japanese unit 731 experimentsjapanese unit 731 experiments

[26], Thousands of men, women, children, and infants interned at prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection, often performed without anesthesia and usually lethal. [34][35]:xii,173. In addition, poisoned food and candy were given to unsuspecting victims. Ishii ordered every member of the group to disappear and "take the secret to the grave". [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. [116], As above, during the United States occupation of Japan, the members of Unit731 and the members of other experimental units were allowed to go free. Administration" of the Imperial Japanese Army, Unit 731 and Unit 100, as well as their subsidiary branches, performed human experimentation on the innocents under the leadership of Dr. Ishii Shiro. He then received authorization to move to Pingfang, approximately 24 kilometers (15mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new, much larger facility. [129][130] Sabur Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description, based on officers' testimony. Chief of the Personnel Division of the Kwantung Army Headquarters Tamura Tadashi testified that, when he was shown the inner-prison, he looked into the cells and saw living people in chains, some moved around, others were lying on the bare floor and were in a very sick and helpless condition. [127] The information was from the country's national archives. 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. But before Unit 731 was broken up in 1945, it committed some of the most torturous human experiments in recorded history. This term originated as a joke on the part of the staff because the official cover story for the facility given to local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. November 1940. In one case, at least half a liter of blood was drawn at two-to-three-day intervals.[54]. 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. [35]:xii,173 The American historian Sheldon H. Harris states that over 200,000 died. "Medicine itself must become a weapon," said Nakagawa Yonezo, Professor Emeritus at Osaka University. Some of Unit731's satellite (branch) facilities are still in use by various Chinese industrial companies. [117] As the chief of the unit, Shiro Ishii was granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes by the American occupation authorities, because he had provided human experimentation research materials to them. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. The Ministry for Education attempted to remove this passage from his textbook before it was taught in public schools, on the basis that the testimony was insufficient. Guards would hold him while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an ax. Its true purpose was masked as the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. Technician Naokata Ishibashi interacted with two female prisoners. While he was there, he watched footage of human experiments and executions from Unit731. Koizumi had joined a secret poison gas research committee in 1915, during World War I, when he and other Imperial Japanese Army officers were impressed by the successful German use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres, in which the Allies suffered 5,000 deaths and 15,000 wounded as a result of the chemical attack. [40][41], During the final months of World WarII, codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, [56] Ice was then chipped away, with the affected area being subjected to various treatments, such as being doused in water, exposed to the heat of fire, etc. Whenever he moved, a rope around his neck tightened. [19], A special project, codenamed Maruta, used human beings for experiments. Ishii had proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, on the grounds that Western powers were developing their own programs. The ministry alleged that no academic research supported the claim. Official silence during the American occupation of Japan, Post-occupation Japanese media coverage and debate, Significance in postwar research on bio-warfare and medicine, Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II (Pacific Theater). [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. 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. Ishibashi asked where she came from and learned that she was from Ukraine. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal. That was just playing around. [102], Unit731 had branches in Linkou (Branch162), Mudanjiang, Hailin (Branch643), Sunwu (Branch673), Toan, and Hailar (Branch543). The design of the facilities made them hard to destroy by bombing. 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. The prison cells had wooden floors and a squat toilet in each. November 1940. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there. Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September1945. Even if they had managed to escape the quadrangle (itself a heavily fortified building full of staff), they would have had to get over a three-meter-high (9.8ft) brick wall surrounding the complex, and then across a dry moat filled with electrified wire running around the perimeter of the complex (which can be seen in aerial pictures of the Unit).[97]. Prisoners were generally well fed on a diet of rice or wheat, meat, fish, and occasionally even alcohol in order to be in normal health at the beginning of experiments. While they have added over 60,000names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. [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. [63] Although this article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Since then, much more in depth testimony has been given in Japan. All under the auspices of the US govt, ofc. Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, vacuum chamber experiments on humans, vivisection, amputation, and standard weapons testing. Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted 12 top military leaders and scientists from Unit731 and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit1644 in Nanjing and Unit100 in Changchun in the Khabarovsk war crimes trials. They also were exposed to as much as 1,800rounds of yperite gas. Its records were mostly burned, destroying any useful information the team had managed to generate in 13 years of research. They show what humans are capable of when they are given free rein to experiment on other human beings. [18] Medical doctors and professors from Japan were attracted to join Unit731 both by the rare opportunity to conduct human experimentation and the Army's strong financial backing. The Truth of Unit 731: Elite medical students and human experiments (2017). Proteinuria. [93] The inner-prison was a highly secured building complete with cast iron doors. . One of the most common experiments at Unit 731 was the vivisection of diseased bodies. Once at the inner-prison, technicians would take samples of the prisoners' blood and stool, test their kidney function, and collect other physical data. the plan of Unit 731 was to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. Bayonets, swords, and knives were also studied in this way, though the victims were usually bound for these tests. Some prisoners, including Russian and Chinese, were frantically roaming the corridors and kept yelling and shouting. The report describes conditions of every subject precisely without mentioning what happened to them in the long run. [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. [9][10], Japan started its biological weapons program in the 1930s, partly because biological weapons were banned by the Geneva Convention of 1925; they reasoned that the ban verified its effectiveness as a weapon. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. Among those accused of war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otoz Yamada, commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria. One of the most heinous types of experiments conducted in Unit 731 was . [106] Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in case the remaining personnel were captured. [68] Until Sanders finally threatened the Japanese with bringing the Soviets into the picture, little information about biological warfare was being shared with the Americans. And out of all the atrocities that Imperial Japan unleashed upon the Chinese people during this brutal occupation, probably none were as gratuitously hateful as the operations of Unit 731, the Japanese biological warfare unit that somehow plumbed new depths in what was already a genocidal war. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and infected mentally-ill patients with typhus. 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. Parts of organs, such as the brain, lungs, and liver, were removed from others. 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. [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. But that didn't stop a Japanese army medical officer named Shiro . Takashi Tsuchiya. Warning: Child-related post. Japanese discussions of Unit731's activity began in the 1950s, after the end of the American occupation of Japan. 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. "[68] The children of these women were tested in ways similar to their parents, with specific emphasis on determining how longer infection periods affected the effectiveness of treatments. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at a periodic interval. November 1940. 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. Unit731 staff included approximately 300 researchers, including doctors and bacteriologists. [128], Japanese history textbooks usually contain references to Unit731, but do not go into detail about allegations, in accordance with this principle. Another group was clothed in summer military uniform and shoes; three had masks and another three had no mask. At first, these patients were volunteers from the ranks of the army, but as the experiments reached the limits of what could be non-invasively observed, and as the supply of volunteers dried up, the unit turned to the study of Chinese POWs and civilian captives. These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks, infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells, as well as other areas, with anthrax- and plague-carrier fleas, typhoid, cholera, or other deadly pathogens. Wikimedia CommonsGeneral Shiro Ishii, the commander of Unit 731. Each cell door had a small window in it. 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. Ishii ran Unit 731 as his own personal house of horrors. The hypothetical possibility of vertical transmission (from mother to child) of diseases, particularly syphilis, was the stated reason for the torture. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. Some of the tests have been described as "psychopathically sadistic, with no conceivable military application". It also operated a secret research and experimental school in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. The Unit731 complex covered six square kilometers (2.3sqmi) and consisted of more than 150buildings. September 1937. Unit731 was divided into eight divisions: Unit731 had other units underneath it in the chain of command; there were several other units under the auspice of Japan's biological weapons programs. 1936-1945: Unit 731 the Asian Auschwitz was a massive biological warfare research program of the Japanese Imperial Army under the command of Lt. General Dr. Ishii Shiro in Pin Fang, Manchuria outside the city of Harbin. 94111; A Short History of Biological Warfare (PDF) p. 12, A Short History of Biological Warfare (PDF) p. 27, Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces, biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk, List of war apology statements issued by Japan, List of Japanese-run internment camps during World War II, List of Axis personnel indicted for war crimes, Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, Unethical human experimentation in the United States, "Unmasking Horror A special report. Based in Japanese-occupied . Unit 731 was a Japanese biological warfare research unit that operated during WWII. Five subjects were forced to drink a solution of yperite and lewisite gas in water, with or without decontamination. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it more... 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