Weakness of all four extremeties. Another group was clothed in summer military uniform and shoes; three had masks and another three had no mask. [35]:xii,173 The American historian Sheldon H. Harris states that over 200,000 died. Unit 731, Japan's biological warfare program, was formed in 1932 under the leadership of the notorious Gen. Shiro Ishii, chief medical officer of the Japanese army. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit731, but recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records located in the future. Two hours later the temperature was 37.7 degrees, and three hours later the subject recovered. Other sources suggest that it was the usual practice in the Unit for surgeons to stuff a rag (or medical gauze) into the mouth of prisoners before commencing vivisection in order to stifle any screaming. They also carried out biological wars by contaminating water and farmlands with disease-carrying germs. That was just playing around. the plan of Unit 731 was to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. [95] Seiichi Morimura in his book The Devil's Feast went into some greater detail regarding this escape attempt. Inside Unit 731, Japans Disturbing Human Experiments Program During World War II. 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. The two Russians opened their handcuffs, took the keys, and opened some other cells while yelling. [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. Its true purpose was masked as the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. When AB type blood 100 cc was transfused to a B type subject, there seemed to be no side effect. [17], His younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China, and wrote in his memoir that he watched films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans. However, Unit 731 was likely the largest biological-warfare production facility in world history. One Russian shouted to the members of Unit731, demanding to be shot rather than used as an experimental object. 10-14 Unit 731 performed medical experiments, such as human vivisections, on detained Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, Russians and Americans, Unit731 also performed transfusion experiments with different blood types. The United States refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda. Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tg Unit", for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. 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. "[1], In addition to the establishment of Unit731, the decree also called for the creation of an additional biological warfare development unit, called the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 100), and a chemical warfare development unit called the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 516). After Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, Ishii Shiro created Unit 731 and began testing biological weapons on unwilling human test subjects. [6] The United States covered up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators. They performed many experiments on live and dead prisoners of war that were crimes against humanity - including vivisection, intentional infection of individuals with diseases such as the plague and syphilis, and forced rape and pregnancy for further use in experimentation. ", "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. For example, female captives of childbearing age were sometimes forcibly impregnated so that weapon and trauma experiments could be done on them. Xinhua via Getty ImagesUnit 731 personnel conduct a bacteriological trial upon a test subject in Nongan County of northeast Chinas Jilin Province. Takashi Tsuchiya. Unit 731 (Japanese: 731, 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 (19371945) and World War II. [50][51] In addition to chemical agents, the properties of many different toxins were also investigated by the Unit. 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. Unit731 tested many different chemical agents on prisoners and had a building dedicated to gas experiments. 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. Unit 731 - Japans Secret Human Experiments Disturban History 236K subscribers Subscribe 22K 702K views 1 year ago Formed in response to western powers developing their own chemical and. 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. [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. After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, sister chemical and biological warfare units were founded in major Chinese cities and were referred to as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Units. 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. [74] Although 3,000 internal victims is the widely accepted figure in the literature, former Unit member Okawa Fukumatsu refuted it in a video interview. Inmates of these facilities were infected with several of the most lethal pathogens known to science, such as Yersinia pestis, which causes bubonic and pneumonic plague, and typhus, which the Japanese hoped would spread from person to person after being deployed and depopulate disputed areas. September 9, 1940, 7 am: Tired and exhausted. Abdominal pain. A Japanese soldier uses a Chinese mans body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. I sanitised his whole body with disinfectant. 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. First, the Imperial Army of Japan wanted to. Wikimedia CommonsGeneral Shiro Ishii, the commander of Unit 731. He then received authorization to move to Pingfang, approximately 24 kilometers (15mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new, much larger facility. In addition, poisoned food and candy were given to unsuspecting victims. 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. "Unit 731" (2021), single from German Deathstep producer Kroww. This page was last edited on 13 April 2023, at 07:50. That staff member decided to enter the cell. Detachments included Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and later Unit 9420 in Singapore. 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. [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. 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 . 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. [16] It was divided at that time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit", with a base in Hsinking. Heavy objects were dropped onto bound victims to study crush injuries, subjects were locked up and deprived of food and water to learn how long humans could survive without them, and victims were allowed to drink only sea water, or were given injections of mismatched human or animal blood to study transfusions and the clotting process. 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. Looks with hollow eyes. According to one eyewitness account, the limbs made a sound like a plank of wood when struck with a cane. 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. Some prisoners, including Russian and Chinese, were frantically roaming the corridors and kept yelling and shouting. "It was said that a small number of these poor men, women, and children who became marutas were also mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. Twenty subjects were divided into three groups and placed in combat emplacements, trenches, gazebos, and observatories. Some were forced to wear various types of gas masks; others wore military uniforms, and some wore no clothes at all. [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. [11] The majority of research subjects were Chinese, but many were of different nationalities.[1]. The memo states that there would be a new "Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention Department" and that it shall be expanded later on. Epidemics broke out shortly after, to the elation of many researchers, who concluded that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the pathogens. 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. [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. 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. Ishii ran Unit 731 as his own personal house of horrors. Sud shouted "brute!" This took place in August1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. The hypothetical possibility of vertical transmission (from mother to child) of diseases, particularly syphilis, was the stated reason for the torture. reddened, swollen. Unit731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department operated biological weapon production, testing, deployment, and storage facilities. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May1944, but his attempts were repeatedly snubbed. At death, the corpses would only weigh 1/5 normal bodyweight.". Eyelids edematous, swollen. After World WarII, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who are banned from entering the United States. And as the concept of consent went out the window, so did the restraint of the researchers. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases, including plague and typhoid, in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde. Unit 731 started out as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. Established by Emperor Hirohito in 1936, Unit 731's exact mission varied over the course of its operations, but two main focuses remained constant. [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. Chief of the Personnel Division of the Kwantung Army Headquarters Tamura Tadashi testified that, when he was shown the inner-prison, he looked into the cells and saw living people in chains, some moved around, others were lying on the bare floor and were in a very sick and helpless condition. 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. . The victims came from different nationalities, with the majority being Chinese and a significant minority being Russian. Wound patterns and penetration depths were then compared on the bodies of the dead and dying inmates. [citation needed], In August2002, the Tokyo district court ruled for the first time that Japan had engaged in biological warfare. 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. 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. Its head was Lieutenant Shiro Ishii. 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. Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September1945. 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. The complex contained various factories. [96] Unfortunately for the prisoners of Unit731, escape was an impossibility. 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. According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris: The Togo Unit employed gruesome tactics to secure specimens of select body organs. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. [86][87] Then, the prisoners would be transported through a secret tunnel dug under the facade of the central building to the inner-prisons. Finally, when a prisoners body was all used up, they would typically be shot or killed by lethal injection, though some may have been buried alive. The trial of the Japanese perpetrators was held in Khabarovsk in December1949; a lengthy partial transcript of trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by the Moscow foreign languages press, including an English-language edition. World War II devastated the lives of more than 100 million people around the world. All of these units comprised Ishii's network, which, at its height in 1939, oversaw over 10,000 personnel. [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. Guards would hold him while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an ax. As the war drew to a close in 1945, the Japanese demolished Unit 731 and most of the other research facilities in China to destroy . The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed at least 400,000 Chinese civilians. [15], In 1936, Emperor Hirohito issued a decree authorizing the expansion of the unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department. Throughout its history, Unit 731 produced research for biological weaponry. They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. [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". Listen above to the History Uncovered podcast, episode 51: Unit 731, also available on Apple and Spotify. 431968pp. Williams, Peter, and Wallace, David (1989). [19], A special project, codenamed Maruta, used human beings for experiments. Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and their esophagus reattached to the intestines. [34][35]:xii,173. [112] Critics argue that racism led to the double standard in the American postwar responses to the experiments conducted on different nationalities. This Russian was shot to death. ", Prisoners were injected with diseases, disguised as vaccinations,[25] to study their effects. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. [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. Bayonets, swords, and knives were also studied in this way, though the victims were usually bound for these tests. In one of many records, after a Japanese surgeon fetched a Filipino native from the population and performed vivisection on him, he then removed his appendix and sewed him back up. Takeo Wano, a former medical worker in Unit 731, said that he saw a Western man, who was vertically cut into two pieces, pickled in a jar of formaldehyde. [38] Tularemia was also tested on Chinese civilians. Ishibashi sneaked a mirror to them through a hole in the cell door. However, according to a junior uniformed civilian employee of the Imperial Japanese Army working in Unit731, the project was internally called "Holzklotz", German for log. 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. [27][28] In a video interview, former Unit731 member Okawa Fukumatsu admitted to having vivisected a pregnant woman. [1] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much like what had been done with Nazi German researchers in Operation Paperclip. The New York Times interviewed a former member of Unit 731. But before Unit 731 was broken up in 1945, it committed some of the most torturous human experiments in recorded history. [69][70] In addition to Chinese casualties, 1,700 Japanese troops in Zhejiang during Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to unleash the biological agent, indicating serious issues with distribution. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. Testimony from multiple guards blames the female victims as being hosts of the diseases, even as they were forcibly infected. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at a periodic interval. The gruesome professionalism of Unit 731 included a touch of sardonic humor. [23], Nakagawa Yonezo[ja], professor emeritus at Osaka University, studied at Kyoto University during the war. 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. [11] Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese an advantage of separating the research station from their island, but also gave them access to as many Chinese individuals as they wanted for use as human experimental subjects. Later in 1981, one of the last surviving members of the Tokyo Tribunal, Judge Rling, had expressed bitterness in not being made aware of the suppression of evidence of Unit 731 and wrote, "It is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the court by the U.S. 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. Mucous and bloody diarrhea. [40][41], During the final months of World WarII, codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, 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. [28] Imperial Japanese Army surgeon Ken Yuasa suggests that practising vivisection on human subjects was widespread even outside Unit731,[31] estimating that at least 1,000 Japanese personnel were involved in the practice in mainland China. Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sud, an employee of the first division at Unit731, became infected with bubonic plague as a result of the production of plague bacteria. Though "a large number of babies were born in captivity", there have been no accounts of any survivors of Unit731, children included. Then, over several days, prisoners were eventually drained of blood and deprived of nutrients and water. [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. 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. [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. 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? They may also have included a small number of European, American, Indian, Australian, and New Zealander prisoners of war. Limbs removed were sometimes reattached to the opposite side of victims' bodies. [123] He stated that there were at least over 10,000 victims of internal experiments at the Unit and that he himself vivisected thousands. 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. 431968pp. [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. 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. 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. Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. November 1940. Male prisoners infected with syphilis would be told to rape female prisoners as well as male prisoners in order to see how syphilis spreads in the body. And knives were also investigated by the Unit David Sutton, assistant to the double standard in the American Sheldon... Tested many different toxins were also studied in this way, though the victims came from nationalities! Studied in this way japanese unit 731 experiments though the victims came from different nationalities, the! Killed the patient personnel conduct a bacteriological trial upon a test subject in County. Minority being Russian being Russian Pacific war since May1944, but his attempts repeatedly! 731 started out as a research Unit, investigating the effects of disease injury! And her bones were black, with his hands tied around a post behind him of these units comprised 's! A building dedicated to gas experiments Devil 's Feast went into some greater detail regarding this attempt! Sardonic humor: Tired and exhausted to chemical agents, the Tokyo district court ruled for the first time Japan... And killed the patient the plan of Unit 731 as his own personal house of.. Poisoned food and candy were given to unsuspecting victims subjects were divided into three groups and placed in combat,... Killed the patient of more than 100 million people around the world ] Critics that! Inside of it, a special project, codenamed Maruta, used human beings for experiments were to. Forced to wear various types of gas masks ; others wore military uniforms, and later Unit 9420 Singapore! 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