Unit 731 was similar to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp as they both did human experiments during World War II. I got the information from Wikipedia and other links.
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Unit 731 Complex
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Location
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Pingfang
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Coordinates
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45.6°N 126.633333°ECoordinates:
45.6°N 126.633333°E
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Date
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1935–1945
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Attack type
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Human experimentation.
Biological/chemical warfare |
Weapon(s)
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Biological weapons
Chemical weapons Explosives |
Deaths
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Over 3,000 from inside experiments and tens of
thousands from field experiments
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Perpetrators
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General Shirō Ishii
Lt. General Masaji Kitano Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army |
Unit 731
(731部隊 Nana-san-ichi butai, Chinese: 731部队) was a covert
biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial
Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second
Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of
the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel. Unit 731 was
based at the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese
puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China).
It
was officially known as the Epidemic
Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部
Kantōgun Bōeki
Kyūsuibu Honbu?). Originally set up under the Kempeitai
military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded
until the end of the war by General Shiro Ishii, an officer in the Kwantung
Army.
Between
3,000 and 12,000 men, women, and children—from which around 600 every year were
provided by the Kempeitai —died during the human experimentation
conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone, which does not
include victims from other medical experimentation sites. Almost 70% of the
victims who died in the Pingfang camp were Chinese, including both civilian and
military. Close to 30% of the victims were Russian. Some others were South East
Asians and Pacific Islanders, at the time colonies of the Empire of Japan, and
a small number of the prisoners of war from the Allies of World War II
(although many more Allied POWs were victims of Unit 731 at other sites).
Many
of the scientists involved in Unit 731 went on to prominent careers in post-war
politics, academia, business, and medicine. Some were arrested by Soviet forces
and tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials; others surrendered to the
American Forces. It has been postulated that one reason the scientists were not
tried was that the information and experience gained in the studies of the
biological warfare was of a great value for the United States biological
weapons development program. On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme
Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data,
possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing
Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels
and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence." The deal concluded in
1948.
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Formation
In
1932, General Shirō Ishii (石井四郎 Ishii Shirō), chief medical officer of the
Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki was placed in command of
the Army Epidemic Prevention Research
Laboratory. Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō
Unit", for various chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria.
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. One of Ishii's main supporters
inside the army was Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who later became Japan's
Health Minister from 1941 to 1945. Koizumi had joined a secret poison gas
research committee in 1915, during World War I, when he and other Japanese army
officers were impressed by the successful German use of chlorine gas at the second battle of Ypres,
where the Allies suffered 15,000 casualties as a result of the chemical attack.
Unit
Tōgō was implemented in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in
Beiyinhe, a village 100 km (62 mi) south of Harbin on the South
Manchurian Railway. A jailbreak in autumn 1934 and later explosion (believed to
be an attack) in 1935 led Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. He received the
authorization to move to Pingfang, approximately 24 km (15 mi) south
of Harbin, to set up a new and much larger facility.
In
1936, Hirohito authorized, by imperial decree, the expansion of this unit and
its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department.
It was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and
"Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From August 1940, all these
units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water
Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)" or "Unit 731" (満州第731部隊) for short.
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Unit 731 Human Experiments (SOURCE: http://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2012/08/savages-of-rising-sun.html)
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Activities
A
special project code-named Maruta used human beings for experiments.
Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes
referred to euphemistically as "logs" (丸太
maruta?) This term originated as a joke on
the part of the staff because the official cover story for the facility given
to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. In an account by a man
who worked as a "junior uniformed civilian employee" of the Japanese
Army in Unit 731, the term Maruta came from German, meaning medical
experiment, used in such contexts as, "How many logs fell?"
The
test subjects were selected to give a wide cross section of the population and
included common criminals, captured bandits and anti-Japanese partisans, political
prisoners, and also people rounded up by the Kempeitai for alleged
"suspicious activities". They included infants, the elderly, and
pregnant women.
Vivisection
Prisoners
of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia. Vivisections were
performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists
performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects
of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were
alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the
results. The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children,
and infants.
Prisoners
had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Those limbs that were removed
were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body. Some prisoners' limbs
were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study
the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.
Some
prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to
the intestines. Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some
prisoners.
In
2007, the Japanese army surgeon Ken Yuasa testified to the Japan Times
that, "I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time
around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it." He
believes at least 1,000 people, including surgeons, were involved in
vivisections over mainland China.
Germ warfare attacks
Prisoners
were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study
their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and
female prisoners were deliberately infected, often by rape, with syphilis and gonorrhea,
then studied.
Plague
fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped
on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated
to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians. Tularemia was tested on
Chinese civilians.
Unit
731 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 civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas,
bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying
airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan
Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people
with bubonic plague epidemics.
Weapons testing
Human
targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in
different positions. Flame throwers were tested on humans. Humans were tied to
stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and
explosive bombs.
Other experiments
In
other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length
of time until death; placed into high-pressure chambers until death;
experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and
human survival; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with
animal blood; exposed to lethal doses of x-rays; subjected to various chemical
weapons inside gas chambers; injected with sea water to determine if it could
be a substitute for saline; and burned or prematurely buried alive.
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General Shirō Ishii (SOURCE: http://www.deviantart.com/#/art/Shiro-Ishii-Compilation-193699035?hf=1)
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Biological warfare
Japanese
scientists performed tests on prisoners with plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism,
and other diseases. This research led to the development of the defoliation
bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague. Some of these
bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii
in 1938.
These
bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks, infecting
agriculture, reservoirs, wells, and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrier
fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and other deadly pathogens. During
biological bomb experiments, scientists dressed in protective suits would
examine the dying victims. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by
airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. In addition,
poisoned food and candies were given out to unsuspecting victims and children,
and the results examined.
In
2002, Changde, China, site of the flea spraying attack, held an
"International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare"
which estimated that at least 580,000 people died as a result of the attack.
The historian Sheldon Harris claims that 200,000 died. In addition to Chinese
casualties, 1,700 Japanese in Chekiang were killed by their own biological
weapons while attempting to unleash the biological agent, which evidences
serious issues with distribution.
Known unit members
- Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii
- Lieutenant Colonel Ryoichi Naito, founder of the pharmaceutical company Green Cross
- Masaji Kitano
- Yoshio Shinozuka
- Yasuji Kaneko
Divisions
- Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis using live human subjects. For this purpose, a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
- Division 2: Research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
- Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
- Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
- Division 5: Training of personnel.
- Divisions 6–8: Equipment, medical and administrative units.
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Building on the site of the Harbin bioweapon
facility of Unit 731
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Facilities
The
Unit 731 complex covered six square kilometers and consisted of more than 150
buildings. The design of the facilities made them hard to destroy by bombing.
The complex contained various factories. It had around 4,500 containers to be
used to raise fleas, six cauldrons to produce various chemicals, and around
1,800 containers to produce biological agents. Approximately 30 kg of
bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in several days.
Some
of Unit 731's satellite facilities are in use by various Chinese industrial
concerns. A portion has been preserved and is open to visitors as a War Crimes
Museum.
Tokyo
A
medical school and research facility belonging to Unit 731 operated in the Shinjuku
District of Tokyo during World War II. In 2006, Toyo Ishii—a nurse who worked
at the school during the war—revealed that she had helped bury bodies and
pieces of bodies on the school's grounds shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945.
In response, in February 2011 the Ministry of Health began to excavate the site.
China
requested DNA samples from any human remains discovered at the site. The
Japanese government—which has never officially acknowledged the existence of
Unit 731—rejected the request.
Canton
The
related Unit 8604 was operated by the Japanese
Southern China Area Army and stationed at Canton (Guangzhou). This installation
conducted human experimentation in food and water deprivation as well as
water-borne typhus. According to postwar testimony, this facility served as the
main rat breeding farm for the medical units to provide them with bubonic
plague vectors for experiments.
Related units
Unit
731 was part of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department which
dealt with contagious disease and water supply generally.
Mukden POW camp
According
to Maj. Robert Peaty, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, who was the senior British
officer at Mukden, a prisoner-of-war camp 350 miles from Pingfan, doctors from
Unit 731 administered the regular injections of infectious diseases, disguised
as harmless vaccinations, which eventually killed 186 Americans.
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Information sign at the site today.
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Surrender and immunity
Operations
and experiments continued until the end of the war. Ishii had wanted to use
biological weapons in the Pacific conflict
since May 1944, but his attempts were repeatedly snubbed.
Destruction of evidence
With
the Russian invasion of Manchukuo and Mengjiang in
August 1945, the unit had to abandon their work in haste. The members and their
families fled to Japan.
Ishii
ordered every member of the group "to take the secret to the grave",
threatening to find them if they failed, and prohibiting any of them from going
into public work back in Japan. Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in
the event that the remaining personnel were captured.
Skeleton
crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew the compound up in the final days of the
war to destroy evidence of their activities, but most were so well constructed
that they survived somewhat intact.
American grant of immunity
After
Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Powers, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation.
MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including
their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime
allies, with their research on biological warfare. American occupation
authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading
and censoring their mail. The U.S. believed that the research data was
valuable. The U.S. did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union,
to acquire data on biological weapons.
The
Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with
"poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August
1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor.
The Japanese defense counselor argued that the claim was vague and
uncorroborated and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb,
for lack of evidence. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was
likely aware of Unit 731's activities. His reference to it at the trial is
believed to have been accidental.
Separate Soviet trials
Although
publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the
case and prosecuted twelve top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731
and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing, and Unit 100 in
Changchun, in the Khabarovsk
War Crime Trials. Included among those prosecuted for war crimes
including germ warfare was General Otozō Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the
million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria.
The
trial of those captured Japanese perpetrators was held in Khabarovsk in December 1949. A lengthy
partial transcript of the trial proceedings was published in different
languages the following year by a Moscow foreign languages press, including an
English language edition. The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial
was Lev
Smirnov, who had been one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials. The Japanese doctors and
army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences
from the Khabarovsk court ranging from two to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp.
The Americans refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist
propaganda.
After
World War II, the Soviet Union built a biological
weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from
Unit 731 in Manchuria.
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General Shirō Ishii (SOURCE: http://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2012/08/savages-of-rising-sun.html)
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After World War II
Official silence under Occupation
As
above, under the American occupation the members of Unit 731 and other
experimental units were allowed to go free. One graduate of Unit 1644,
Masami Kitaoka, continued to do experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from
1947 to 1956 while working for the National Institute of Health Sciences. He
infected prisoners with rickettsia and mental health patients with typhus.
Post-Occupation Japanese media coverage and debate
Japanese
discussions of Unit 731's activity began in the 1950s, after the end of the American
occupation of Japan. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City
Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former
members of Unit 731. Later in that decade, journalists suspected that the murders
attributed by the government to Sadamichi Hirasawa
were actually carried out by members of Unit 731. In 1958, Japanese author Shusaku
Endo published the book The Sea and Poison about human experimentation,
which is thought to have been based on a real incident.
The
author Morimura Seiichi published the book The Devil's Gluttony (悪魔の飽食) in 1981, followed by The Devil's
Gluttony: A Sequel in 1983. This purported to reveal the "true"
operations of Unit 731, but actually confused them with that of Unit 100, and falsely used unrelated photos
attributing them to Unit 731, which raised questions about its accuracy.
Also
in 1981 appeared the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China, by Ken
Yuasa. Since then many more in-depth testimonies have appeared in Japanese. The
2001 documentary Japanese Devils
was composed largely of interviews with 14 members of Unit 731 who had been
taken as prisoners by China and later released.
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General Shirō Ishii (SOURCE: http://shiroishii.deviantart.com/art/Shiro-Ishii-1892-1959-163013801)
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Official government response in Japan
Since
the end of the US Occupation, the Japanese government has repeatedly apologized
for its prewar behavior in general, but specific apologies and indemnities are
determined on the basis of bilateral determination that crimes occurred, which
requires a high standard of evidence. Unit 731 presents a special problem,
since unlike Nazi human
experimentation which is extremely well documented, the activities
of Unit 731 are known only from the testimonies of former unit members, and
testimony cannot be employed to determine indemnity in this way.
Japanese
history textbooks usually contain references to Unit 731, but do not go into
detail about allegations, in accordance with this principle. Saburo Ienaga's New
History of Japan included a detailed description, based on officers' testimony.
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. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in 1997 that the testimony was
indeed sufficient and that requiring it to be removed was an illegal violation
of freedom of speech.
In
1997, the international lawyer Kōnen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against
the Japanese government demanding reparations for the actions of Unit 731,
using evidence filed by Rikkyo University professor Makoto Ueda. All court
levels found that the suit was baseless. No findings of fact were made about
the existence of human experimentation, but the decision of the court was that
reparations are determined by international treaties and not by local court
cases.
In
October 2003, the Prime Minister of Japan responded to an inquiry from a member
of the House of Representatives of Japan stating that, while the current
Japanese government does not possess any records related to Unit 731, they
recognize the gravity of the matter and will publicize any records that are
located in the future.
Abroad
The
Chinese film Men Behind the Sun,
directed by Tun Fei Mou in 1988, is a graphic film about the atrocities
committed by Unit 731, as is the Russian film Philosophy of a
Knife, directed by Andrey Iskanov and released in 2008.
James T. Hong produced a 2007 documentary
about Unit 731 told from the Chinese and Japanese sides called 731: Two
Versions of Hell.
Bruce Dickinson's 1994 CD-single Tears of the Dragon
contains a song entitled "The breeding house" describing the
atrocities committed by Unit 731 and the immunity granted by the Americans to
the physicians of the Unit.
American
thrash metal band Slayer's 2009 album World Painted Blood
contains a song entitled "Unit 731" describing the events and
atrocities that occurred at Unit 731.
The X-Files episode "731"
was a reference to Unit 731, in which former members secretly continue their
experiments on humans under control of a covert U.S. government agency.
ReGenesis episode "Let it burn"
(Season 3, episode 9) mentions Unit 731 after it was discovered outbreaks of
anthrax and glanders was from World War 2 Japan.
See also
Pacific War (World War II)
- Japanese human experimentations
- Changde chemical weapon attack
- Japanese war crimes
- Kaimingjie germ weapon attack
- Second Sino-Japanese War
Other human experimentation
- Nazi human experimentation
- Josef Mengele
- North Korean human experimentation
- Tuskegee syphilis experiment
- Unethical human experimentation in the United States
- Dr. Sidney Gottlieb
- Porton Down
- Harold Blauer (victim)
- Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
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