Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II

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Some might dismiss Japan’s bio-war against China as history from a past century. But that history still resonates. Memories of Japanese atrocities still linger in Asia. And as China and Japan appear on the brink of conflict over disputed islands in the East China Sea, it’s worth remembering that this time, it’s China and not Japan that has weapons of mass destruction.

The best moments are when Yang and co-author, Yue-Him Tam, a professor of history at Macalester College in Minnesota, reveal the stories of ordinary people who suffered. In 1934, some 30 prisoners staged a breakout of the unit. They carry an interview with a villager who still remembered he and his brother desperately trying to smash the fetters as the Japanese patrols drew closer; some were killed others, escaped to join the resistance. Japanese history textbooks usually contain references to Unit731, but do not go into detail about allegations, in accordance with this principle. [129] [130] Saburō 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. [131] a b c "Japan – Insects, Disease, and History | Montana State University". Montana.edu . Retrieved 2022-06-01.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. At one time, the Japanese hatched a plan to infect fleas with a plague manufactured at Unit 731 and drop flea-filled bombs, launched from planes stored aboard submarines, on San Diego in a mission code-named Operations Cherry Blossoms at Night. The war ended before the plan could be executed. The Japanese government has also failed to grant the OSI meaningful access to these and related records after the war, while European countries, on the other hand, have been largely cooperative, [136] the cumulative effect of which is that information pertaining to identifying these individuals is, in effect, impossible to recover.

reddened, swollen. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. Had difficulties opening the eyes. Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs." Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, hypobaric pressure chamber testing, vivisection, organ harvesting, amputation, and standard weapons testing. 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. The victims also came from different nationalities, with the majority being Chinese and a significant minority being Russian. 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. Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived. In the final moments of the Second World War, all prisoners were killed to conceal evidence. What makes this descent into barbarity all the more stunning was the Japanese contribution to medical science just three decades earlier. A U.S. Army doctor named Lewis Livingston Seaman observed colleagues who were attending to the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Japanese Medical Atrocities in World War II". www.vcn.bc.ca. Archived from the original on 2019-06-18 . Retrieved 2019-05-10.The following year, under the cover of the euphemistically named Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, Ishii set up shop in the Army’s hospital in Tokyo. The location was only temporary because, to accomplish his objectives, he would need access to far greater resources; Japanese ascendancy in Manchuria provided its medical community unprecedented opportunities for research (much as the Germans used concentration camps and their prisoners for their own medical and pseudo-scientific research). By 1930, nationalism burned hotter than ever in Japan and created a climate receptive to Ishii’s ideas of developing biological weapons. In September 1931, Japanese forces instigated the “Mukden Incident.” The pitched battle between Japanese and Chinese forces was actually no more than a Japanese ruse used to justify a complete takeover of Manchuria. Yoshimura, Hisato; Iida, Toshiyuki (1950). Studies on the Reactivity of Skin Vessels to Extreme Cold. Japan: Japanese Journal Of Physiology.

Croddy, Eric; Wirtz, James (2005). Weapons of Mass Destruction: Chemical and biological weapons. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1851094905.Ken Alibek and S. Handelman. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it. 1999. Delta (2000) ISBN 0385334966. Cholera was dumped into wells used by the Chinese populace. Fleas were carefully collected, infected with plague and then dropped in aerial bombs over Chinese cities and villages. 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. Most or all Units had branch offices, which were also often referred to as "Units." The term Unit731 can refer to the Harbin complex, or it can refer to the organization and its branches, sub-Units and their branches. IAB8] Imperial Japanese Medical Atrocities". osaka-cu.ac.jp. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04 . Retrieved 2016-10-02.

Division1: 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 Unit 731 ( Japanese: ７３１部隊, 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 (1937–1945) and World War II. It killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people. It was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China) and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia.

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a b Kristof, Nicholas D. (17 March 1995). "Unmasking Horror – A special report. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 20, 2018 . Retrieved April 10, 2017. Fortunately for the Russians, this type of typhoid germ became ineffective almost immediately after hitting the water. The contamination was probably initiated more for the publicity than anything else, as Ishii likely knew it would not work. General Yoshijiro Umezu, who served as the Army’s chief of staff, was a member of the elite war cabinet that held the reins of power in Japan from April 1945 until it surrendered to Allied forces on September 2, 1945. According to Lt. Gen. Kajitsuka Ryuji of the Japanese Medical Service and former Chief of the Medical Administration for the massive Kwantung Army (located in Manchuria), Ishii was given permission to begin the Ping Fang experiment in 1936 by “command of the Emperor.”