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Date | 27 October 1940 |
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Location | Ningbo, China |
Coordinates | 29°52′27″N 121°32′55″E / 29.87409°N 121.54869°E |
Type | Biological warfare |
Reporter | Xu Guofang & Ding Licheng |
Deaths | 1,554 |
The Kaimingjie germ weapon attack (simplified Chinese: 开明街鼠疫灾难; traditional Chinese: 開明街鼠疫災難; lit. 'Kaiming Street Plague Disaster') was a secret biological warfare launched by Japan in October 1940 against the Kaiming Street area of Ningbo, Zhejiang, China.[1] A joint operation of the Imperial Japanese Army's Unit 731 and Unit 1644,[1] this attack was operated by military planes taking off from Jianqiao Airport in Hangzhou,[2]: 89 which airdropped wheat, corn, cotton scraps, and sand infected with plague fleas to target locations.[1] From September 1940, Ningbo, Quzhou, and other places were subjected to various forms of biological warfares until the end of October 1940, when the attacks triggered a plague epidemic in Ningbo.[3]
After the outbreak of the plague, the city authorities in Ningbo built a 4.3-meter-high isolation wall around the epidemic area, segregating patients and suspected cases, and eventually burned down the Kaiming Street area to eradicate the disease.[4] Until the 1960s, this burned area was still referred to as the "plague field".[5] According to the doctoral thesis of Junichi Kaneko, a military doctor of Unit 731, on October 27, 1940, Unit 731 spread 2 kilograms of plague bacteria over Ningbo, Zhejiang, using aircraft, resulting in a total of 1,554 deaths from the first- and second-round infections.[6][7]