Japan poison gases China, again

[Taro Toporific]

[Cubed]

Now what exactly are people doing digging around in Northeastern China and lifting the lids off dodgy-looking containers?

[Taro Toporific]

Now what exactly are people doing digging around in Northeastern China and lifting the lids off dodgy-looking containers?

Construction site / digging a foundation

Now, what I really worry about is the dayglow-green outflow during heavy rains at Hitatsuka beach, Shonan.

[Cubed]

Nope. I'm sorry but I just don't buy it. I know that Japanese soldiers left lethal containers in China but getting poisoned not once but twice is stretching it.

A chemical spill in the US or UK would result in an instant evacuation of the area when any kind of cannister was ruptured (especially in an area where such drums are known to be present). This idea that many Chinese people died again just doesn't ring true. Where are the pictures of these drums?

Show us independetly corroborated evidence, China. Otherwise there's little difference between this and those ridiculous stories Chinese people fervently publish on the Internet about Japanese people eating babies etc.

[kurohinge1]

Toxic territory ... Chinese soldiers examine a site where suspected chemical weapons left by the Japanese after World War II were uncovered in Changchun, Northeast China. Photo: AP

I love this photo, and can imagine the conversation ...

Guy in yellow shirt: "Why are you guys wearing those funny suits?"
Guy in uniform: "Yeah. And what's that smell?"

[Mulboyne]

Verdict for an earlier incident:

China Daily: Tokyo court throws out weapon case

The Tokyo High Court yesterday rejected a compensation plea by a group of Chinese victims of chemical weapons abandoned in China by the invading Japanese army at the end of World War II. The judgment overturned a ruling by a Tokyo district court in 2003, which said the Japanese government should pay 190 million yen to 10 Chinese victims. Yesterday, the higher court confirmed that Japanese troops abandoned chemical weapons in China. However, it said there was no proof that the damage could probably have been avoided if the Japanese government had offered relevant information to China and helped retrieve the weapons. "They admitted the fact, but refused to shoulder the responsibility It is the logic of pirates," Zhong Jiang, a victim of a 1982 leak of a mustard gas shell which injured four construction workers in Mudanjiang of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, told a press conference in Beijing..."I cannot understand it as a lawyer," said Osamu Saikawa, a Japanese lawyer representing the Chinese. "This is an illegitimate ruling, due to their lack of courage"
...more...

[American Oyaji]

Is it just me or do these three look like they are rappers due to the way they are posed in the picture...

The middle dude's pose looks like something out of a late 80s rap video.

[6810]

Read this thread, quick! Before Takepoo comes along with some rock solid evidence which incontestably refutes that chemical weapons were ever used or tested in China and that Nanking didn't happen... etc ad nauseum...

[Greji]

Read this thread, quick! Before Takepoo comes along with some rock solid evidence which incontestably refutes that chemical weapons were ever used or tested in China and that Nanking didn't happen... etc ad nauseum...

Doesn't need to refute it. There is no more evidence. Chemical weapons no longer exist in China. They have all be shipped overseas as chlorine in toothpaste!

[Iraira]

Doesn't need to refute it. There is no more evidence. Chemical weapons no longer exist in China. They have all be shipped overseas as chlorine in toothpaste!

And my teeth have never been whiter.

[eddie]

i know it's wrong but i turned around and poison gassed my dog...she snorted and backed away

[DrP]

Hahaha! - well we all know where the Chinese are getting the fertilizer for the veggies they export to Japan now. What goes around , comes around. I wouldn't be surprised if the farmers are dosing every load that comes over, just to get a little venge.

[L S]

Update...

Japan Firm Beset by Poison Gas Scandal

TOKYO (AP) — Investigators launched raids this week on Japanese companies accused of corruption in projects to remove chemical weapons abandoned in China during World War II, officials said Friday, in an embarrassing scandal that threatened to further delay the decades-long cleanup.
Prosecutors searched the Abandoned Chemical Weapons Disposal Corp. on Wednesday, a company official said.
Agents raided an affiliated company, Pacific Consultants International, on Thursday and Friday, and the home of PCI's 71-year-old former president, a government official said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing policy.
The allegations involve the illegal diversion of some of the $199 million the government has disbursed since 2004 to help dispose of 400,000 chemical weapons that retreating Japanese troops left in northeast China at war's end.
China says poisons have leaked from the weapons and killed about 2,000 people since 1945, compounding the enduring resentment over Japan's wartime aggression. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing expressed concern the allegations could delay the cleanup.
Japan is required to pay for the removal and to build a chemical weapons disposal plant in China under an 1997 international chemical weapons convention, but progress has been painstakingly slow.
Only 10 percent of the poisonous shells and canisters have been dug up so far, and Japan recently was forced to extend the deadline for complete disposal from this year for another five years, to 2012 — nearly 70 years after the war ended. Work on the disposal plant has not even begun.
Su Xiangxiang, a Chinese activist and lawyer on the chemical weapons issue, said he was not surprised by the allegations. He said he has urged the Japanese government to be more transparent about the funding for its cleanup operations.
"If the Japanese government says that the project is delayed due to the company's scandal, it is using the scandal as an excuse," he said.
The Abandoned Chemical Weapons Disposal Corp. and PCI are accused of misappropriating some $866,000 received from the government for the disposal, a Disposal Corp. official said on condition of anonymity, citing the case's sensitivity.
Investigators also suspect that Disposal Corp. and PCI illegally outsourced the projects to cover up their deeds, Kyodo News agency reported. The Tokyo District Prosecutors Office has so far refused to confirm details of the case.
Critics said the allegations further tarnish Japan's efforts to clean up the mess — material and emotional — that it left behind after its conquest of China in the 1930s and 1940s.
"Those profiteers were taking advantage ... preying on the very victims who should be helped by this project," said Norio Minami, a Japanese lawyer supporting Chinese injured by the poison gas. "Japan's loss of credibility is inevitable."
Northeast China was a central base of Japanese military operations on the Asian continent in the war. Tokyo used the area to stockpile chemical weapons produced in Japan.
A Japanese Cabinet Office official refused to say whether the scandal would delay the disposal work, but he insisted Japan's credibility would not suffer because the government is committed to the project. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing departmental policy.
In 2003, one person was killed and 43 were injured when construction workers broke open a buried barrel of poison gas in the northeastern Chinese city of Qiqihar.
The plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against Japan, demanding Tokyo cover their medical costs and income losses, saying one-time compensation of $2.6 million was not enough.

[Captain Japan]

Former bosses of consulting firm PCI nabbed for breach of trust
Mainichi

Three former presidents of Pacific Consultants International (PCI), a major Japanese consulting firm, have been arrested on suspicion of causing the firm 120 million yen in losses in connection with a project to clean up discarded chemical weapons in China.

Public prosecutors arrested former company presidents Tamio Araki, 71, Shota Morita, 66, and Masayoshi Taga, 62, along with a fourth suspect on suspicion of aggravated breach of trust. The suspects allegedly caused the company losses through unnecessary expenses.

The PCI group has also come under suspicion of creating fictitious personnel expenses to pad invoices submitted to the government, and it is believed that public prosecutors are also conducting an investigation on suspicion of fraud.

Araki reportedly denied the allegations against him when questioned by investigators, saying, "It was distribution of profits within the group, which was a justified action."

Investigators said that when the PCI group subcontracted out part of its work to clean up discarded chemical weapons, the suspects had group company Pacific Program Management (PPM) act as a go-between in a fictitious deal. Between fiscal 2004 and 2005, the suspects allegedly transferred about 120 million yen in funds to PPM, causing PCI the same amount in losses.

Araki, who headed a holding company that controlled the group reportedly told PCI, "It was thanks to me that we were able to be the sole firm to take on the order of the work to dispose of discarded chemical weapons," and demanded that 300 million yen in profits be handed over.

To respond to the request from Araki, who had the power to shuffle personnel, Morita, Taga and other management officials of PCI at the time apparently decided to illicitly send funds to PPM.