Unit 516 (第五一六部隊) was a top secret Japanese

chemical weapon A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...

s facility, operated by the

Kempeitai The , also known as Kempeitai, was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945 that also served as a secret police force. In addition, in Japanese-occupied territories, the Kenpeitai arrested or killed those suspecte ...

, in

Qiqihar Qiqihar () is the second-largest city in the Heilongjiang province of China, in the west central part of the province. The built-up (or metro) area made up of Longsha, Tiefeng and Jianhua districts had 959,787 inhabitants, while the total populat ...

, Japanese-occupied

northeast China Northeast China or Northeastern China () is a geographical region of China, which is often referred to as "Manchuria" or "Inner Manchuria" by surrounding countries and the West. It usually corresponds specifically to the three provinces east of ...

. The name Unit 516 was a code name ( Tsūshōgō) of the Unit. It was officially called the

Kwantung Army ''Kantō-gun'' , image = Kwantung Army Headquarters.JPG , image_size = 300px , caption = Kwantung Army headquarters in Hsinking, Manchukuo , dates = April ...

Chemical Weapons Section and operated underneath

Unit 731 , short for Manshu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment and Ishii Unit, was a covert Biological warfare, biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in unethical h ...

.Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003 An estimated 700,000 (Japanese estimation) to 2,000,000 (Chinese estimation) Japanese-produced chemical weapons were buried in China. Until 1995, Japan had refused to acknowledge that it dumped chemical weapons in the Nen River between

Heilongjiang Heilongjiang () formerly romanized as Heilungkiang, is a province in northeast China. The standard one-character abbreviation for the province is (). It was formerly romanized as "Heilungkiang". It is the northernmost and easternmost province ...

and Hulunbei'er, leaving huge amounts behind.

Chemical weapons

* Phosgene * Hydrogen cyanide *

Bromobenzyl cyanide Bromobenzyl cyanide (BBC) is an obsolete lachrymatory agent introduced in World War I by the Allied Powers. When implemented in World War I, it revolutionized the use of tear agents due to their extreme potency. BBC is toxic like chlorine gas.AMO ...

and

Chloroacetophenone Phenacyl chloride, also commonly known as chloroacetophenone, is a substituted acetophenone. It is a useful building block in organic chemistry. Apart from that, it has been historically used as a riot control agent, where it is designated CN. It ...

Diphenylcyanoarsine Diphenylcyanoarsine, also called Clark 2 (Chlor-Arsen-Kampfstoff 2, being the successor of Clark 1) by the Germans, was discovered in 1918 by Sturniolo and BellinzoniSturniolo, G. und Bellinzoni, G. (1919); ''Boll. chim. pharm.'', 58, 409–410 an ...

and

Diphenylchloroarsine Diphenylchloroarsine (DA) is the organoarsenic compound with the formula (C6H5)2AsCl. It is highly toxic and was once used in chemical warfare. It is also an intermediate in the preparation of other organoarsenic compounds. The molecule consists o ...

* Arsenic trichloride * Sulfur Mustard * Lewisite At the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

buried some of their chemical weapons in China, but most were confiscated by Soviet

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

, the People's Liberation Army and the Kuomintang Army, along with other weapons. The

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

later handed over these weapons to China (ROC), who then buried them. Japanese chemical weapons were later found mixed with Soviet and Chinese chemical weapons. Th
Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies
has a record of Japanese weapons confiscated by Kuomintang Army along with a list of the types of chemical weapons. No confiscation records about ROC / Russia have been found. However, no country has records about the locations of the buried chemical weapons. China has started gathering these abandoned weapons for destruction and burial, and they are currently buried in remote

Dunhua Dunhua (; Chosŏn'gŭl: 돈화; Hangul: 둔화) is a county-level city of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in southeastern Jilin province, People's Republic of China. It has more than 480,000 inhabitants (as of 2002) and was the capital ...

County, in Haerbaling,

Jilin Jilin (; alternately romanized as Kirin or Chilin) is one of the three provinces of Northeast China. Its capital and largest city is Changchun. Jilin borders North Korea ( Rasŏn, North Hamgyong, Ryanggang and Chagang) and Russia (Prim ...

(吉林) province.

The Chemical Weapons Convention

One of the focuses of the Chemical Weapons Convention was to assign responsibility for the destruction of old chemical weapons in China. The convention was signed in 1993 and according to it, all chemical weapons created after 1925 must be destroyed by the originating-country. Under the convention, Japan is building a factory in China to destroy chemical weapons.

References

{{IJA special research units Chemical warfare facilities Japanese human subject research Second Sino-Japanese War Second Sino-Japanese War crimes Japanese war crimes

Chemical weapons

The Chemical Weapons Convention

See also

Other cases of abandoned chemical weapons

References