Private industries and banks in Germany and Switzerland plan to pay billions more. Despite the refusal of the Japanese government to release information, new details are emerging about the scope of the biological program. Research by scholars, campaigns by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles and the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, and a lawsuit in Japan by Chinese plaintiffs have unleashed a flood of new accounts that substantially expand the historical record. The accounts have heightened tensions between Japan and its neighbors. The death toll from Japan's biological warfare remains in dispute.
Some scholars assert that severalhundred thousand people died, mostly in China.
Others say the casualties were far lower. Scholars estimate that an additional 10,000 prisoners were killed in experiments, perhaps a dozen times the number who died at the hands of Dr. Josef Mengele and other Nazi scientists. Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations in the Justice Department, said the dispute between Tokyo and Washington over suspected war criminals has been quietly building for three years. The Justice Department's worldwide list of war crimes suspects now includes the names of about 60,000 Germans and other Europeans, including Kurt Waldheim, the former U.N.secretary-general, president of Austria and wartime intelligence officer in Hitler's army. By contrast, Rosenbaum said the United States had dates of birth and other identifying data on fewer than 100 suspected Japanese war criminals.