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Evil Doctors and Scientists From World War II

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2021 33 min

Second Battle of Champagne - Second Battle of Ypres — French soldiers wearing gas masks in WWI trenches, waiting for an order to launch an attack. Flickr

19. This Evil Doctor Planned to Infect America With the Plague

I-400 long-range submarine and M6A1 float plane. Recovery Curios

If Dr. Ishii had had his way, US civilians would have experienced first hand what his victims in China had endured. On March 26^th, 1945, he finalized plans for Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, to attack America with biological weapons. The operation called for five I-400 long-range submarines, each carrying three Aichi M6A1 Seiran floatplanes, to cross the Pacific Ocean. Upon reaching the US West Cost, the submarines were to launch the float planes, loaded with plague-infected fleas, to attack San Diego.

As one of the pilots put it in 1998: “I was told directly by Shiro Ishii of the kamikaze mission “Cherry Blossoms at Night”, which was named by Ishii himself. I was a leader of a squad of seventeen. I understood that the mission was to spread contaminated fleas in the enemy’s base and contaminate them with plague.” The operation was scheduled for September 22^nd, 1945, but the atomic bombing of Japan in August ended the war. Japan formally surrendered on September 2^nd, less than three weeks before the scheduled launch date of Cherry Blossoms at Night.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.