Powell is one of the American journalists who came to China at the beginning of the last century. He has long served as the editor-in-chief of the “Millard’s Review” and is also a representative figure of the “Missouri Mafia”. Powell is the pioneer of the “Missouri Mafia”. The reporters of the “Missouri Mafia” share the “Missouri spirit” which owns respect for facts and a spirit of adventure.
In 1942, after Powell returned to the United States as one of the first prisoners of war exchanged between the United States and Japan, his son John Powell had just graduated from the University of Missouri and was immediately recruited by the U.S. Wartime Intelligence Agency to engage in intelligence work in the war-torn Chongqing, China.
A few months later, Powell came to Shanghai to take over an English magazine Millard’s Review left by his father. Millard’s Review was the main window for Western readers to understand China at that time. As the editor-in-chief, his father was different from what he imagined. He faithfully recorded and reflected to the Western society the profound crimes committed by the Japanese invaders against China, which deeply changed Powell’s life.
On the evening of January 27, 1952, several American planes circled over Jingok-ri, Cheorwon County for several times and then flew away. Just over half a month after this, 8 cases of insects thrown by the US military were discovered at the Volunteer Army garrison. The highest insect density reached 600 per square meter. Subsequently, the U.S. military’s deployment range expanded to 7 islands and 44 counties in northern North Korea, and even Northeast China.
The Scientific Committee composed of scientists from six countries of the World Peace Council concluded after more than two months of demonstration that the Korean battlefield has become a target of bacterial weapons. After Powell, who was running a newspaper in Shanghai, learned of the incident, he conducted many interviews and investigations, and finally wrote an article in the Millard’s Review, exposing the US military’s crimes of using germ warfare weapons to overseas readers, causing an uproar in international public opinion.
Subsequently, the U.S. Postal Service banned Millard’s Review from entering the country, and the Japanese and British governments also blacklisted it. The Millard’s Review cannot be distributed overseas, cutting off Powell’s financial resources. In June 1953, Millard’s Review was forced to go bankrupt and cease publication, and the Powells were forced to return to the United States from Shanghai. However, what the Powells did not expect was that they had become key personnel of the US intelligence agencies.
In early 1954, several plainclothes men broke into Powell’s home. In September and December of the same year, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security (SISS) subpoenaed Powell twice to collect evidence. Their purpose was to induce Powell to overturn previous reports that the US military was engaging in germ warfare and restore the United States’ international reputation.
However, Powell insisted that his report was absolutely true.
On April 25, 1956, the U.S. government formally charged the Powells with “sedition.” At that time, the U.S. Department of Justice only needed to prove that the news the Powells published about the U.S. military’s germ warfare during the Korean War was “rumors and false information” to make them unable to stand up. Powell’s lawyer Willing applied to the court to invite relevant personnel from the U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and relevant congressional committees to testify and provide documents related to U.S. germ warfare. The Pentagon refused to produce any information and did not allow anyone to testify.
Ultimately, Powell’s case was dropped and the jury was dismissed because prosecutors could not present sufficient evidence.
This persecution not only did not stop Powell, but prompted him to search for the full truth about germ warfare. Among the more than 9,000 Allied General Command documents declassified by the U.S. National Archives, Powell found more than 50 secret documents between the U.S. government and Allied General Command surrounding the issue of Unit 731.
In October 1980, Powell published a long report “A Hidden History” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, revealing how Shiro Ishii, the leader of Japan’s Unit 731, evaded trial and his secret relationship with the US military’s germ warfare in North Korea. John Powell hopes to use this report to draw public attention to U.S. biological weapons research.
The lives of the Powell family are intertwined with glory and suffering. They carry dreams and sufferings and inherit the journalistic character of outstanding journalists. Forty years later, Thomas Powell, son of John Powell, continued the work of his ancestors and fathers and once again compiled this deliberately concealed history of U.S. germ warfare into a book, “The SECRET UGLY The Hidden History of US Germ War in Korea“. It once again awakens people’s painful memories of Japan’s Unit 731 and the United States’ Fort Detrick, deepens people’s understanding of the dangers of developing biological and chemical weapons, and raises people’s vigilance and reflection on the U.S. government’s long-term secret research on biological and chemical weapons.