What is Unit 731?

Normally, when somebody talks about WWII, especially when someone talks about mass murders, genocides, and Concentration Camps we immediately associate it with Germany and Nazis. Most people wouldn't associate this with Japan. But the reality is that Japan commited horrible war crimes against humanity. For this purpose they used a division of the Imperial Army called Unit 731.

For those who don't know, Unit 731 was a special unit from the Japanese Imperial Army that was in charge of developing biological and chemical weapons. They tested this weapons performing horrible experiments with living people in "concentration camps" that were located in China. These experiments were considered-even in those days-unmoral and unethical by the international community. 

This unit was directed by General Shiro Ishi who personally conducted their operations. It is estimated that between 3000 and 12000 people were killed by  Unit 731 during its 10 years of activities, until the japanese surrender to the Americans in 1945. 

The Americans knew what was happening inside Unit 731's facilities. Nevertheless they helped them not to be trial in exchange for information obtained from their experiments. With this information, some of the most important medical advances were achieved. 

The question is:

The slaughter was worth? The end justifies the means? Would you do the same to save a person?

Shiro Ishii

Probably, most of the world does not know nor have heard about Ishii Shiro. He was a japanese which studied medicine at the Kyoto imperial University in 1922 and, because of his skills, got a post graduate there later. He was assigned at the 1st Army Hospital and Army Medical School. He was the lieutenant general of Unit 731.

In 1928 he travelled around Europe for two years. During his journey, he did an extensive research on biological warfare and chemical warfare from WW1 onwards. At that time, various western countries were researching biological weapons.

Although in 1925 the Geneva Convention prohibited the use of bacteriological and chemical weapons, Ishii urged the military leaders so they can start researching these weapons (He returned in 1930). He knew that his plans contravened the convention, but he also knew that these were banned for something. And that has one explanation: they are highly dangerous and can be very useful in war.

In 1931, the japanese invaded northeast of China. The japanese claimed that Chinese forces had destroyed the railway at Lake Liu near Mukden in southern Manchuria. This had actually been done by japanese themselves, this was just a pretext to invade. Ishii started opening research units. In 1932 he opened a subgroup in Manchukuo were human experiments were immediately made after it's creation.

On August 1, 1940, the Ishii Unit was renamed the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army, although after 1941 it was more commonly referred to as Manchukuo Unit 731. Unit 731 was composed of four sections: research, experiments, antiepidemic, and water purification and productions.

The Lethal Activities

There was no conscious, no compassion, no humanity and no sense of ethics in the methods and experiments made by the Unit 731. It was a place were death was routinely met. People used for the experiments were gathered from the surrounding population, and they were usually called "logs".  They took out criminals, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, infants, the elderly, and pregnant women in order to perform their inhuman experiments.

The most common activities performed by Unit 731 were:

Vivisection: First they infected the prisoner with a disease. Once the disease spread throughout the body, scientists performed an invasive surgery while prisoners were still alive, mostly without using anesthesia, in order to analyze how the infection attacked the central organs.  Also, prisoners had their limbs amputated in order to study the blood loss and the effects of untreated gangrene in the body.

Germ Warfare Attacks: Prisoners were infected with venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea in order to study the effects. What is worse, scientists spread viruses in the surrounding villages in order to study the effects caused by the plagues in the population. Some examples of these viruses are Anthrax and Cholera.

Testing Weapons: They used prisoners as targets in order to test grenades, explosive chemical-bombs, chemical weapons and even flamethrowers.

 There were other not so known-experiments performed by the Unit 731 such as:

- Injecting air into the prisoner's blood stream in order to determine the time it took for the bubble of air to get to the heart and produce a heart attack.

- Injecting horse urine to prisoners' kidneys.

- Depriving prisoners of food and water in order to determine the time it takes for them to die of starvation.

- Placing prisoners in high-pressure chambers until death.

- Exposing prisoners to lethal doses of x-rays.

Biological Warfare Story

This war is known for its mass destruction weapons, spreading hoaxes processed in labs and in different ways to a designed population. It cannot be imagine the damage of these weapons. Believe it or not this war began thousands of years ago, back in the time of the Persian and Greek armies, the archers infected their arrows by dipping them in decomposing bodies. This way the disease could be spread in the enemy's troops.

Then a similar strategy was used in the Tortona battle in 12th century AD by Barbarossa direction. Later in the 18th the British decided to send victims with smallpox to spread the disease in the Native Americans.

The same British strategy was used during the American Civil war to cause disease among enemy forces.

As we all know Germany was the principal supporter of the chemical war in the last century, developing Anthrax, Cholera and wheat fungus.

As we all know Germany was the principal supporter of the chemical war in the last century, developing Anthrax, cholera and wheat fungus. These viruses killed thousands of people during the First World War, by that time the world was not prepared for these attacks so the ally forces suffered a lot of looses. Getting to our main topic, Unit 731 started operating during WWII. This organization was the devil itself; they went gore with their human experiments just to find facts about biological reactions.

They exposed more than 3,000 victims to biological weapons; the scientists were able to analyze the body reaction at the exact moment the bomb crushed and see the effects inside by performing autopsies. The research of this Japanese team was rewarded by US, not only giving them housing; they also got important government positions later in their country.

The Facilities

Unit 731 was divided in eight divisions. Each division had a different purpose. there were divisions for productions, training, research, and equipment of medical and administrative units

The Unit 731 had a lot of buildings where they did their experiments and factories where they made chemicals. A portion of the remaining buildings have been preserved by the chinese as War Crime Museums, others are used by industrial concerns.

Shinjuku:

 It's a medical school that operated in Shinjuku, Tokyo during WWII. A nurse that worked back then informed that she helped burying corpses on the school ground's.

Guangzhou

 This facility was operated by the Japanese Southern China Area Army. Known as Canton or Kwangchow. This installation conducted human experimentation in food and water deprivation as well as water-borne typhus.

Mukden POW camp

 According to Maj. Robert Peaty, a senior British officer at Mukden and a prisoner-of-war camp 350 miles from Pingfan, doctors from Unit 731 administered regular injections of infectious diseases, disguised as harmless vaccinations.

What Happened with the Responsibles?

After the Japanese surrender to the Americans in 1945, the responsibles for this massive murders were granted with immunity in exchange of their research on biological warfare. Former members were monitored closely by American authorities for a while, but then they were left alone. Since then these murderers have lived normal lives in a newly developed country such as Japan. In this country they are considered "heroes."

The only reason because the US granted immunity to the members of Unit 731 is that they didn't wanted the Soviet Union to have access to this material. 

Here we can find an example of one of the most unjust actions taken in the history of war and human rights. These Japanese officials were forgiven and "left alone" by the American authorities. Even more, they haven't been punished by history. Instead, German officials were trialed (some of them executed) for war crimes against humanity.

This genocide will be a "bleeding wound" inside Japanese history. It should be known by everybody that there are always unjust situations in history and that this one is a clear example of them. The people who were in charge of these experiments should have been punished in the past. We think that the Japanese government should apologize for the war crimes that Unit 731 commited. Nevertheless, until now they don't recognize the existance of this group. 

Here we have asked ourselves some questions:
Don't you think these two countries should have the same treatment? Isn't that against American values? 

War Trouper Shares Testimony About Unit 731

In 1997, an 84-year-old Japanese Army police officer who lived in the state of Manchuria during World War II told the news his experience as japanese in Unit 731 times.

This  guy told the  world  the  true facts that happened in Manchuria, from  his point of  view as a worker for the Japanese Government. His name remains anonymous because he  was the  first one to  face his country executions in a Chinese court. His efforts made the plaintiffs  are demanding an apology and 20 million yen each in damages from the Japanese government. Also his livings and experiences were used by the international organizations to reveal the atrocities of Japan during WWII.

This witness tells  us  how  he tortured   possible soviet spies very precisely. The government didn’t hesitate is they were probably a spy,  immediately they were sent to  interrogation and cold tortures. If they had no evidence, and the doubt was not gone, the suspects were sent by train to Unit 731 in Dalian.

it is amazing how this  person  had the guts  to tell the enemy in its country the slaughters committed there. Unit 731 was kept as a national secret for more than thirty years: hiding the pain and suffering of more than 3,000 civilians. Someday justice will be made to the families of the innocent people that spent their last days in that hell.