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. The Unit731 complex covered six square kilometers (2.3sqmi) and consisted of more than 150buildings. [32] Yuasa said that when he performed vivisections on captives, they were "all for practice rather than for research", and that such practises were "routine" among Japanese doctors stationed in China during the war.[21]. On October 4, 1940, Japanese bombers deployed these casings, each loaded with 30,000 fleas that had each sucked blood from a dying prisoner, over the Chinese village of Quzhou. 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. [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. 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. None of the Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, or Russian captives assigned to Unit 731 survived their confinement. Researchers mostly slipped back into civilian life in occupied Japan as if nothing had ever happened, many of them becoming prominent members of university faculty. The 2001 documentary Japanese Devils largely consists of interviews with fourteen Unit731 staff members taken prisoner by China and later released. 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. Epidemics broke out shortly after, to the elation of many researchers, who concluded that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the pathogens. To ensure effective transmission of the disease, syphilitic male victims were ordered to rape both female and male fellow captives, who would then be monitored to observe the onset of the disease. It was officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (, Kantgun Beki Kysuibu Honbu). [102], Unit731 had branches in Linkou (Branch162), Mudanjiang, Hailin (Branch643), Sunwu (Branch673), Toan, and Hailar (Branch543). Other suspected Japanese war criminals who were never indicted include three postwar prime ministers: Hatoyama Ichir (19541956), Kishi Nobusuke (19571960), and Ikeda Hayato (19601964).[100]. If the first exposure failed to establish infection, more rapes would be arranged until it did. Although the dissemination methods of delivering plague infected fleas by aircraft were crude, the method, among others, allowed the Japanese to "conduct the most extensive employment of biological weapons during WWII." [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. 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. [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. 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. Abundant mucous nose secretions. The tales of World War II are replete with innumerable accounts . "Unit 731" (2021), single from German Deathstep producer Kroww. Sanders' duty was to investigate Japanese biological warfare activity. The prison cells had wooden floors and a squat toilet in each. 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. The New York Times interviewed a former member of Unit 731. [37] Some of these bombs were designed with porcelain shells, an idea proposed by Ishii in 1938. [40][41], During the final months of World WarII, codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, The fleas were then packed in dust and sealed inside clay bomb casings. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. [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. Led by Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro, 3,000 Japanese researchers working at Unit 731's headquarters in Harbin infected live human beings with diseases such as the plague and anthrax and then eviscerated them without anesthesia to see how the diseases infected human organs. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal. Estimates of those killed by Unit731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived. [119] Later in that decade, journalists suspected that the murders attributed by the government to Sadamichi Hirasawa were actually carried out by members of Unit731. [85] The vehicle would pull up at the main gates and one of the drivers would go to the guardroom and report to the guard. Epiphora. The term Unit731 can refer to the Harbin complex itself, or it can refer to the organization and its branches, sub-Units and their branches. Sixty minutes later the pulse was 106 per minute and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. 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. To name a few, prisoners were exposed to tetrodotoxin (pufferfish or fugu venom), heroin, Korean bindweed, bactal, and castor-oil seeds (ricin). Despite innocent beginnings as a research and public health agency, Unit 731 eventually grew into an assembly line for weaponized diseases that, if fully deployed, could have killed everyone on Earth several times over. Evil is as evil does. June 1942. Some prisoners were alive in the Unit for over 12months, and many female prisoners gave birth in the Unit. [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. 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. Some were forced to wear various types of gas masks; others wore military uniforms, and some wore no clothes at all. [59] The following is an excerpt of one of these reports: September 7, 1940, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. [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. [113] 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 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. In the 1930s through the second China-Japan war and till the end of World War II, Unit 731 carried out horrific human experiments on the countless prisoners and villagers at Harbin, Northeastern China. 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. [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. That was just playing around. [96] One staff member, who was an eyewitness at this escape attempt, recalled: "spiritually we were all lost in front of the 'marutas' who had no freedom and no weapons. He performed his experiments while he was working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences. 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. [127] The information was from the country's national archives. [36] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague. 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. September 1937. During biological bomb experiments, researchers dressed in protective suits would examine the dying victims. Unit 731 was one of six human experimentation sites financially supported by the Imperial Japanese government during the Second World War. Study methods in these experiments were barbaric. Unit 731 started out as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. 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. "The Imperial Japanese Experiments in China". Limbs removed were sometimes reattached to the opposite side of victims' bodies. The first focused on experimenting with bacteriological diseases, including the bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, and tuberculosis. Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. November 1940. [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. [34][35]:xii,173. However, the amount of effort devoted to BW was not matched by its results. The U.S. cover-up of Unit 731 war crimes. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs". [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. 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. The United States refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda. 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. 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. The unit conducted cruel and inhumane . This page was last edited on 13 April 2023, at 07:50. 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. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former members of Unit731. Unit 731 (Japanese: 731, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai), short for Manshu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment: 198 and the Ishii Unit, 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 . That guard would then telephone to the "Special Team" in the inner-prison (Shiro Ishii's brother was head of this Special Team). reveals distressing evidence of Unit 731 experiments involving US prisoners and the use of British as control groups in Northern China, Hainau . Twenty subjects were divided into three groups and placed in combat emplacements, trenches, gazebos, and observatories. [82] Author Seiichi Morimura estimates that almost 70 percent of the victims who died in the Pingfang camp were Chinese (both military and civilian),[83] while close to 30 percent of the victims were Russian. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square [97sqft] and two meters [6.6ft] high was used. One of Ishii's main supporters inside the army was Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who later served as Japan's Health Minister from 1941 to 1945. the plan of Unit 731 was to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. [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. 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. Ishii ordered every member of the group to disappear and "take the secret to the grave". 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. [6] American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail. "The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down, but when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. For example, female captives of childbearing age were sometimes forcibly impregnated so that weapon and trauma experiments could be done on them. [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. [123] [91] Prisoners were repeatedly reused for experiments as long as they were healthy enough. 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). [7][8] On 28 August 2002, Tokyo District Court ruled that Japan had committed biological warfare in China and consequently had slaughtered many residents. Ishibashi asked where she came from and learned that she was from Ukraine. ", "Japan publishes list of members of Unit 731 imperial army branch", "Unit 731: One of the Most Terrifying Secrets of the 20th Century", Occupation censored Unit 731 ex-members' mail: secret paper, "The United States and the Japanese Mengele: Payoffs and Amnesty for Unit 731", Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it, "Unit 731: Japan discloses details of notorious chemical warfare division", "Japanese Textbook Controversies, Nationalism, and Historical Memory: Intra- and Inter-national Conflicts", "Examining the Japanese History Textbook Controversies", , "Names of 3,607 members of Imperial Japanese Army's notorious Unit 731 released by national archives", "Hit manga My Hero Academia removed in China over war crimes reference", "My Hero Academia Manga Updated With Villain's New Name", "The English Fhrer by Rory Clements Historia Magazine", Orrori e misteri dell'Unit 731: la 'fabbrica' dei batteri killer, "Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program", The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), History of Japan's biological weapons program, History of United States' biological weapons program, "US paid for Japanese human germ warfare data", The Unknown Victims of Japanese Unit 731 in WWII (19321945) and Known Experiments, Select Documents on Japanese WarCrimes and Japanese Biological Warfare, 19342006, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unit_731&oldid=1149602900, Chief of General Division, 19391941, Head of Production Division, 19411945, Lieutenant general of the Medical Service, Lieutenant general of the Veterinary Service, Lieutenant colonel of the Medical Service, 400,000 or higher from biological warfare, Over 3,000 from inside experiments from each unit (not including branches, 19401945 only), Kazuhisa Kanazawa, chief of the 1stDivision of Branch673 of Unit731, Ryoichiro Hotta, member of the Hailar Branch of Unit731, Major General Hitoshi Kikuchi, head of Research Division, 19421945, Lieutenant General [unknown first name] Yasazaka, doctor, Yoshio Furuichi, student at Sunyu Branch of Unit731, Division2: research for biological weapons used in the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites, Division3: production of shells containing biological agents; stationed in Harbin, Division4: bacteria mass-production and storage, Divisions68: equipment, medical, and administrative units. [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. Warning: Child-related post. World War II devastated the lives of more than 100 million people around the world. 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. A contemporary treatment, a primitive chemotherapy agent called Salvarsan, was sometimes administered over a period of months to observe the side effects, however. [120][121], Also in 1981, the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China was given by Ken Yuasa. To this end, Unit 731 cycled through tens of thousands of captives at several facilities across Manchuria, which had been occupied by imperial forces for years. A report authored by unknown researcher in the Kamo Unit (Unit731) describes a large human experiment of yperite gas (mustard gas) on 710September 1940. 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. This got the attention of a staff member who saw it as an unusual condition. "Terrorism and Weapons of the Apocalypse". At death, the corpses would only weigh 1/5 normal bodyweight.". The idea of Unit 731 first circulated around by a memo written in April 23, 1936, that speaks about the establishment of reinforcement military forces in Manchuria. But then finally he stopped. The disturbances and upheavals that these invasions caused shook China to its very foundations, triggered a civil war and a famine that probably killed more people than currently live in Canada and Australia combined, and lasted until the countrys Soviet liberation in 1945. 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. [95] Seiichi Morimura in his book The Devil's Feast went into some greater detail regarding this escape attempt. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. [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". Corporal Kikuchi Norimitsu testified that he was told by another unit member that a prisoner "had shown violence and had struck the experimenter with a door handle" and then "jumped out of the cell and ran down the corridor, seized the keys and opened the iron doors and some of the cells. Among those accused of war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otoz Yamada, commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria. 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? While they have added over 60,000names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. One of the most common experiments at Unit 731 was the vivisection of diseased bodies. Parts of organs, such as the brain, lungs, and liver, were removed from others. Inside Unit 731 and Japan's Human Experiments in WW2 By Carl Seaver From 1939 to 1945, the world witnessed the deadliest war in history, as over 30 countries wound together in acrimony, strife, and bloodshed, leading to a war that claimed the lives of more than 100 million people all over the world. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The complex contained various factories. government. 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. Technician Naokata Ishibashi interacted with two female prisoners. Unit 731: The horrors of biological warfare experiments that the world forgot. Approximately 30 kilograms (66lb) of bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in a few days. They may also have included a small number of European, American, Indian, Australian, and New Zealander prisoners of war. A portion has been preserved and is open to visitors as a War Crimes Museum. Weakness of all four extremeties. Mucous and bloody diarrhea. When AB type blood 100 cc was transfused to a B type subject, there seemed to be no side effect. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. [128], Japanese history textbooks usually contain references to Unit731, but do not go into detail about allegations, in accordance with this principle. 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. [6], One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to perform experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sud. 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. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. The Unit 731 complex. The Russian lying on the floor suddenly sprang up and knocked the guard down. Thousands of men and women, mostly Chinese communist captives as well as children and elderly farmers, were infected with diseases such as cholera and the plague, then had their organs removed for examination before they died in order to study the effects of the disease without the decomposition that occurs after death. World War II devastated the lives of more than 100 million people around the world. [93] The inner-prison was a highly secured building complete with cast iron doors. Hyperemic conjunctivae. [29], According to A. S. Wells, the majority of victims were Chinese,[31] with a lesser percentage being Russian, Mongolian, and Korean. Ishibashi sneaked a mirror to them through a hole in the cell door. Xinhua via Getty ImagesUnit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast Chinas Jilin Province. 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. [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. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. 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