THE SCHOLARS' SCOOP

Healthcare Industry is a course taught by Tate Renzenbrink, it focuses on the various fields of study dealing with health issues from a broad range of perspectives, e.g. medicine, insurance, disabilities, physical therapy, etc. This day, they were focused on the medicine part of the course, delving into the effects that World War II had on Japan’s blood supply. 

On July 9th, while I was observing the class, they were reading a book called Blood by Douglas Starr. The chapter they were discussing was about Dr. Ryoichi Naito, and his work in rebuilding blood labs after the war. Colonel Murray Sanders was serving in a clandestine research facility in response to reports that the enemy was trying to develop agents of biological warfare. Naito would inform the Americans about the existence of the biological warfare experiments, and would initiate a cover up that masked their true horrors for 40 years.

Naito’s evil genius began when he enrolled in medical school in Kyoto University, where he came to the attention of an army colonel named Tomosado Masuda. Masuda worked with a scientist named Shiro Ishii to form a bacteriological unit. Together they felt the next war would rely on harnessing the power of microbes. They had just started to prepare the groundwork, and offered to include Naito. He worked as a spy, quite literally. He was sent to Berlin, and sifted through the garbage at an institute to gather intelligence about German research. The next year, he traveled to the U.S. on similar intelligence missions, and unsuccessfully tried to obtain a vial of yellow-fever virus.

When scholars heard this part of the book, they were in an uproar. They wondered why he even felt he would be able to just acquire a virus, confused on his audacity in a sense. The conversation continued to sway this way whenever Dr. Naito would do anything, as he was acting as a villain, playing a double agent.

All in all, the scholars spent the day reading about a man who was at the forefront of anything blood related in Japan for an extended amount of time. I observed great conversations between scholars, and great questions asked by Tate. This conversation about blood and all things related was a stepping stone for other activities completed by the class, such as dissections, and other lab work.