Research Institute № 9 of the Imperial Japanese Army

Abstract

Despite the decades that have passed since the end of World War II, historians and researchers from other academic fields remain interested in the activities of a number of organizations and military units of the Japanese army and navy, engaged, during the pre-war and war periods, in the development of weapons of mass destruction, unique weapons, as well as means of their delivery. At the same time, against the background of the relatively well-studied circumstances of the activities of the infamous Units 731 and 100, which produced and tested bacteriological and other weapons in the territory of Manchuria, the data on the activities of the Army Military Research Institute № 9, located in the Tokyo suburb of Kawasaki, remain almost completely unknown to Russian researchers.

In the Japanese- and English-language historical literature, the unit is known as the “Noborito Laboratory,” deriving the name from the area where the institute was located. For the first time in the Russian-language literature, this work presents the history of the establishment and activities of this top-secret division of the Japanese Imperial Army, a general outline of its structure and activities, which included experiments and attempts to create bacteriological weapons, production of counterfeit money and documents, various weapons of mass destruction, including bacteriological ones as well as weapons based on the use of microwave radiation, secret espionage and electronic equipment, poisons, the historically first intercontinental means of delivering damaging substances, etc.

The problem of the post-war fate of the liquidated Research Institute № 9 and the appearance of some of its traces in Japan after 1945 are also touched upon. The research is based on materials declassified in Japan and published by the Defunct Imperial Japanese Army Noborito Laboratory Museum for Education in Peace, as well as on the materials of foreign press.