propaganda and totally ignored in the West until the 1980s. Historian Sheldon Harris described the trial in his history of Unit 731: Evidence introduced during the hearings was based on eighteen volumes of interrogations and documentary material gathered in investigations over the previous four years. Some of the volumes included more than four hundred pages of depositions.... Unlike the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s, the Japanese confessions made in the Khabarovsk trial were based on fact and not the fantasy of their handlers. Yet the very wealth of trial documentation that tended to confirm that the Khabarovsk proceedings were no mere show trial also led Harris to question the relatively light punishment meted out there. All of defendants (aside from one who died in prison and another who committed suicide) had been freed by 1956, a mere seven years after the trial took place. Chief trial translator Georgy Permyakov alleged that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin may have initially feared that Japan would execute Soviet prisoners of war if the Khabarovsk defendants were hanged. But Harris also claimed that "the Soviets made a deal with the Japanese similar to the one completed by the Americans: Information [in exchange] for... extremely light sentences":The Soviets and their successors never released the interrogation reports of the Japanese, some 18 volumes. This leads me to believe that the Japanese did arrange a deal, did yield some information, and the Soviets settled for the best goodies they could get.Harris also noted other controversies unleashed by the trial, which linked Emperor Hirohito to the Japanese biological warfare program, as well as allegations that Japanese biological warfare experiments had also been conducted on Allied prisoners of war. One of the experts called upon by Soviet prosecutors during the trial, N. N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov, later served on the panel of scientists, led by Joseph Needham, investigating Chinese and North Korean allegations of US biological warfare in the Korean War. Accused and their sentences 25 years imprisonment: General Otozō Yamada (born 1881), former Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army (released from prison in 1956) Lieutenant General Kajitsuka Ryuji (born 1888), former Chief of Medical Administration (released from prison in 1956) Lieutenant General Takahashi Takaatsu (born 1888), former Chief of Veterinary Service (died in prison in 1951) Major General Kawashima Kiyoshi (born 1893), former Chief of Unit 731 (released from prison in 1956) 20 years imprisonment: Major General Sato Shunji (born 1896),