Unit 731

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Image:Unit 731.jpgkurtis queerbait Unit 731 was a secret military medical unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that researched biological warfare and other topics through human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War(1937-1945) and World War II era. For information on its origin see Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory.

The unit was disguised as a water purification unit. It was based in Pingfan, near the city of Harbin in northeastern China, the region which was then part of the puppet state of Manchukuo. Various Eastern and Western sources estimate anywhere from 3,000 to 200,000 Chinese, Korean, Allied civilians and POWs were directly or indirectly killed by Unit 731's experiments.

There were other units besides Unit 731, which serves as a general term in describing the Japanese biological warfare program. Other units include Unit 543 (Hailar), Unit 773 (Songo unit), Unit 100 (Changchun), Unit 1644 (Nanjing), Unit 1855 (Beijing), Unit 8604 (Guangzhou), Unit 200 (Manchuria):and Unit 9420 (Singapore). The acts of Unit 731 are one of many major war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army from the occupation of Manchuria in 1931 to the end of World War II in 1945.

After these laboratories were destroyed by the Japanese to hide their activities, many of the scientists involved went on to prominent careers in politics, academia and business. The United States granted amnesty, allowing these scientists to go unprosecuted in exchange for their experimentation data.

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Formation

In 1932, Shiro Ishii and his men built the Zhongma Fortress, a prison on the outskirts of Harbin. In 1935 a jailbreak forced Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. Ishii moved closer to Harbin at Pingfan to set up a new facility.

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Activities

A special project code-named Maruta used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes known as "logs" (maruta 丸太). This term was the result of the feeling of the scientists that killing a prisoner was the same as cutting down a tree. The test subjects ranged from infants, to old people, to pregnant women along with the baby. Many experiments were performed without the use of anesthetics because it was believed that it might affect the results.

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Vivisection

  • Vivisections were performed on prisoners infected with various diseases; scientists would remove organs to study the effects of the disease on the human body.
  • Prisoners were amputated limb by limb to study blood loss.
  • Arms were cut off and reattached to opposite sides.
  • Limbs were frozen and sawed off.
  • Stomachs were surgically removed and the esophagus was reattached to the intestines.
  • Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, et cetera were taken out.
  • Vivisection of a pregnant woman (impregnated by one of the doctors) and the fetus.
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Weapons testing

  • Grenade tests used human targets at various distances and positions.
  • Flame throwers were tested on humans.
  • Bombs were tested on humans tied to stakes at various positions.
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Other experiments

  • Human subjects were deprived of food and water to study the effects and duration before death.
  • Prisoners were placed into highly pressurized chambers until they died.
  • Frostbite experiments were conducted on prisoners to determine how long humans can survive when exposed to extreme temperatures.
  • Temperature experiments were performed to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and survival rate.
  • Prisoners were placed into centrifuges and spun until they died.
  • Animal blood was injected into humans.
  • Prisoners were bombarded with lethal doses of x-ray radiation.
  • Gas chambers tested chemical weapons on prisoners.
  • Air bubbles were injected into prisoners' bloodstreams to simulate a stroke.
  • Sea water was injected into prisoners to determine if it could be substituted for saline.
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Biological warfare

Japanese scientists tested the plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, and other diseases on prisoners. Their research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb to spread the bubonic plague. Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, proposed by Ishii Shiro in 1938. This enabled Japanese soldiers to launch multiple biological attacks by infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells, and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrying fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera and other deadly pathogens. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by planes in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces.

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Members

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Divisions

Unit 731 was divided into eight divisions.

  • Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, tuberculosis on live subjects. For this purpose a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
  • Division 2: Research for biological weapons used on the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
  • Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
  • Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
  • Division 5: Training of personnel.
  • Division 6-8: Equipment, medical, and administrative units.
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Facilities

Image:Harbin maj enh 731 1.JPG The Unit 731 complex covered six square kilometers and consisted of more than 150 buildings. The facilities were very well designed making it hard to destroy them. Some of Unit 731's satellite facilities still remain and are open to tourists.

The complex contained various production facilities. It had around 4,500 containers for raising fleas, six giant cauldrons to produce various chemicals, and around 1,800 containers to produce biological agents. Approximately 30 kg of bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in several days.

Tens of tons of these biological weapons (and some chemical) were stored in various places in northeastern China throughout the war. The Japanese attempted to destroy every last shred of evidence of the facilities after disbanding; however, this was not successful as evidence has occasionally harmed civilians even very recently. In particular, in August 2003, 29 people were hospitalized after a construction crew in Heilongjiang inadvertently dug up chemical shells that had been buried deep in the soil more than fifty years ago.

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Disbanding and the end of World War II

Image:Harbin maj enh 731 2.JPG Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific conflict since May 1944, but his attempts were repeatedly foiled by poor planning and Allied intervention. When it was clear that the war would soon end, Ishii ordered the destruction of the facilities, and told his men "to take the secret to the grave." His Japanese troops blew the compound up in the final days of the war to destroy evidence of their experimentation. They also purposely released thousands of plague-infected rodents, and other animals, such as horses, infected with diseases communicable to humans. Chemicals were dumped into rivers or buried. Some of these chemicals continue to pollute China today.

After Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation. At the end of the war however, he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological weapons. The United States believed that the research data was valuable because the allies had never publicly conducted this type of human experimentation, due to potential political fallout. Also, the U.S. did not want any other nation, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons.

Only one reference to Japanese experimentation with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians was made at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in August 1946 by David Sutton, the assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. Japanese defense counselor, Michael Levin, argued the claim was vague and uncorroborated, and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb, for lack of evidence. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was likely aware of Unit 731 activities. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental.

Although silent on the issue at the Tokyo trials, the Soviet Union relentlessly pursued the case and prosecuted several officials from the unit at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. Although many Russians were also tortured and experimented upon at Unit 731, along with Mongolians and Koreans, Russia's motivation for the Khabarovsk trial is believed to have been political in nature. In fact, the Soviet Union let off the criminals with a relatively light sentence, some believe after negotiating its own acquisition of the data.

Many former members of Unit 731 became part of the Japanese medical establishment. Dr Masaji Kitano led Japan's largest pharmaceutical company, the Green Cross. Others headed U.S.-backed medical schools or worked for the Japanese health ministry.

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Politicization of history

Unit 731 activities are denied by right-wing nationalist Japanese historians, who say they are fabrications by Chinese propaganda. Left-wing organizations have published histories of Unit 731 that detail the cover-up by the U.S. government (in exchange for the data). As with many WWII topics (and the subsequent political debate) references to Unit 731 are omitted from many Japanese history textbooks. Some see this as evidence that, in modern Japan, revisionist history is part of the mainstream, which contributes to the perception that Japan has yet to accept full responsibility for the crimes of its past.

In late 1982, the Government of the People's Republic of China opened the Unit 731 War Crime Exhibition Museum in Harbin.

In 1997, 180 Chinese, either victims or the family of victims of Unit 731, sued the Japanese government for a full disclosure, apology and compensation.

In August 2002, the Tokyo District Court acknowledged the existence of Unit 731 and its biological warfare activities, but ruled that all compensation issues were settled by the Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China of September 29, 1972. However that document only mentions the renunciation of reparations claims by the Chinese Government, not private individuals.

In 2000, the United States Congress passed the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act to declassify most classified U.S. Government records about war criminals and crimes committed by the Japanese during World War II. As of 2003, this will be done through the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG). Nearly all of the remaining classified data is believed to relate to post-1945 experiments conducted jointly between Japanese and U.S. scientists.

In 2005, Professor Keiichi Tsuneishi of Kanagawa University found, in the U.S. National Archives, declassified documents showing that the U.S. Government had purchased information gleaned from Unit 731's experiments. The officers in charge of Unit 731 were persuaded to provide the results with money, gifts, entertainment and a waiver of war crimes charges. The motivation for the purchase was the enhancement of the U.S.'s own biological warfare program, itself a part of the arms race with the Soviet Union.

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Cultural depictions and representations

  • Japanese author Morimura Seiichi published the book The Devil's Gluttony (悪魔の飽食) in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony - A Sequel in 1983, which were the first Japanese language publications to reveal the dark history of Unit 731.
  • The Chinese movie Men Behind The Sun is a film about the atrocities committed by Unit 731.
  • Two episodes of the television show The X-Files weave Unit 731 into the series' complex alien abduction/government conspiracy mythology. In the episodes "Nisei" and "731", Japanese scientists who were given amnesty in the U.S. after World War II are said to be continuing their work in secret, experimenting with creating an alien-human hybrid, possibly as a weapon to be immune to biological weapons. The name of the doctor in charge of the secret Japanese group of former Unit 731 doctors, Takeo Ishimaru, and his alias, Shiro Zama, is an amalgamation of the name of the real head of Unit 731, Dr. Shiro Ishii.
  • The British comics writer Warren Ellis wrote a John Constantine story ("Setting Sun," Hellblazer #142, DC Comics) about a fictionalized version of one of the doctors who performed the experiments, and his guilt-ridden desire to have done to him what he did to others.
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See also

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External links

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References

  • Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4900737399
  • Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0029353017
  • Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0415091055 ISBN 0415932149
  • Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0253334721
  • Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 0375502319 ISBN 0385334966
  • Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing : The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 0812966538
  • Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1883319854 ISBN 0756756987 ISBN 0826412580 ISBN 082641415Xde:Einheit 731

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