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

Product Information

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). a b c Christopher W., George; Cieslak, Theodore J.; Pavlin, Julie A.; Eitzen, Edward M. (August 1997). "Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective". The Journal of the American Medical Association. 278 (5): 412–417. doi: 10.1001/jama.1997.03550050074036. PMID 9244333. Additionally, Unit731 Youth Corps member Yoshio Shinozuka testified that his friend junior assistant Mitsuo Hirakawa was vivisected as a result of being accidentally infected with plague. [62] Known unit members a b c d e f Kristof, Nicholas D. (1995-03-17). "Unmasking Horror – A special report. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2019-07-14 . Retrieved 2019-07-14.

Even compared to the sordid dealings that allowed Nazi scientists and spies to trade their expertise for immunity from war crimes trials, this was repugnant. Silvester, Christopher (2006-04-29). "Electrocuted, gassed, frozen, boiled alive". Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 2022-01-10 . Retrieved 2019-05-31. a b Ye, Josh (February 4, 2020). "Hit manga My Hero Academia removed in China over war crimes reference". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on November 19, 2020 . Retrieved November 11, 2020.

Get the RNZ app

The final months of World War II saw the liberation of hundreds of ghastly concentration camps and the awful reality of Nazi racism. For more than seven decades those atrocities, including the use of human beings for medical experiments, have been common knowledge. Far less known is the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese by a Japanese organization known as Unit 731. Harris, S.H. (2002). Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-up. Routledge. p.334. ISBN 978-0415932141. Archived from the original on 2022-06-07 . Retrieved 2017-07-08. X, X (1950). Materials On The Trial Of Former Servicemen Of The Japanese Army Charged With Manufacturing And Employing Bacteriological Weapons. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. p.366. 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.” Unit100 also experimented with toxic gas. Phone booth-like tanks were used as portable gas chambers for the prisoners. Some were forced to wear various types of gas masks; others wore military uniforms, and some wore no clothes at all.

Japan’s medical institutions enabled the work of Unit 731 by supplying Dr. Ishii with top Japanese scientists and physicians who would be labeled Hikokumin (traitors) if they refused to take part. Most medical professionals saw their work as noble service to the Emperor; the fact that they were killing non-Japanese meant nothing to them. In 1997, international lawyer Kōnen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against the Japanese government, demanding reparations for the actions of Unit731, using evidence filed by Professor Makoto Ueda of Rikkyo University. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. 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. [ citation needed] a b Emanuel, Ezekiel; Grady, Christine; Crouch, Robert; Lie, Reidar; Miller, Franklin (2011). The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics. US: Oxford University Press. RARE) Yoshimura Hisato (excerpt of a telephone interview conducted by Mainichi Shimbun)". Vimeo. Archived from the original on 2021-10-07 . Retrieved 2021-10-07.Harris, Sheldon. "Factories of Death" (PDF). p.77. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-08-08 . Retrieved 2019-05-31. Monchinski, Tony (2008). Critical Pedagogy and the Everyday Classroom. Volumen 3 de Explorations of Educational Purpose. Springer, p. 57. ISBN 1402084625