[HN Gopher] Japan WWII poison gas agents still scarring people t... ___________________________________________________________________ Japan WWII poison gas agents still scarring people today Author : tomohawk Score : 96 points Date : 2022-10-02 17:13 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (mainichi.jp) (TXT) w3m dump (mainichi.jp) | PradeetPatel wrote: | My heart goes out to the Aotsuka family. | | Thankfully, research, development and deployment of | chemical/biological weapons are heavily restricted and regulated | in most developed nations. If do we not learn from the past we're | doomed to repeat it. Only through education and awareness can we | prevent this type of tragedy from occurring again. | galangalalgol wrote: | The article mentions almost offhandedly that the substance was | buried no longer ago than 1993. Surely that must have been | illegal? Is anyone investigating that? | valenceelectron wrote: | Random information: the article shows an image from Okunoshima | Island. Today, this is also called Rabbit Island. It is chock | full of rabbits of all colors. There is also at least one hotel | on the island and a little museum that tells the dark past of | this island. Rumor has it, the rabbits were used as test subjects | for the chemical weapons and were freed after the war, | multiplying uncontrolled. Everywhere you look, there is a group | of fluffy rabbits. I've been there for a day and it was a nice | experience. The museum lacked English explanations for most of | its exhibits though. But this was some years ago, may have | changed. | sva_ wrote: | The article mentions this as well: | | > The tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea off Takehara, | Hiroshima Prefecture, is a popular tourist destination known | for being the home of hundreds of bunnies, but it was once a | "poison gas island" where the Imperial Japanese Army secretly | manufactured chemical weapons from around 1930 to the end of | the war. | birdyrooster wrote: | This is absolutely devastating to read and truly reminds me not | to be a war monger. | formerkrogemp wrote: | Populations living near past conflicts continue to pay the price | of that conflict to this day. Mines from the world war, Vietnam, | etc continue to harm people today. | m463 wrote: | I wonder what will happen to the SS Richard Montgomery, with | 1400 tons of unexploded ordinance. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery | zx10rse wrote: | It is always the common people that pay the price, there is | great documentary about agent orange used in Vietnam war. | | It is hard to watch, be aware. | | The Vietnam War's Agent Orange legacy | Unreported World - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMzJvwG2rsQ | baxtr wrote: | I clicked the link. I regret it. Don't watch this if you want | your Sunday to stay nice. | amelius wrote: | Reminds me of: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruinard_Island | | > The island was dangerous for all mammals after experiments with | the anthrax bacterium in 1942, until it was decontaminated in the | late 20th century. | Spooky23 wrote: | The US version was Plum island in the Long Island Sound. If you | draw a circle around early Lyme Disease cases, it just happens | to be in the middle of that circle. | dpe82 wrote: | Please don't spread conspiracy theories. | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/no-lyme-diease-is- | not-... | [deleted] | garmanarnar wrote: | Synaesthesia wrote: | Not to mention the birth defects and mutations due to the | chemical warfare employed there. | dane-pgp wrote: | For what it's worth, the US is at least destroying its | remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons, and is due to finish | the process by September 2023. Let's hope the country doesn't | get involved in a large scale conflict between now and then, | which might cause a change of plans for those munitions. | | https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2022-08-10/colorado-chemica... | buildbot wrote: | We have Henry Kissinger to thank for that. Disgusting what we | (America) did there. | Waterluvian wrote: | Being a foolish victim of a low-quality fraud by a second- | rate charlatan like like Elizabeth Holmes is a telling and | fitting capstone to his legacy. | WalterBright wrote: | There are still unexploded bombs in England and Germany being | found. A few years ago, a Civil War shell exploded killing | someone. Hopefully the last casualty of that war. | | Me, I'd press for a law that mines can only be electrically set | off using a battery that decays over time. (Or any triggering | device that decays away.) This is so after a year or so, past | any military value, they'll be inert. | bombcar wrote: | It's hard to decay away the actual explosive, and they can be | set off concussively. | ok_dad wrote: | Most military high explosives today cannot be set off | without a secondary. Still not great to have lying around, | but it's also not just TNT. | pvaldes wrote: | Four people walking in a forest near Chernobyl killed by | a land mine today. And farmers found also potato fields | with land mines buried on it. | | We can create the most "tremendous" and beautiful and | well written law possible. It will not change the fact | that war criminals don't obey the law, and that some | armies are using still a lot of obsolete stuff. Landmines | are still an unsolved problem. | samatman wrote: | Was this an old mine, or a new one due to the war? | | Old mines don't decay, which is why new ones do. | | Civilians being killed in war is tragic, but also seems | out-of-scope, militaries aren't going to stop using area | denial weapons. Making sure they don't kill people once | they're no longer intended to is as close as we're likely | to come without reaching utopia. | bombcar wrote: | But can the secondary be set off without a tertiary? | mhh__ wrote: | There was a British nuclear mine (design) that actually used | a chicken to keep the electronics warm | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock | dane-pgp wrote: | For what it's worth, most countries, including the US, are | parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, of | which Protocol II requires a ban on "the use of non-self- | destructing and non-self-deactivating mines outside fenced, | monitored and marked areas"[0]. | | I think that means that countries have to either use mines | which decay over time, as you suggest, or they have to remove | the mines themselves from any designated area once the | relevant conflict ends. I'm not sure if any signatories have | deployed any non-decaying mines since the convention entered | into force, though. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conve | nti... | jcmeyrignac wrote: | My grand-father was gassed in Verdun (WW I). | | All his children had pulmonary problems. | | Some of his grand-children also have similar problems. | Eisenstein wrote: | I was doubtful of your implication of a causal relationship | between poison gassing of a father and problems passed down | genetically. However upon some research I came upon this study, | which definitely supports such a relationship: | | * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917398/ | linschn wrote: | How hold are you? Even if he had you in his forties, you would | be more than eighty now. | | I don't know much about epigenetics, but I would be highly | surprised if this had anything to do with that. | collegeburner wrote: | not necessarily. a lot of the people in WWI were young and | lied about their age. say he was 16, so born in 1900. he and | this person's dad could have very well had kids at 50 or so, | i.e. father born 1950 and the person born in 2000 making him | young. though he is probably a bit older than this. | dane-pgp wrote: | That reminds me of the strange little piece of trivia that | the last surviving US Civil War widow died in 2020: | | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/08/last- | civil-w... | samatman wrote: | The grandson of President John Tyler died at 95 years of | age in 2020. | | John Tyler was President starting in 1841. It is indeed | possible. | chucksmash wrote: | This has been my go-to "that can't possibly be right" | factoid for years. He had two living grandsons the last | time someone made me Google it. It looks like one of them | passed away in 2020, but the other is still alive albeit | no longer in good health[1]. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler | linschn wrote: | Never mind, I had a brain fart and misread gand father for | father, and the sibling comment provided a link to a study | showing that indeed, mustard gas has a measurable effect on | spermogenesis and can increase the rate of respiratory | diseases in the victims offspring. | | My apologies. | fatneckbeardz wrote: | one of the clearest examples of "privatize the profits, socialize | the losses." | [deleted] | Godel_unicode wrote: | Which profits are those? The article seems to indicate that the | factory was operated by the Japanese army. | gfaster wrote: | Well in that case it isn't strictly 'profit' but rather just | benefit. In the same way that antisocial urban development | isn't necessarily profitable per se, it just allows the | people doing it to reap all the benefits while pushing the | burden onto society as a whole. | philjohn wrote: | Why do countries invade others? It's often portrayed as | being for the greater good of the attacker, restoring their | territorial integrity. But let's be honest, you don't spend | billions if you're not getting anything in return other | than pissed off invadees - it's for profit. | bawolff wrote: | I mean, they are pretty honest about. Land is how | countries make money. Its not a secret. | zopa wrote: | In the 1700s, maybe; today profit comes from fragile | human and physical capital that don't like having bombs | dropped on them. | | Let's look at some numbers. Ukraine, a largely | agriculture country, is one of the strongest possible | cases for your thesis. So consider net Ukrainian raw | materials exports: <https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryPro | file/en/Country/UKR/Yea...> | | Around $18 billion in 2019. To gain partial control of | that revenue stream, Russia has largely smashed up the | military it spends $50-$60 billion a year on. It's not a | good trade. | | You might protest that land also has factories and such | on it, and that's true, but today many of those factories | look like this: | | <https://gdb.rferl.org/07520000-0aff-0242-a90c-08da3a5a2c | 06_w...> | | Launching wars of aggression is a bad idea because | killing people and taking things that don't belong to you | is wrong. But if that fails to persuade, recall that it's | also a financial catastrophe, for both sides. | | ( _Edit: formatting_ ) | Godel_unicode wrote: | Ukraine also has some of the best agricultural land in | the world, which nets exports of around $18bn. Hard to | argue that's not about the land. Then there's the big | one; Putin believes that land belongs to him. Once you | get into squishy questions like how much is it worth to | get your thing back from someone the financial calculus | becomes much harder. | toast0 wrote: | > Around $18 billion in 2019. To gain partial control of | that revenue stream, Russia has largely smashed up the | military it spends $50-$60 billion a year on. It's not a | good trade. | | With my deeply cynical hat on... | | I mean, if they keep the territory (which seems unlikely | at this moment), they get that revenue, so good for them? | | They also got to clear out their stores of old munitions, | and run a sales demo for newer munitions. Might have been | a better demo if the campaign didn't go sideways, though. | Either way, lots of business for domestic producers of | munitions to resupply. | sva_ wrote: | From the article (sounds very speculative though): | | > Why the chemical agent was buried in Kamisu has not yet | been clarified by government investigations. Some believe | that during the chaotic years following the war, the | substance was sold and eventually transported to the city. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-02 23:00 UTC)