Yoshimura Hisato, a physiologist assigned to Unit 731, took a special interest in hypothermia. 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? The author Seiichi Morimura published The Devil's Gluttony[ja] () in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony: A Sequel in 1983. A few years later, as the war was nearing its end, Japan likewise planned to bomb America with plague-ridden fleas, but never got the chance. Insisting on anonymity, the former Japanese medical assistant recounted his first experience in dissecting a live human being, who had been deliberately infected with the plague, for the purpose of developing "plague bombs" for war. [72], At least 3,000 men, women, and children[3]:117[71]from which at least 600 every year were provided by the Kenpeitai[73]were subjected to Unit731 experimentation conducted at the Pingfang camp alone, not including victims from other medical experimentation sites such as Unit 100. There are unit members who were known to be interned at the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre and Taiyuan War Criminals Management Centre after the war, who then went on to be repatriated to Japan and founded the Association of Returnees from China and testified about Unit 731 and the crimes perpetrated there. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. [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]. 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. 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. [14], A prison break in the autumn of 1934, which jeopardized the facility's secrecy, and an explosion in 1935 (believed to be sabotage) led Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. No findings of fact were made about the existence of human experimentation, but the courts' ruling was that reparations are determined by international treaties, not national courts. At that time we understood in our hearts that justice was not on our side". [5] These operations killed tens of thousands with bubonic plague epidemics. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. [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. [93] The "special team" worked in these two inner-prison buildings. [62] Yoshimura's lack of remorse was evident in an article he wrote for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology in 1950 in which he admitted to using 20 children and a three-day-old infant in experiments which exposed them to zero-degree-Celsius ice and salt water. Then, over several days, prisoners were eventually drained of blood and deprived of nutrients and water. 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 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. Weakness of all four extremeties. Some prisoners were alive in the Unit for over 12months, and many female prisoners gave birth in the Unit. The Truth of Unit 731: Elite medical students and human experiments (2017). So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. 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. Then, the lesson over, the surgeon pulled out a gun and shot and killed the patient.[78][79][80] A member of the Yokusan Sonendan paramilitary political youth branch, who worked for Unit731, stated that not only were Chinese, Russians, and Koreans present, but also Americans, British, and French people. [6], One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to perform experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956. It was around this time that Unit 731 began referring to confined research subjects as logs, or Maruta in Japanese. Detachments included Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and later Unit 9420 in Singapore. Proteinuria. Unit731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department operated biological weapon production, testing, deployment, and storage facilities. When most of the blood had been siphoned off and the heart was too weak to pump anymore, an officer in leather boots climbed onto the table and jumped on the victims chest with enough force to crush the ribcage, whereupon another dollop of blood would spurt into the container. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. [132], In October2003, a member of Japan's House of Representatives filed an inquiry. [29], According to A. S. Wells, the majority of victims were Chinese,[31] with a lesser percentage being Russian, Mongolian, and Korean. [95] Seiichi Morimura in his book The Devil's Feast went into some greater detail regarding this escape attempt. 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). The effectiveness of various weapons was of obvious interest to the Japanese Army. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. The author reveals distressing evidence of Unit 731 experiments involving US prisoners and the use of British as control groups in Northern China, Hainau Island, New Guinea and in Japan. Other attacks, using anthrax, killed approximately 6,000 more people in the area. Date unspecified. 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. [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. 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. Date unspecified. Some of the prisoners managed to jump out but these were only the bold ones. Ishibashi asked where she came from and learned that she was from Ukraine. According to one eyewitness account, the limbs made a sound like a plank of wood when struck with a cane. [36] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague. [129][130] Sabur Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description, based on officers' testimony. 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. . [67], After victims were infected, they were vivisected at different stages of infection, so that internal and external organs could be observed as the disease progressed. [86][87] Then, the prisoners would be transported through a secret tunnel dug under the facade of the central building to the inner-prisons. Associated Press/LIFE via Wikimedia CommonsA Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. Sud shouted "brute!" November 1940. Japanese discussions of Unit731's activity began in the 1950s, after the end of the American occupation of Japan. Researchers performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. The unit was supported by Japanese universities and medical schools which supplied doctors and research staff. Two hours later the temperature was 37.7 degrees, and three hours later the subject recovered. All under the auspices of the US govt, ofc. [34][35]:xii,173. Xinhua via Getty ImagesJapanese personnel in protective suits carry a stretcher through Yiwu, China during Unit 731s germ warfare tests. Xinhua via Getty ImagesUnit 731 personnel conduct a bacteriological trial upon a test subject in Nongan County of northeast Chinas Jilin Province. When AB type blood 120 cc was transfused to an O type subject, an hour later the subject described malaise and psychroesthesia in both legs. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. [21] Researchers in Unit731 also published some of their results in peer-reviewed journals, writing as though the research had been conducted on nonhuman primates called "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys".[22]. 126134, Human Lab Rats: Japanese Atrocities, the Last Secret of World War II (Penthouse, May 2000). The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed at least 400,000 Chinese civilians. [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. Then their general symptoms and damage to skin, eye, respiratory organs, and digestive organs were observed at 4hours, 24 hours, and 2, 3, and 5days after the shots. From 1948 to 1958, less than five percent of the documents were transferred onto microfilm and stored in the US National Archives before they were shipped back to Japan.[118]. 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. 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. 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. "The Imperial Japanese Experiments in China". [50][51] In addition to chemical agents, the properties of many different toxins were also investigated by the Unit. Less discussed than the Holocaust forced on Jewish people during World War II, Unit 731 is Japan's covert biological and chemical research division that primarily operated in China between 1932 and 1945. [75][76][77] Vivisections were also conducted on native Filipinos in the Philippines. The unit is estimated to have killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people. One thing is for certainno prisoner, whether man, woman, or child, got out alive. Parts of organs, such as the brain, lungs, and liver, were removed from others. Army Engineer Hisato Yoshimura conducted experiments by taking captives outside, dipping various appendages into water of varying temperatures, and allowing the limb to freeze. Wound patterns and penetration depths were then compared on the bodies of the dead and dying inmates. One of the most common experiments at Unit 731 was the vivisection of diseased bodies. These resulted in loss of life and extreme suffering. It also operated a secret research and experimental school in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. 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]. With the coming of the Red Army in August1945, the unit had to abandon their work in haste. Estimates of the death toll from experiments performed on prisoners at Unit 731 range from 3,000 to 12,000. [123] 1341361982pp. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit731's activities. 541 Likes, 42 Comments - PORTRAITSOUL | Speak Truth (@portraitsoul5.0) on Instagram: ""Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese a." PORTRAITSOUL | Speak Truth on Instagram: ""Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot. None of the Japanese scientists in Unit 731 was ever punished. The 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. Xinhua via Getty ImagesA Unit 731 doctor operates on a patient that is part of a bacteriological experiment. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal. Unit 731 was a secret chemical and living warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. [55] A former army major and technician gave the following testimony anonymously (at the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university): In 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental. Another group was clothed in summer military uniform and shoes; three had masks and another three had no mask. Takashi Tsuchiya. Low morale. The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from 2 to 25years in a Siberian labor camp. Shiro Ishii ran Unit 731 and performed cruel experiments on prisoners until he was apprehended by the U.S. government and granted full immunity. [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. Study methods in these experiments were barbaric. [40][41], During the final months of World WarII, codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, Prisoners were also repeatedly subjected to rape by guards. 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). 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. From contemporary accounts, it is known that more than 2,000 civilians died of plague following this attack, and that another 1,000 or so died in nearby Yiwu after the plague was carried there by sick railway workers. The opening of the new Museum of War Crime Evidence by Japanese Army Unit 731 on Aug. 15 in Harbin in northeast China was timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, part of commemorations across China that included a major Victory Day military parade in Beijing on Sept. 3. That guard would then telephone to the "Special Team" in the inner-prison (Shiro Ishii's brother was head of this Special Team). Other articles where Unit 731 is discussed: World War II: The horror of war in pictures: Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army carried out horrific medical experiments on thousands of prisoners of war and civilians; men and women were subjected to chemical and biological agents and vivisected to survey the results. 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. [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. In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the US also asserted that the trials were to only serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the US had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. [7][8] On 28 August 2002, Tokyo District Court ruled that Japan had committed biological warfare in China and consequently had slaughtered many residents. One Russian shouted to the members of Unit731, demanding to be shot rather than used as an experimental object. November 1940. [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. 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