Zhongma Fortress - Background

Background

Shirō Ishii, an Imperial Japanese Army senior researcher in biological and chemical warfare, was assigned to establish a clandestine program to develop weapons of mass destruction under the patronage of Army Minister Sadao Araki.

Ishii built a medical research facility in Harbin shortly after the city came under Japanese control after the Manchurian Incident in 1932. This facility conducted legitimate medical research on vaccines and public health. However, the facility was too close to a highly populated area to be able to conduct clandestine biological warfare research, so Ishii selected a second site about 100 kilometers to the south of Harbin at the village of Beiyinhe. The local inhabitants were forcibly evacuated and their village burnt down, and a large tract of land was fenced off.

Read more about this topic:  Zhongma Fortress

Famous quotes containing the word background:

    In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    ... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)