Japan Today - U.S. paid Unit 731 members for germ warfare experiment data

Rats. It looks like after World War II the U.S. might have paid Japanese germ warfare experts for data obtained from human experiments conducted in China by the Japanese. Talk about dirty money. Yick.

It appears that Keiichi Tsuneishi, professor at Kanagawa University, has found two declassified documents in the U.S. National Archives that suggest that between 150,000 to 200,000 yen was handed to unnamed members of the unit led by military doctor Shiro Ishii (believed responsible for the deaths of something like 3,000 people - mostly Chinese and Russian as I understand it, as if nationality matters in a case like this). Both documents are from July 1947, and were either compiled or written by Brig. Gen. Charles Willoughby, who headed intelligence unit "G2" of the postwar occupation forces in Japan.

Historians (and others) already knew that the U.S. had offered to drop war crimes charges in exchange for information. But what it looks like now (if I read this correctly) is that after the war crimes charges were waived, the investigators had to turn to offering money, food, gifts and entertainment to entice cooperation from the pathologists.

Sigh. I understand (or think I understand) that every society that survives any length of time has had people running around doing shady things behind the scenes, but that doesn't alter the fact that I'm always quite pleased when the United States comes up with a more civilized and/or honorable and/or aboveboard way of getting the job done, and am always a bit saddened when we sink to the same techniques as less idealistic nations. But wooing folks who had used other human beings as lab rats seems rather worse than the usual techniques, doesn't it? Yuck.