swat the upturned buttocks of one of the prisoners. He laughed as he tossed the board aside, then jogged over to help his comrades as they placed upright panels resembling privacy screens against the buttocks of each prisoner.
"Those panels are armor plated. Each one has a hole about three inches in diameter, which is being positioned against the right buttock."
The major wrinkled his nose as the smell of alcohol drifted out of the darkness. That would be Keenan, the major thought. Joseph Keenan: "Joe the Key" as he was known in the White House inner circles. One of J. Edgar Hoover's original gangbusters, Joe the Key had been very close to FDR. It was said that the Brown and Harvard educated man earned his nickname because he was the key to obtaining high-ranking appointments in the Capital.
As hard as the Ivy Leaguer now tried to be one of the boys, however, his style grated on the new president. There had been friction. The word was that Truman had appointed Keenan as chief judge of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial simply to get him out of the White House. What else could explain the appointment to such a post of a man whose sum knowledge of Asian affairs was how to use chopsticks badly?
Then there was the drinking. The whole thing reeked of internal sabotage, the major thought. Somebody wanted to minimize the pressure on the Japanese.
"Note Ishii and his men gathering here." The major swatted the projection screen with the brass tip of his cane. "The protective gear they are getting into now are the world's best bacteriological warfare protection suits, far beyond anything we've developed. A new plastic-like material that seems to be heatsealed. Captured documents indicate the suits were developed in cooperation with the Germans so we assume the suits are also protection against Sarin, Tabun and other nerve gases as well."
On screen, the cameraman had joined Ishii and the other protected soldiers in a bunker. In the distance, the spread-eagled men faced the bunker, struggling with their bonds. Beyond the bound POWs and the carefully perforated armor screens sat a tripod supporting a small cylinder.
Ishii gave the camera a broad smile from within his protective suit and nodded his head.
Instants later the tripod vanished in the smoke and fire of an explosion that left the trussed-up POWs writhing. The film had no sound, but the screams of agony were undisguised. Many of the POWs twitched uncontrollably. Blood pooled in the dust and splattered against their ankles.
"That was an updated version of the HA model 40-kilogram experimental fragmentation anthrax bomb. Captured records show that regular production of the first version of this bomb was begun in 1938. Total production of the bacteria alone at special bacteriological manufacturing plants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was eight tons per month by 1941. Again, their production techniques far surpass our best designs. By August of last year, they had enough functional bacteriological weapons to wipe out several nations. And not just anthrax. They also developed weapons using hemorrhagic fever, cholera, plague, typhus and typhoid. The Imperial strategy, according to captured documents, was to attack with three or four different diseases with the aim of overwhelming medical treatment facilities and assuring 100-percent kill rates. They tested every aspect of their weapons and strategy thoroughly."
On the screen, the POWs were loaded face-down on stretchers and stacked on transport trucks. "The HA bomb and all its successors were designed by General Ishii himself." A schematic drawing of the bomb appeared on the screen. "This is a drawing which E Division here at Detrick has drawn based on a sketch from General Ishii who, as you know, is in our custody. You'll see the model HA is about two feet long and has a cylindrical core of about seven pounds of TNT surrounded by 1,500 steel pellets and some 700 ccs of anthrax bacterial fluid. Two type 12 Toka Shunpatsu fuses assure adequate dispersal of the contents. Again, the design is far advanced from anything we -- or the Russians -- have right now. Ishii says he has an advanced porcelain bomb that is far more effective." He paused, then added, sotto voce, "Not that it has to be."
On screen lay rank after rank of obviously dead POWs.
The major coughed softly to clear his throat. "These are the same men shown in the experiment," he moved the tip of his cane slowly along the screen, forcing eyes to look individually at every corpse. "The armor plating assured that the steel pellets would cause non-fatal wounds to the tough, meaty part of the buttocks, thus assuring that resulting deaths would be from the anthrax rather than from shrapnel wounds.
"The kill rate among the untreated was close to 100 percent," he continued as he lowered the cane and used it to move himself to the podium at one side of the room. "Realizing that the same warfare techniques could be used against them, Ishii's doctors developed a series of increasingly effective vaccines and treatments that were also tried out on the Allied POWs."
The film now showed living POWs, drinking tea from handleless cups and talking with doctors. "But being the recipient of a successful vaccine was a respite, not a reprieve, since Ishii's ever-curious researchers inevitably picked up their scalpels to take a look around inside the survivors to see why they had survived."
The film showed seemingly endless rows of laboratory jars filled with tissue samples.
"Of course, some of the dissections were carried out under somewhat non-scientific conditions to satisfy the..." Perversions. "Foibles of Ishii and his troops."
On screen, a row of posts were set into the ground. Tied to the posts were naked Caucasian men bound with webbed straps at the neck, waist and feet. All but the POW in the foreground were slightly out of focus, but obviously still and slumped against their bonds. Walking toward the camera were five men, laughing. They came into focus and stopped by the POW focused in the foreground.
"In the foreground is Dr. Ota Futaki; he's a professor at Kyoto University and Japan's leading researcher in open heart surgery. Three of the men are Japanese Army doctors who work with Ishii. They're here to get a lesson from the master."
On screen, tears streamed down the POW's face as he struggled with his bonds; his lips pleaded for mercy.
"The fourth man in the film," Barner continued, "is Yoshio Kodama, a leading boss in the Japanese Mafia -- the yakuza -- who had a big hand in greasing the wheels of government and industry. He controls the unions and a lot of the pols and has a hand in every black market racket going, including the supply of Dr. Ishii's unit. Kodama's gang was allied with the right wing, ultra-nationalists who pushed Japan into the war. His slice of the pie is his reward for throwing his private army behind the war effort. Kodama is a Class A war criminal, now in Sugamo Prison with Tojo and the rest. However, like Dr. Ishii, I understand he's to be released and not prosecuted now that G-2 has classified him as a strategic intelligence asset."
Someone retched softly in the dark as on the screen Futaki removed the POW's fingernails, then cut open his chest, removed his still beating heart and proceeded to give a practical demonstration.
"I think this is damned enough of this damned inflammatory presentation! Stop this instant!" Calmly, the major focused into the dark, but he didn't need to see the speaker. He knew the man's voice as one of Truman's buddies, a fat young man representing one of the country's largest pharmaceutical companies. Laurence Gilchrist II--not "Jr." but "II"--the brilliant, self-indulgent son of Laurence Gilchrist, chairman of North American Pharmco and the president's largest single campaign contributor. Laurence II had already been anointed by his father and Pharmcos's board as the next chairman of the company, a power the young man wielded like a medieval mace.
"We've got real business to do here today and real decisions to make," Gilchrist continued. "All of this sentimental inflammatory horse manure is wasting time, distracting us from our real task here."
As Gilchrist's tinny voice carried on his tirade, the film continued to run. Chinese women being gang raped by top ranking Japanese Army officers; Allied POWs being given injections of horse blood, and having their livers destroyed by huge X ray doses; more vivisections, some live others not; men whose arms were frozen stiff to test the effects of freezing, later the rotting stumps of thawed limbs.
The major stood at attention through the verbal abuse, striving for grace under pressure as he struggled to remember why he believed in civilian control of the armed forces. The reason didn't come to him immediately.
Gilchrist finally looked at the screen, and what he saw silenced his tirade. For an instant the only sounds in the darkened room came from the clacking projector and from the muffled sounds of truck engines somewhere beyond the room. On screen, an American POW with dysentery was being forced by laughing Japanese guards to consume his own excrement.