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. The memo states that there would be a new "Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention Department" and that it shall be expanded later on. The totality of Unit 731s research was in support of their larger mission, which by 1939 was to develop horrific weapons of mass destruction for use against the Chinese population, and presumably American and Soviet forces, if the time ever came. But then finally he stopped. [115] This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit731 in Manchuria. Human experimentation at Unit 731 was a well-known secret within the Japanese research community. 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. 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. Ishibashi asked where she came from and learned that she was from Ukraine. [20] In a further parallel, the corpses of "sacrificed" subjects were disposed of by incineration. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. [75][76][77] Vivisections were also conducted on native Filipinos in the Philippines. [29], According to A. S. Wells, the majority of victims were Chinese,[31] with a lesser percentage being Russian, Mongolian, and Korean. Unit 731 was a secret chemical and living warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. [96] Unfortunately for the prisoners of Unit731, escape was an impossibility. "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. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work. Unit members orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and noninfected prisoners to transmit the disease, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between patients shows: Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. [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. Estimates of those killed by Unit731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived. Unit 731: The horrors of biological warfare experiments that the world forgot. The facility itself was built in 1935 as a replacement for the Zhongma Fortress, and Ishii and his team used it to expand their capabilities. Xinhua via Getty ImagesThe frostbitten hands of a Chinese person who was taken outside in winter by Unit 731 personnel for an experiment on how best to treat frostbite. 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]. 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. 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. The occupying US government undertook the cover-up of Japanese war crimes after the end of World War II, granting political immunity to military personnel who had engaged in human experimentation and other crimes against humanity, predominantly in mainland China. 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. [52][53] Massive amounts of blood were drained from some prisoners in order to study the effects of blood loss according to former Unit731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu. Researchers found the most virulent strains of disease by infecting prisoners, usually by injecting them with "vaccines" or feeding them contaminated food, and killing those prisoners who recovered quickly from their illnesses. There is at least one recorded instance of "friendly" social interaction between prisoners and Unit731 staff. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal. Looks with hollow eyes. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and infected mentally-ill patients with typhus. [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". The program received generous support from the Japanese government until the end of the war in 1945. One Russian shouted to the members of Unit731, demanding to be shot rather than used as an experimental object. [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. Hisato then tried different methods for rapid rewarming of the frozen appendage. For example, female captives of childbearing age were sometimes forcibly impregnated so that weapon and trauma experiments could be done on them. Mucous and bloody erosions across the shoulder girdle. 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. 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. [30], Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. That was just playing around. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit731's activities. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. Whenever prisoners died after the experiments they had been subjected to, a clerk of the 1stDivision struck their numbers off an index card and took the deceased prisoner's manacles to be put on new arrivals to the prison.[90]. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. [7][8] On 28 August 2002, Tokyo District Court ruled that Japan had committed biological warfare in China and consequently had slaughtered many residents. 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. 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. Mucous and bloody diarrhea. 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. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. 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. Phone booth-like tanks were used as portable gas chambers for the prisoners. [59] The following is an excerpt of one of these reports: September 7, 1940, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. It was officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (, Kantgun Beki Kysuibu Honbu). [16] It was divided at that time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit", with a base in Hsinking. 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. Wikimedia CommonsUnit 731s Harbin facility. This got the attention of a staff member who saw it as an unusual condition. [64][user-generated source? The Russian lying on the floor suddenly sprang up and knocked the guard down. Unit731 also performed transfusion experiments with different blood types. But that didn't stop a Japanese army medical officer named Shiro . World War II devastated the lives of more than 100 million people around the world. 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. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs". Associated Press/LIFE via Wikimedia CommonsA Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. 431968pp. The unit conducted cruel and inhumane . When AB type blood 100 cc was transfused to a B type subject, there seemed to be no side effect. 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. [36] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity", "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese", "CIA Special Collection ISHII, SHIRO_0005", "United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency", "Ruling recognizes Unit 731 used germ warfare in China", "Japan - Insects, Disease, and History | Montana State University", "Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus", "Pure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard for Human Suffering", "Unmasking Horror: A special report. 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. 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. [6] American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail. Unit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast Chinas Jilin Province. Unit731 also tested chemical weapons on prisoners in field conditions. They show what humans are capable of when they are given free rein to experiment on other human beings. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sud. The first focused on experimenting with bacteriological diseases, including the bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, and tuberculosis. 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