Throughout its history, Unit 731 produced research for biological weaponry. Unit 731 was one of six human experimentation sites financially supported by the Imperial Japanese government during the Second World War. [1] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much like what had been done with Nazi German researchers in Operation Paperclip. ", Prisoners were injected with diseases, disguised as vaccinations,[25] to study their effects. After Sud's body was carefully checked [by the surgeon], I handed a scalpel to [the surgeon] who, reversely gripping the scalpel, touched Sud's stomach skin and sliced downward. However, the amount of effort devoted to BW was not matched by its results. These books purported to reveal the "true" operations of Unit731, but falsely attributed unrelated photos to the Unit, which raised questions about their accuracy. As the last witnesses to this history grow old and die, its possible that the matter will never be addressed again. But that didn't stop a Japanese army medical officer named Shiro . They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. Unit 731 started out as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. [104], At Tokyo's Kyushu Imperial University in 1945, US POWs from a shot down B-29 were subjected to fatal medical experimentation.[105]. A Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. With the coming of the Red Army in August1945, the unit had to abandon their work in haste. At death, the corpses would only weigh 1/5 normal bodyweight.". The occupying US government undertook the cover-up of Japanese war crimes after the end of World War II, granting political immunity to military personnel who had engaged in human experimentation and other crimes against humanity, predominantly in mainland China. Unit 731: The horrors of biological warfare experiments that the world forgot. Unit 731 - Japans Secret Human Experiments Disturban History 236K subscribers Subscribe 22K 702K views 1 year ago Formed in response to western powers developing their own chemical and. Originally set up by the Kenpeitai military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shir Ishii, a combat medic officer in the Kwantung Army. In addition, poisoned food and candy were given to unsuspecting victims. One member of Unit 731 later recalled that very sick and unresisting captives would be laid out on the slab so a line could be inserted into their carotid artery. [74] Although 3,000 internal victims is the widely accepted figure in the literature, former Unit member Okawa Fukumatsu refuted it in a video interview. [36] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague. The history of Imperial Japan's human experiments was one in which Ishii and Unit 731 was the principal actor, but Unit 731 operated in a much larger context. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. November 1940. Unit 731 (731) led by Japanese microbiologist Shiro Ishii, was a covert biological warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook human experimentation mainly on Chinese, Koreans, and Russians, during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and World War II. Sanders was a highly regarded microbiologist and a member of America's military center for biological weapons. To determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of shrapnel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese Soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. [42] The plan was scheduled to launch on 22September 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.[43][44][45]. Though "a large number of babies were born in captivity", there have been no accounts of any survivors of Unit731, children included. The unit is estimated to have killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity", "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese", "CIA Special Collection ISHII, SHIRO_0005", "United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency", "Ruling recognizes Unit 731 used germ warfare in China", "Japan - Insects, Disease, and History | Montana State University", "Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus", "Pure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard for Human Suffering", "Unmasking Horror: A special report. Estimates of those killed by Unit731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May1944, but his attempts were repeatedly snubbed. [106] Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in case the remaining personnel were captured. In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the US also asserted that the trials were to only serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the US had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. [112] Whereas the perpetrators of Unit 731 were exempt from prosecution, the U.S. held a tribunal in Yokohama in 1948 that indicted nine Japanese physician professors and medical students for conducting vivisection upon captured American pilots; two professors were sentenced to death and others to 1520 years' imprisonment.[112]. "Unit 731" (2021), single from German Deathstep producer Kroww. Millions of inhumane experiments occurred in this research center. This got the attention of a staff member who saw it as an unusual condition. [7][8] On 28 August 2002, Tokyo District Court ruled that Japan had committed biological warfare in China and consequently had slaughtered many residents. In a 1998 correspondence letter between the DOJ and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Eli Rosenbaum, director of OSI, stated that this was due to two factors: There have been several films about the atrocities of Unit 731. Scientists in Unit 731 also experimented on their test subjects through pregnancy and rape. It operated covertly for ten years since 1935 in Harbin, China, and was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by Imperial Japan, due to its extensive use of lethal human experimentation. After World WarII, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who are banned from entering the United States. Unit 731 was a secret chemical and living warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. This page was last edited on 13 April 2023, at 07:50. [89] Once deemed healthy and fit for experimentation, prisoners lost their names and were given a three-digit number, which they retained until their death. [17], His younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China, and wrote in his memoir that he watched films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans. Inside Unit 731, Japans Disturbing Human Experiments Program During World War II. [16] It was divided at that time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit", with a base in Hsinking. Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. [39], Due to pressure from numerous accounts of the biowarfare attacks, Chiang Kai-shek sent a delegation of army and foreign medical personnel in November1941 to document evidence and treat the afflicted. Unit 731 (Japanese: 731, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai),[note 1] short for Manshu Detachment731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment[3]:198 and the Ishii Unit,[5] was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (19371945) and World War II. Proteinuria. In addition to the experimentation in Manchukuo, the Japanese ran human experimentation units all over, such as Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing and Unit 2646 in inner Mongolia. At the time of his arrival in Japan, he had no knowledge of what Unit731 was. the plan of Unit 731 was to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. [citation needed], In August2002, the Tokyo district court ruled for the first time that Japan had engaged in biological warfare. [115] This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit731 in Manchuria. As the war drew to a close in 1945, the Japanese demolished Unit 731 and most of the other research facilities in China to destroy . Some were also vivisected. 13 Apr 2023 06:39:48 The gas was adamsite (sneezing gas), and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. In World War II, Japan created a top-secret project named Unit 731.Officially called the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army, Unit 731 carried out human experiments on unwilling subjects. Male prisoners infected with syphilis would be told to rape female prisoners as well as male prisoners in order to see how syphilis spreads in the body. [92] Former Unit731 Youth Corps member Yoshio Shinozuka testified that the windows in these prison doors were so small that it was difficult to see in. Other articles where Unit 731 is discussed: World War II: The horror of war in pictures: Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army carried out horrific medical experiments on thousands of prisoners of war and civilians; men and women were subjected to chemical and biological agents and vivisected to survey the results. Based in Japanese-occupied . An expedition to Nanjing involved spreading typhoid and paratyphoid germs into the wells, marshes, and houses of the city, as well as infusing them in snacks distributed to locals. Had difficulties opening the eyes. To learn what they needed to know, doctors assigned to Unit 731 infected victims with the disease and withheld treatment to observe the uninterrupted course of the illness. Fetal survival and damage to mother's reproductive organs were objects of interest. Unit 731 started out as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. [75][76][77] Vivisections were also conducted on native Filipinos in the Philippines. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. A few years after World War I, the Geneva Protocol prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons during wartime in 1925. Five subjects were forced to drink a solution of yperite and lewisite gas in water, with or without decontamination. This team wore white overall suits, army hats, rubber boots, and pistols strapped to their sides.[86]. The idea seems to have been to translate the teams findings into civilian medicine, but if Unit 731s researchers ever published these results, the papers seem not to have survived the war years. Then, have a look at four of the most evil science experiments ever performed and find out whether or not any of the highly disturbing Nazi research actually contributed anything to medical science. None at all. Some children grew up inside the walls of Unit731, infected with syphilis. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. Insisting on anonymity, the former Japanese medical assistant recounted his first experience in dissecting a live human being, who had been deliberately infected with the plague, for the purpose of developing "plague bombs" for war. Venereal disease has been the bane of organized militaries since ancient Egypt, and so it stands to reason that the Japanese military would take an interest in the symptoms and treatment of syphilis. [40][41], During the final months of World WarII, codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, In this way, Unit 731 was performing the service of human experimentation for the entire Japanese medical community, in an on-going feedback loop. According to one eyewitness account, the limbs made a sound like a plank of wood when struck with a cane. [20] In a further parallel, the corpses of "sacrificed" subjects were disposed of by incineration. [102], Unit731 had branches in Linkou (Branch162), Mudanjiang, Hailin (Branch643), Sunwu (Branch673), Toan, and Hailar (Branch543). [124][125] Harris speculates that US scientists generally wanted to acquire it due to the concept of forbidden fruit, believing that lawful and ethical prohibitions could affect the outcomes of their research. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time. [The subjects] suffered such agony they were digging their nails into each other's flesh". Date unspecified. A Youth Corps member deployed to train at Unit731 recalled viewing a batch of subjects that would undergo syphilis testing: "one was a Chinese woman holding an infant, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the last was a White Russian woman with a boy of about six or seven. While Unit731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December1949 Khabarovsk war crime trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments. Low morale. A former member of the Special Team (who insisted on anonymity) recalled in 1995 his first vivisection conducted at the Unit: He didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. [35]:xii,173 The American historian Sheldon H. Harris states that over 200,000 died. Flamethrowers were also tested, on both covered and exposed skin. Some were forced to wear various types of gas masks; others wore military uniforms, and some wore no clothes at all. Xinhua via Getty ImagesA Unit 731 doctor operates on a patient that is part of a bacteriological experiment. . Japanese personnel in protective suits carry a stretcher through Yiwu, China during Unit 731s germ warfare tests. [28] Imperial Japanese Army surgeon Ken Yuasa suggests that practising vivisection on human subjects was widespread even outside Unit731,[31] estimating that at least 1,000 Japanese personnel were involved in the practice in mainland China. Tamura recalled: Sud had, a few days previously, been interested in talking about women, but now he was thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. A contemporary treatment, a primitive chemotherapy agent called Salvarsan, was sometimes administered over a period of months to observe the side effects, however. Members of Unit 731 were not immune from being subjects of experiments. Associated Press/LIFE via Wikimedia CommonsA Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. [11] Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese an advantage of separating the research station from their island, but also gave them access to as many Chinese individuals as they wanted for use as human experimental subjects. The opening of the new Museum of War Crime Evidence by Japanese Army Unit 731 on Aug. 15 in Harbin in northeast China was timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, part of commemorations across China that included a major Victory Day military parade in Beijing on Sept. 3. Other sources suggest that it was the usual practice in the Unit for surgeons to stuff a rag (or medical gauze) into the mouth of prisoners before commencing vivisection in order to stifle any screaming. All under the auspices of the US govt, ofc. [114] The sentences doled out to the Japanese perpetrators were unusually lenient by Soviet standards, and all but two of the defendants returned to Japan by the 1950s (with one prisoner dying in prison and the other committing suicide inside his cell). Unit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast Chinas Jilin Province. Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in various positions. There were also twelve members who were formally tried and sentenced in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. The pardon of Japanese war criminals, among whom were Unit 731's commanding officers General Shiro Ishii and General Masaji Kitano . Weapon Test in Unit 731 Experiments It is common to test weapons before going to the war, but it is uncommon to test weapons on living humans. The prisoners brought to Zhongma included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, as well as political prisoners and people rounded up on trumped up charges by the Kempeitai. Meanwhile, prolonged X-ray exposure sterilized and killed thousands of research participants, as well as inflicting horrible burns when the emitting plates were miscalibrated or held too close to the subjects nipples, genitals, or faces. The trial of the Japanese perpetrators was held in Khabarovsk in December1949; a lengthy partial transcript of trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by the Moscow foreign languages press, including an English-language edition. A portion has been preserved and is open to visitors as a War Crimes Museum. It is suspected that the children of female prisoners were killed after birth or aborted.[68]. Weakness of all four extremeties. Warning: Child-related post. He later testified about the playfulness of the experimenters:[24], Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. It was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China) and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. In a number of separate experiments it was then determined how these parameters depend on the time of day a victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, how the victim had been treated before the immersion ("after keeping awake for a night", "after hunger for 24 hours", "after hunger for 48 hours", "immediately after heavy meal", "immediately after hot meal", "immediately after muscular exercise", "immediately after cold bath", "immediately after hot bath"), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions with regard to dietary nutrient intake ("high protein (of animal nature)", "high protein (of vegetable nature)", "low protein intake", and "standard diet"), and salt intake (45g NaCl per day, 15g NaCl per day, no salt). [34][35]:xii,173. [46] Victims were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test pathogen-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments, and explosive bombs as well as bayonets and knives. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and sometimes euphemistically referred to as "logs" (, maruta), used in such contexts as "How many logs fell?". [88] One of the prisons housed women and children (Building8), while the other prison housed men (Building7). The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so, the morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare. Its true purpose was masked as the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. For example, female captives of childbearing age were sometimes forcibly impregnated so that weapon and trauma experiments could be done on them. From contemporary accounts, it is known that more than 2,000 civilians died of plague following this attack, and that another 1,000 or so died in nearby Yiwu after the plague was carried there by sick railway workers. Located in the Pingfang district of what is now China, most of . In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans;[49] placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood, notably with horse blood; exposed to lethal doses of X-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with seawater; and burned or buried alive. His perverted imagination was captured by the possibilities of biological and chemical warfare, and in the Japan of the 1920s and '30s, he found supporters in the increasingly nationalistic and fanatical military. The purpose of these tests was to determine the amount of water in an individual's body and to see how long one could survive with a very low to no water intake. [122], Japanese Biological Warfare operations were by far the largest during WWII, and "possibly with more people and resources than the BW producing nations of France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the Soviet Union combined, between the world wars. Date unspecified. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tg Unit", for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Most Japanese civilian scientists before their time at Unit 731 had never used science in an unethical and malicious way. [38] Tularemia was also tested on Chinese civilians. Looks with hollow eyes. Ishibashi asked where she came from and learned that she was from Ukraine. There was space between the outer walls of the cells and the outer walls of the prison, enabling the guards to walk behind the cells. Injecting the blister fluid from one subject into another subject and analyses of blood and soil were also performed. From August1940 on, the units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army" () or "Unit731" (731) for short. [107] Sanders took this information to General Douglas MacArthur, who was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and responsible for rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupations. Unit731 tested many different chemical agents on prisoners and had a building dedicated to gas experiments. 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