Japan’s Poison Gas Legacy: Industrial Disease, Environmental Remediation, and the Challenge of Abandoned Chemical Weapons (ACW) in East Asia

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay examines two aspects of the legacy of Japan’s manufacture and deployment of chemical weapons (CW) in World War II: the medical issues that arose among workers in Japan’s chemical industry related to weapons manufacturing and the long-term environmental impact of abandoned chemical weapons (ACW) remaining in China and Japan. The essay argues that these subjects have received inadequate attention due largely to three factors: the secrecy imposed upon the matter beginning in the immediate postwar period; the bureaucratic inertia that characterized the Japanese government’s attitude toward industrial workers during and after the war as well Chinese victims who suffered injuries as a result of ACW in China; and political constraints imposed by postwar agreements. Consequently, the victims – both Chinese and Japanese – have not been adequately compensated by either government. Nor has this subject received much attention in Korea, another site of Japan’s industrial manufacturing during the war, largely because the munitions plants in question were predominantly located in what is today North Korea. The issue of ACW related illnesses and deaths remains politically charged and controversial, despite efforts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 to address it.

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