Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sud, an employee of the first division at Unit731, became infected with bubonic plague as a result of the production of plague bacteria. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. Technician Naokata Ishibashi interacted with two female prisoners. Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. This Russian was shot to death. [69][70] In addition to Chinese casualties, 1,700 Japanese troops in Zhejiang during Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to unleash the biological agent, indicating serious issues with distribution. 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. A report on the Japanese use of plague-infected fleas on Changde was made widely available the following year but was not addressed by the Allied Powers until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 condemning the attacks. [133] In April2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607members of Unit731, in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science.[134][135]. The truth is that Japan's Unit 731 committed some of the most heinous war crimes ever. Unit731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department operated biological weapon production, testing, deployment, and storage facilities. 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. To breed the most lethal strains possible, doctors monitored patients for rapid onset of symptoms and quick progression. Some of the prisoners managed to jump out but these were only the bold ones. Subjects had limbs amputated and reattached to the other side of the body, while others had their limbs crushed or frozen, or had the circulation cut off to observe the progress of gangrene. In fact, Japan arguably started the war by attacking Manchuria in 1931, and it inarguably waged war with China by invading in 1937. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit731, but recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records located in the future. However, he rejected victims' compensation claims on the grounds that they had already been settled by international peace treaties. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. First, the Imperial Army of Japan wanted to. Injecting the blister fluid from one subject into another subject and analyses of blood and soil were also performed. Japan committed many horrors throughout WWII, but arguably the most gruesome acts occurred in Unit 731. Twenty subjects were divided into three groups and placed in combat emplacements, trenches, gazebos, and observatories. But that didn't stop a Japanese army medical officer named Shiro . [20] In a further parallel, the corpses of "sacrificed" subjects were disposed of by incineration. In 2006, Toyo Ishiia nurse who worked at the school during the warrevealed that she had helped bury bodies and pieces of bodies on the school's grounds shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945. [27][28] In a video interview, former Unit731 member Okawa Fukumatsu admitted to having vivisected a pregnant woman. 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. Sometimes he did this by dousing the limb with hot water, sometimes by holding it close to an open fire, and other times by leaving the subject untreated overnight to see how long it took for the persons own blood to thaw it out. [60] Once frozen, Yoshimura would strike their affected limbs with a short stick, "emitting a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck". Others were deliberately infected with plague bacteria and other microbes. These books purported to reveal the "true" operations of Unit731, but falsely attributed unrelated photos to the Unit, which raised questions about their accuracy. ", Prisoners were injected with diseases, disguised as vaccinations,[25] to study their effects. That was just playing around. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at a periodic interval. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. Its records were mostly burned, destroying any useful information the team had managed to generate in 13 years of research. [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. Plague-infected fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit731 and Unit1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes over Chinese cities, including coastal Ningbo and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1940 and 1941. Two hours later the temperature was 37.7 degrees, and three hours later the subject recovered. A prisoner would be taken from his cell. A few years later, as the war was nearing its end, Japan likewise planned to bomb America with plague-ridden fleas, but never got the chance. Witnesses to the raid recall a fine reddish dust settling on surfaces all over town, followed by a rash of painful flea bites that afflicted nearly everyone. Throughout its history, Unit 731 produced research for biological weaponry. None of the Japanese scientists in Unit 731 was ever punished. In this way, Unit 731 was performing the service of human experimentation for the entire Japanese medical community, in an on-going feedback loop. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. When the plague bacillus had been bred to what was felt to be a sufficiently lethal caliber, the last generation of victims to be infected were exposed to huge numbers of fleas, Y. pestis preferred vector of contagion. [120][121], Also in 1981, the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China was given by Ken Yuasa. Victims included not only kidnapped men, women (including pregnant women) and children but also babies born from the systemic rape perpetrated by the staff inside the compound. [103], While Tokyo courts acknowledged in 2002 that Unit731 has been involved in biological warfare research, as of 2011[update] the Japanese government had made no official acknowledgment of the atrocities committed against test subjects and rejected the Chinese government's requests for DNA samples to identify human remains (including skulls and bones) found near an army medical school. 126134, Human Lab Rats: Japanese Atrocities, the Last Secret of World War II (Penthouse, May 2000). 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. June 1942. rape became a common feature of Unit 731s experiments, infected with several of the most lethal pathogens known to science, Japan likewise planned to bomb America with plague-ridden fleas, Nazi research actually contributed anything to medical science. [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]. Then, over several days, prisoners were eventually drained of blood and deprived of nutrients and water. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. Unit 731 was a Japanese biological warfare research unit that operated during WWII. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. One one occasion, he demanded a human brain to experiment on, so guards grabbed a prisoner and held him down while one of them hacked. Japanese personnel in protective suits carry a stretcher through Yiwu, China during Unit 731s germ warfare tests. The Unit731 complex covered six square kilometers (2.3sqmi) and consisted of more than 150buildings. Approximately 30 kilograms (66lb) of bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in a few days. [15], In 1936, Emperor Hirohito issued a decree authorizing the expansion of the unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department. 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. Genitals of female prisoners that were infected with syphilis were called "jam-filled buns" by guards.[68]. Thousands of prisoners were killed in cruel human experiments at Unit 731, which was based near the northeastern China city of Harbin, north of the Korean peninsula and on a border with Russia. As stated above, dehydration experiments were performed on the victims. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. [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. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. The fleas were then packed in dust and sealed inside clay bomb casings. In April2018, the National Archives of Japan disclosed a nearly complete list of 3,607members of Unit731 to Katsuo Nishiyama, a professor at Shiga University of Medical Science. Additionally, Unit 731 produced biological weapons that were used in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces, which included Chinese cities and towns, water sources, and fields. "[33], Unit731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644 and Unit 100, among others) were involved in research, development and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both military and civilian) throughout World WarII. Some were forced to wear various types of gas masks; others wore military uniforms, and some wore no clothes at all. November 1940. Yoshimura Hisato, a physiologist assigned to Unit 731, took a special interest in hypothermia. A Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. Unit 731, Japan's Horrific Human Experiments Program During World War II Unit 731 personnel conduct a bacteriological trial upon a test subject in Nong'an County of northeast China's Jilin Province. [6], One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to perform experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956. 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 . Among those accused of war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otoz Yamada, commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria. [29], According to A. S. Wells, the majority of victims were Chinese,[31] with a lesser percentage being Russian, Mongolian, and Korean. Flamethrowers were tested on people. None of the Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, or Russian captives assigned to Unit 731 survived their confinement. Since then, much more in depth testimony has been given in Japan. [35]:xii,173 The American historian Sheldon H. Harris states that over 200,000 died. [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. [62] Yoshimura's lack of remorse was evident in an article he wrote for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology in 1950 in which he admitted to using 20 children and a three-day-old infant in experiments which exposed them to zero-degree-Celsius ice and salt water. 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. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental. [129][130] Sabur Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description, based on officers' testimony. Unit member Naeo Ikeda wrote: In my experience, when A type blood 100 cc was transfused to an O type subject, whose pulse was 87 per minute and temperature was 35.4 degrees C, 30 minutes later the temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with slight trepidation. Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. There is at least one recorded instance of "friendly" social interaction between prisoners and Unit731 staff. Most Japanese civilian scientists before their time at Unit 731 had never used science in an unethical and malicious way. It was around this time that Unit 731 began referring to confined research subjects as logs, or Maruta in Japanese. Later in 1981, one of the last surviving members of the Tokyo Tribunal, Judge Rling, had expressed bitterness in not being made aware of the suppression of evidence of Unit 731 and wrote, "It is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the court by the U.S. A report authored by unknown researcher in the Kamo Unit (Unit731) describes a large human experiment of yperite gas (mustard gas) on 710September 1940. 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. [1] Japan's occupation of Manchuria began in 1931 after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Other attacks, using anthrax, killed approximately 6,000 more people in the area. 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. He performed his experiments while he was working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences. [96] Unfortunately for the prisoners of Unit731, escape was an impossibility. Flamethrowers were tested on humans. [115] This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit731 in Manchuria. Bayonets, swords, and knives were also studied in this way, though the victims were usually bound for these tests. Nishiyama reportedly intended to publish the list online to encourage further study into the unit.[98]. "It was said that a small number of these poor men, women, and children who became marutas were also mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. They also were exposed to as much as 1,800rounds of yperite gas. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square [97sqft] and two meters [6.6ft] high was used. 13 Apr 2023 06:39:48 At the time of his arrival in Japan, he had no knowledge of what Unit731 was. That guard would then telephone to the "Special Team" in the inner-prison (Shiro Ishii's brother was head of this Special Team). The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from 2 to 25years in a Siberian labor camp. It also operated a secret research and experimental school in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. Ishii ordered every member of the group to disappear and "take the secret to the grave". Unit 731 is a biological warfare organ of the Imperial Japanese Army, which conducted horrific human experiments on prisoners of war and civilians in northeast China during WWII. One element of the unit, called "Maruta," took this research a little further than the usual bounds of medical ethics by observing injuries and the course of disease on living patients. MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants:[108] he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. Unit100 also experimented with toxic gas. After this look at Unit 731, read up on some more of the worst war crimes ever committed as well as other Japanese war crimes from the World War II era. Most or all Units had branch offices, which were also often referred to as "Units". Low morale. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there. Unit 731 was housed within 150 buildings with a staff of 3,000. [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. On 6May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington in order to inform it that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'war crimes' evidence". A few years after World War I, the Geneva Protocol prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons during wartime in 1925. 10-14 Unit 731 performed medical experiments, such as human vivisections, on detained Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, Russians and Americans, There is such a thing as professional curiosity: What would happen if we did such and such? What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? It had around 4,500containers to be used to raise fleas, six cauldrons to produce various chemicals, and around 1,800containers to produce biological agents. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May1944, but his attempts were repeatedly snubbed. [56] Wano guessed that the man was Russian because there were many Russians living in the area at that time.[56]. Wound patterns and penetration depths were then compared on the bodies of the dead and dying inmates. These experiments also showed how easily we can rationalize these kinds of actions if we believe that we are doing it for the greater good. As the last witnesses to this history grow old and die, its possible that the matter will never be addressed again. 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. Xinhua via Getty ImagesUnit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast Chinas Jilin Province. He stated that there were at least over 10,000 victims of internal experiments at the Unit and that he himself vivisected thousands. 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. Potential witnesses, such as the 300 remaining prisoners, were either gassed or fed poison while the 600 Chinese and Manchurian laborers were shot. [109] The Americans believed that the research data was valuable and did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons. reveals distressing evidence of Unit 731 experiments involving US prisoners and the use of British as control groups in Northern China, Hainau . Some children grew up inside the walls of Unit731, infected with syphilis. Its head was Lieutenant Shiro Ishii. In 1932, Surgeon General Shir Ishii (, Ishii Shir), chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and protg of Army Minister Sadao Araki, was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory (AEPRL). [19], A special project, codenamed Maruta, used human beings for experiments. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. [128], Japanese history textbooks usually contain references to Unit731, but do not go into detail about allegations, in accordance with this principle. Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and their esophagus reattached to the intestines. Inside The Little-Known Story Of Linda Lee Cadwell And Her Marriage To Bruce Lee, Inside The Legend Of The Banshee, The Most Chilling Spirit In Celtic Folklore, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the final days of the war to destroy evidence of their activities, but many were sturdy enough to remain somewhat intact. The 2001 documentary Japanese Devils largely consists of interviews with fourteen Unit731 staff members taken prisoner by China and later released. They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. [88] One of the prisons housed women and children (Building8), while the other prison housed men (Building7). [34][35]:xii,173. Five subjects were forced to drink a solution of yperite and lewisite gas in water, with or without decontamination. [86] No one could enter without special permits and an ID pass with a photograph, and the entry/exit times were recorded. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases, including plague and typhoid, in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde. They may also have included a small number of European, American, Indian, Australian, and New Zealander prisoners of war. An attack on Changde in 1941 reportedly led to approximately 10,000 biological casualties and 1,700 deaths among ill-prepared Japanese troops, in most cases due to cholera. The U.S. cover-up of Unit 731 war crimes. One of the most common experiments at Unit 731 was the vivisection of diseased bodies. . Associated Press/LIFE via Wikimedia CommonsA Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. Study methods in these experiments were barbaric. 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. Members of the Unit referred to Yoshimura as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded animal" because he would conduct his work with strictness. [95] Seiichi Morimura in his book The Devil's Feast went into some greater detail regarding this escape attempt. [127] The information was from the country's national archives. Weakness of all four extremeties. After being infected with various diseases, exposed to chemical weapons, or suffering crush injuries, bullet wounds, and shrapnel injuries, the pregnant subjects were opened up and the effects on the fetuses studied. The report describes conditions of every subject precisely without mentioning what happened to them in the long run. The ministry alleged that no academic research supported the claim. 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. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit731's activities. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this reality: One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. 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. 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. Ishii ran Unit 731 as his own personal house of horrors. The Unit 731 complex. This page was last edited on 13 April 2023, at 07:50. [14], A prison break in the autumn of 1934, which jeopardized the facility's secrecy, and an explosion in 1935 (believed to be sabotage) led Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. In 1984, Japanese historian Tsuneishi Keiichi translated and published over 4,000 pages of U.S. documents on Japanese biological warfare. Ishibashi asked where she came from and learned that she was from Ukraine. 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. During biological bomb experiments, researchers dressed in protective suits would examine the dying victims. In one of many records, after a Japanese surgeon fetched a Filipino native from the population and performed vivisection on him, he then removed his appendix and sewed him back up. [55] A former army major and technician gave the following testimony anonymously (at the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university): In 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. [citation needed], In August2002, the Tokyo district court ruled for the first time that Japan had engaged in biological warfare. The hypothetical possibility of vertical transmission (from mother to child) of diseases, particularly syphilis, was the stated reason for the torture. This took place in August1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. Hyperemic conjunctivae. In 1958, Japanese author Shsaku End published the book The Sea and Poison about human experimentation in Fukuoka, which is thought to have been based on a real incident. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity", "Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed", "(RARE) Unit 731 surgeon Okawa Fukumatsu (interview footage)", "Interview with former Unit 731 member Nobuo Kamada", "Vivisectionist recalls his day of reckoning", "Unmasking Horror -- A special report. And out of all the areas in which World War II was fought, none were active as long as what would come to be known as the Pacific Theater. [1], Some test subjects were selected to gather a wide cross-section of the population and included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, homeless and mentally disabled people, which included infants, men, the elderly and pregnant women, as well as those rounded up by the Kenpeitai military police for alleged "suspicious activities". [16] It was divided at that time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit", with a base in Hsinking. [7][8] On 28 August 2002, Tokyo District Court ruled that Japan had committed biological warfare in China and consequently had slaughtered many residents. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. 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?". 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