Japan

Japan is presented through contrasting episodes in the history of chemical pest control: DDT helped control lice affecting some two million people in 1945–46, yet later tests found it ineffective against resistant lice, while a separate campaign in the Bonin Islands used an attractant to target male fruit flies. Together, these cases place Japan within the book’s account of both the reach of postwar insecticides and the search for more selective methods.

DDT and Louse Control

After the Second World War, DDT’s success in controlling lice in Italy was matched by control efforts affecting some two million people in Japan during the winter of 1945–46. The episode belongs to the early record of DDT as a powerful public-health tool, but the book also describes warning signs that its effectiveness would not last everywhere.

When DDT powder was applied to a group of Korean soldiers, lice collected and tested showed no increase in their natural mortality rate. Similar results came from lice collected from vagrants in Tokyo, including people at an asylum in Itabashi. Further tests involving refugee camps in Syria, Jordan, and eastern Egypt likewise confirmed DDT’s ineffectiveness against the lice examined. Japan thus figures both in the story of DDT’s early large-scale success and in evidence that the insecticide could fail against lice in particular populations.

The Bonin Islands and Targeted Control

A different approach was tested in the Bonin Islands, 450 miles south of Japan. Government scientists combined a poison with methyl-eugenol, an attractant irresistible to male oriental fruit flies and melon flies. Small pieces of fiberboard impregnated with the chemicals were distributed by air across the island chain, drawing male flies to the poisoned material.

Begun in 1960, the program was described as male annihilation. A year later, the Agriculture Department estimated that more than 99 percent of the population had been eliminated. The account presents this method as having advantages over conventional broadcasting of insecticides: rather than dispersing poison indiscriminately, it used an attractant to direct it toward male flies. Japan’s place in this episode is geographical, through the nearby island chain, and illustrates the book’s contrast between broad chemical application and more targeted techniques.