Unit 731

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

The unit was disguised as a water purification unit. It was based in Pingfang 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 from 3,000 to 200,000 Chinese, Korean, Mongolians, Allied civilians and POWs (especially Russian POWs) were directly or indirectly killed by Unit 731's experiments. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Unit 731 was one of many units used by the Japanese to research biological warfare and is to this day used as a general term to describe the practice. Other units include Unit 516 (Qiqihar), 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 war crimes committed by Unit 731 are but some examples of those the Imperial Japanese Army carried out from their occupation of Manchuria in 1931 to the end of World War II in 1945.

Many of the scientists involved in Unit 731 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 data.

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 Pingfang to set up a new facility.

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 originated as a joke from the fact that the official cover story for the facility given to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. It might be a demonstration of the feelings of the scientists that killing a prisoner was the same as cutting down a tree, trying not to picture the real event. The test subjects included infants, the elderly, pregnant women (and unborn fetuses). Many experiments were performed without the use of anesthetics because it was believed that it might affect the results.

Vivisection

Vivisections were performed on prisoners infected with various diseases. Scientists would perform invasive surgery on prisoners removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body.
Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the baby removed.
Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.
Those limbs that were removed were sometimes reattached to opposite sides of the body.
Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and sawn off.
Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the oesophagus was reattached to the intestines.
Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

Weapons testing

Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.
Flame throwers were tested on humans.
Human targets tied to stakes were used to test bombs.

Other experiments

Some prisoners were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time before death.
Some prisoners were placed into highly pressurized chambers until death.
Some prisoners were exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans can survive with such an affliction.
Some experiments were performed to determine the relationship between temperature, burns and human survival.
Some prisoners were placed into centrifuges and spun until death.
Animal blood was injected into some prisoners and the effects of this studied.
Some prisoners had lethal doses of x-ray radiation administered.
Gas chambers tested various chemical weapons on some prisoners.
Air bubbles were injected into some prisoners' bloodstreams to simulate a stroke.
Sea water was injected into some prisoners to determine if it could be substituted for saline.

Biological warfare

Japanese scientists performed tests centering around the plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases on prisoners.

The research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague. Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii Shiro in 1938.

These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks by infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrying fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera and other deadly pathogens.

In addition to this infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by planes in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces.

Members

Lieutenant-General Shiro Ishii
Lieutenant Colonel Ryoichi Naito
Dr. Masaji Kitano
Yoshio Shinozuka

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.

Facilities

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 factories. It had around 4,500 containers to be used to raise 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 chemicals) were stored in various places in northeastern China throughout the war.

The Japanese attempted to destroy evidence of the facilities after disbanding. This failed as evidence has occasionally harmed civilians even very recently.

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.

Disbanding and the end of World War II

File:Harbin maj enh 731 2.JPG

Information sign at the site today

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 activities. They also 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.

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 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 were valuable because the allies had never publicly conducted or condoned such experiments on humans due to moral and political revulsion . The U.S. also did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union to acquire data on biological weapons.

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal has heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians —. This took place in August 1946 and was actioned by David Sutton, 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 pursued the case and prosecuted several officials from the unit in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials.

Although many Russians were also tortured and experimented upon at Unit 731 with Mongolians and Koreans, Russia's motivation for the Khabarovsk trial is believed to have also been political.

The Soviet Union sentenced the criminals involved with relatively light sentences, some believe this took place after negotiating acquisition of the research data in the same way the U.S. had done.

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.

Politicization of history

Unit 731 activities are denied by 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 people, either victims or the families of victims of Unit 731, sued the Japanese government for 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 are believed to relate to post-1945 experiments conducted jointly between Japanese and U.S. scientists.

In 2005, Professor Keiichi Tsuneishi of Kanagawa University found declassified documents in the U.S. National Archives showing that the U.S. Government had purchased information regarding Unit 731's experiments.

The officers in charge of Unit 731 were persuaded to provide their results for money, gifts, entertainment and a waiver of war crimes charges. The motivation for the purchase was the enhancement of the U.S.'s biological warfare program, part of the arms race with the Soviet Union.

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 fictional 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.
Japanese director Minoru Matsui's 2001 documentary Japanese Devils was composed largely of interviews with 14 members of Unit 731 who had been taken prisoner by China and later released.
The upcoming film Philosophy of a Knife will follow Unit 731 from its foundation in the 1930s to its disbanding at the end of the Second World War.

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 082641415X
Moreno, Jonathan D. Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, W H Freeman 1999; Routledge 2001. ISBN 0415928354

External links

"History of Japan's biological weapons program". In "Federation of American Scientists". 2000-04-16.
Green, Shane. "The Asian Auschwitz of Unit 731". In The Age. 2002-08-29.
"Biochemical Warfare - Unit 731". In "Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War (APTSJW)". No date.
"Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG)". In "National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)". No date.
The trial of Unit 731 By Russell Working, The Japan Times
technologyartist.com on Unit 731
Japan's sins of the past - from The Guardian.
IWG archives
US paid for Japanese human germ warfare data - from Australian Broadcasting Corportation News Online. 2005-08-15
aiipowmia.com on Unit 731
"Army Doctor"; A first-hand account written by Yuasa Ken.
Ex-Japanese Soldier Deemed War Criminal
TripAdvisor.com (2006). "Unit 731 Museum". TripAdvisor.com travel reviews website. TripAdvisor.com. Retrieved 2006-06-15. This tourist review site has a few photos and comments by tourists, but little specific information on the museum itself.
Marquand, Robert (2001-08-20). "Why the past still separates China and Japan". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2006-06-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Newspaper article which describes the Unit 731 museum and uses it to reflect on larger issues in current Japanese-Chinese relations.
China Daily (2005-05-06). "China recalls germ warfare experiments". ChinaDaily.com website. China Daily. Retrieved 2006-06-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)