The U.S. traded with notorious Japanese biological warfare organ Unit 731 for experimentation data on live human bodies after World War II, by covering up Unit 731's ruthless crimes and offering 250,000 yen payment.

Multiple news reports published in the 1980s on U.S. media, including the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times, have confirmed the trade's existence.

"The U.S. army bypassed the Tokyo Trial, and secretly and directly connected with core members of Unit 731," said Yang Yanjun, a researcher from the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Yang said the U.S. sent its own investigators from the Fort Detrick biological labs several times to Japan to obtain 13-year research data on human bodies. Meanwhile, the U.S. helped Japan cover up the research and real practice of biological warfare conducted by Unit 731.

The U.S. paid about 250,000 yen to secure the data.

Stephen Kinzer, senior fellow of Brown University, quoted from then Supreme Allied Command led by Gen. MacArthur's comment on such data that "the value to the U.S. of Japanese biological weapons data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war time prosecutions." This was a secret principle this document was never published at that time, according to Kinzer.

The potential link between Fort Detrick and COVID-19 made a lot of Chinese people recall bad memories of World War II.

The Japanese army, especially Unit 731, conducted extremely cruel experiments on live humans in China, including and not limited to vivisection, poison gas test, bioweapon test and amputations without anesthesia.

Bacteria and viruses were intentionally injected into healthy people from China, the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Britain, among others, by Unit 731 to observe their suffering.

After obtaining a massive amount of data on human bodies from Unit 731, the U.S. has been conducting an enormous number of biological weapon researches. 

Some reports from the U.S. media including The New York Times and the Washington Post have revealed biological experiments conducted by Fort Detrick lab to the public.

The Washington Post reported the CIA was linked to conduct experiment by releasing swine virus in Cuba in 1977. The New York Times disclosed an engineer from the U.S. Department of Defense admitted he participated in biological test in U.S. cities launched by Fort Detrick lab.

Fort Detrick has internally reported two leak accidents and was shut down in August 2019, not long before the COVID-19 outbreak which caused a global pandemic. Shortly after the shutdown, the labs were allowed to resume operation.

Over 20 million Chinese have signed an open letter calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.

Published on July 17, the petition appealed to the WHO to investigate the lab and urged the U.S. to answer to the call from people around the world.

"If there ever is the need for the U.S., or a desire for the U.S. to develop bioweapons, it would certainly be made in Fort Detrick. That's the only place where it could be made, that's where all scientists are, that's where all the toxins are," said Kinzer.

Read more: Fort Detrick and COVID-19: Why do the Chinese want an investigation?