The documents included Niiduma's record of the Japanese Army ordering Unit 731 on Aug. 15, 1945 to have evidence of developing germ weaponry destroyed, as well as his records of the U.S. authority questioning himself and other Japanese officers, the report said.

According to his records, the U.S. authority told Niiduma and others "not to mix scientific research with war crimes," which practically exempted Japan from liability of conducting human experiments in China.

The bunch of documents, collected by Niiduma during the war, were given to a research institute of the Defense Agency on Wednesday by his second daughter Tomoe Obata.

The documents also included a letter from Tomosada Masuda, an army doctor of Unit 731, to Niiduma in November 1945, which recorded that another army doctor, Ryoichi Naito, had proposed concealing the fact that human experiments were conducted in China.

"We're tying to fix this leak in the roof, and there's a storm," World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson said. "The storm is that the virus is in animals almost everywhere and the lack of effective attention that's being addressed to the problem."

Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands with a population of 220 million people, has a patchwork of local, regional and national bureaucracies that often send mixed messages. The impression, health officials said, is often that no one is truly at the helm.

"I don't think anyone can understand it unless you come here and see it for yourself," said Steven Bjorge, a WHO epidemiologist in Jakarta. "The amount of decentralization here is breathtaking."

He said Health Ministry officials often meet with outside experts to formulate plans to fight bird flu, but they are rarely implemented.

"Their power only extends to the walls of their office," Bjorge said, adding that the advice must reach nearly 450 districts, where local officials then decide whether to take action.

Indonesia has undergone a sometimes rocky transition to democracy since dictator Suharto was ousted in 1998, with many powers held by the central government being transferred to regional and community control.

But the process has been haphazard, and funding and policy decisions are often at the whim of inexperienced officials, mayors and village heads.

National government officials concede there is a problem.

"The local government has the money, thus the power to decide what to prioritize," said Hariyadi Wibisono, director of communicable disease control at the Ministry of Health. "If some district sees bird flu as not important, then we have a problem."

Indonesia has logged at least 36 human deaths in the past year - 25 since January - and is expected to soon eclipse Vietnam's 42 fatalities. The two countries make up the bulk of the world's 127 total deaths since the virus began spreading in Asian poultry stocks in late 2003.

Attention has been fixed on one village on Sumatra island where six of seven relatives died of bird flu. An eighth family member was buried before samples were collected, but the WHO considers her part of the cluster.

Experts have not been able to make a direct link between the relatives and infected birds, which has led them to suspect limited human-to-human transmission. But no one outside the family of blood relatives - no spouses - has fallen ill and experts say the virus has not mutated.

Scientists believe human-to-human transmission has occurred in a few other smaller family clusters, all involving blood relatives. Experts theorize that may mean some people have a genetic susceptibility to the disease.

On Wednesday, WHO said 54 uninfected relatives and contacts of the Indonesian family cluster are under quarantine and are taking the antiviral drug Tamiflu and being monitored by health workers. The quarantine is voluntary and the teams are also visiting all the homes in the 400-household village in North Sumatra to look for signs of illness. It said there are no signs the disease has spread since May 22.

Bird flu remains hard for people to catch, and most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds. Experts fear the virus will mutate into a highly contagious form that passes easily among people, possible sparking a pandemic.

Experts say the best way to battle bird flu in Indonesia is to tackle it in poultry. But that message is not always getting through. Many local governments have refused to carry out mass poultry slaughters in infected areas, and vaccination has been sporadic at best.

Such measures helped other hard-hit countries like Vietnam and Thailand curb outbreaks. Both have strong central governments that have taken a leading role in the effort.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has been working with officials to improve poultry surveillance in Indonesia and quicken response times to outbreaks.

But public awareness and bio-security standards remain low in the densely populated countryside, home to hundreds of millions of backyard chickens.

"It's not quite so easy here, where you have to have the local authorities and provincial authorities and national all on board," said Jeff Mariner, an animal health expert from Tufts University working with the FAO in Jakarta.

"We find outbreaks every week scattered throughout Java. It's a diffusely endemic disease. In most districts, you can find it at any time," he said. "It's a staggering undertaking in a decentralized country."

At least 36 people have died in Indonesia from bird flu, out of a total world toll of 127, WHO said. The country averaged one human bird flu death every 2 1/2 days in May, putting it on pace to soon become the world's hardest-hit country, surpassing Vietnam's 42 deaths.

The boy's death is the third in the province from the H5N1 virus since last week. A 10-year-old girl and her 18-year-old brother earlier died within hours of each other in another village.

In North Sumatra province, six members of a single family in a tiny farm village recently died of bird flu and a seventh was sickened. An eighth family member was buried before samples were collected, but WHO considered her part of the family cluster of cases, the largest ever reported.

Experts have not found any link between the family and infected birds, which has led them to suspect human-to-human transmission. Only blood relatives - no spouses or in-laws - were sickened and no one outside the family has fallen ill.

Scientists suspect human-to-human transmission has also occurred in a few other smaller family clusters, all involving blood relatives. Experts theorize that could indicate that some people have a genetic susceptibility to the disease.

Bird flu remains hard for people to catch, and most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a highly contagious form that passes easily among people, possible sparking a pandemic. However, there is no sign that the virus has changed.

This week a two-day conference all about birds has taken place in Rome, set up by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Experts from around 100 countries gathered to try and fathom whether the H5N1 strain of bird flu that has killed at least 127 people worldwide and ravaged poultry flocks in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe is caused by migrating birds or the commercial poultry business.

If avian flu reaches the Dordogne, it would decimate the economy of the 'département' -- one of France's largest counties -- and ruin the Périgord farmers dedicated to the art of making foie gras.

Yet the foie gras farmers seem particularly unconcerned about the possible threat. In familiar French fashion, they shrug their shoulders, let their muscled arms flap against their blue overalled thighs and make a dismissive popping sound.

They are following EU regulations over the indoor housing of all commercial fowl. But the foie gras farmers are far more anxious about the effect upon their business of California legislation last year banning the California trade from 2012 in breeding ducks and geese for their vastly expanded livers. And they are nervous that the other U.S. foie gras area of production, New York state, may follow suit. Will international legislation then force the French to do the same?

Animal-rights activists have been banging the drum for some time over the cruelty of the liver-fattening process. And the state of California caved.

In France called 'gavage,' the method involves pouring corn into the bird through a funnel set into its throat. It sounds a dreadful business.

Yet there are two facts that should give pause for consideration. One, these fowl apparently don't have the muscles in their throats that would cause us humans to gag at such an action. The other is the sight of the flocks when the old women, flapping in their black skirts in a manner not unlike their birds, enter their fields.

As soon as they appear with their three-legged stools, funnel and sack of grain, the birds come tottering across the grass, abandoning whatever activity had grabbed their interest till then. It doesn't seem the action of a creature in fear. Of course, this is foie gras production at its best: without machine intervention and with birds running free in the fields. Before avian flu, that is.

But whether or not it is a despicable way to treat any bird, given the small size of the foie gras market and limited number of people who can afford to buy it, it's a wonder that the force of the focus upon the practice has inspired the Californian administration to legislate for its shut down.

Why has it not focused first on the comfort of a bird we all eat, all the time -- cheap, mass-produced battery-farmed chicken? They live in excruciating circumstances pressed into cages with no room to move, standing in their own excrement. Some have their beaks removed to prevent them from attacking their fellow captives. Whatever they are fed, it certainly isn't fresh from the ground and can contain elements not produced in nature.

On the eve of the avian-flu conference, Samuel Jutzi, director of FAO's animal production and health division, said that so far, research had shown that wild birds were likely to introduce the virus in unaffected areas but that the disease became widespread "mostly through poor hygiene and through poultry trade."

Anti-foie gras campaigners may be crying 'foul' at the wrong bird.

Sautéed foie gras is often served with this onion marmalade, which is good with any cold cuts or with chicken liver pâté.

Makes just over 1 cup

-- 1 pound onions, thinly sliced

-- 2 tablespoons regular olive oil

-- 1 cup red wine

-- 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

-- 1 bay leaf

-- 2 tablespoons sugar

-- 1/2 teaspoon salt

-- freshly ground black pepper

-- Gently sauté the onions in the oil in a covered pan till wilted and loosing their shape, stirring regularly.

-- Remove lid to evaporate any remaining moisture and stir in salt.

-- Add the wine, bay leaf, sugar and pepper and keeping cooking over the lowest heat, stirring regularly, until it all becomes a glossy, syrupy shapeless mass.

-- Add the vinegar and stir, then cook it out, stirring regularly, until you are left with a syrup again.

-- Add a few grinds of black pepper, leave to cool, then pack in a sterilized jar and store in the refrigerator a few weeks maximum.