[Music] foreign
World War II will always be remembered as a war against humanity. When people hear crimes against humanity
most people immediately think of Nazi Germany the Nuremberg and Dachau Trials and the concentration
and death camps. Many of those on trial were doctors who performed horrific experiments
using eugenics, torture, vivisections without anesthesia and experiments upon human beings
that included high altitude decompression, submersive hypothermia, infectious disease
and other experiments. But few people are aware of what the Japanese were also doing and for
a much longer period of time and with an even larger human population to work on. What was
Unit 731? What was their actual purpose? What did they do that was so horrific? Was anyone
involved held accountable as were the Germans? What do the Japanese of today think about
these men?
Hello I'm Colin Heaton a veteran of the United States Army and Marine Corps former history
professor book author and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History [Music]
[Music]
In 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria and for many years established a strong presence in northern
China. Later as they invaded China proper and then continued throughout Asia and the Pacific
Islands the brutality of the Japanese Army became legendary. In 1937 Unit 731 was created
as a medical engineering unit responsible for testing producing and storing biological
weapons as well as using these on humans to test theories and develop vaccines and treatments
under the direct command of General Shiro Ishii a well-known microbiologist. It was based
near the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin just north of the Korean Peninsula border
with the Soviet Union. Once most of China had fallen the Army was under orders to harvest
the people for forced labor, execution and upwards of a half million or more for medical
experiments. Many were injected with venereal diseases to examine their spread. They were
injected with bubonic plague, cholera, bombarded with intense radiation, amputations to study
blood loss and other horrific experiments. Many people were intentionally infected with
gangrene to test remedies as the Japanese did not have penicillin. Many were sealed into
bunkers as they were killed with a variety of poisonous gases to learn their effects
and there was the removal of various body parts and internal organs while some subjects
were still alive, intentional starvation, deliberate exposure to freezing temperatures to examine
the effects of frostbite and hypothermia and many were infected with yellow fever and malaria
to examine the results and study the efficacies of alternative medications as opposed to using
quinine. Not all of these experiments were isolated within the Unit 731 compound and
facilities. It was decided that a larger pool of test subjects was needed and the most dangerous
forms of parasite hosted diseases such as bubonic plague, anthrax as well as other lethal
pathogens were dropped in canisters on the nearby towns of Changde and Ningbo to assess
the results of biological warfare. The effects were horrific. Men women and even children
were used as guinea pigs. These activities were outlawed by The Hague Convention of 1907
and the Genevic Protocol on the use of biological weapons in 1925 and later incorporated into
the entire Geneva Convention of 1929 ss a result of using various gases in World War
I. Not just Chinese were victims, there were untold thousands of Koreans even Russian civilians
and prisoners of war who were used as lab rats. American prisoners mostly downed air crew
were also victims. Using these biological weapons was not to be restricted to Asia. There was
a plan to release canisters of fleas containing bubonic plague in San Diego, California from
submarine-launched aircraft but the war ended before that could be executed. The mission was
code named Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. After Japan surrendered General Ishii ordered
the destruction of Unit 731 which included more than 150 buildings all the Laboratories
and the two adjacent airports as the Allied forces closed in. Many hundreds of prisoners
and some believe as many as several thousand who had survived up to that time were immediately
killed. Ishii wanted no living witnesses. Japan never signed or ratified Geneva 1929 but that
did not absolve them of the responsibility of adhering to the laws in force at that time.
Japan violated every provision of the laws of warfare until they were finally defeated
in 1945 but few people were ever held accountable and no one for Unit 731 ever stood trial much
like the deals made with top Nazi doctors and scientists. The men of Unit 731 and their
senior officers and scientists were protected. The researchers at Unit 731 had maintained
very detailed records of their experiments and used them as bargaining chips just like
many Germans did. Ironically General Ishii kept a detailed diary during his entire military
service to include his work in China but there is no reference to any of his time commanding
Unit 731 or its activities. That alone illustrates that he knew what he was doing was illegal
and a violation of his oath as a physician. Ishii and his men in U.S custody managed to
avoid being charged with crimes against humanity and placed on trial unlike their brethren
who had murdered Allied pows in the occupied regions under Japanese influence. This was
due to the fact that Ishii and his associates received immunity from prosecution for war
crimes because the U.S wanted their research for its own use in the U.S biological warfare
program and keep many of the documents and the years of incredible data out of the hands
of the Russians. This was sanctioned all the way up the American chain of command from
the general staff all the way up. Their primary catalyst for this was Edwin Hill the chief
of the biological warfare laboratory at Fort Detrick Maryland who after reviewing the thousands
of pages from Unit 731's files stated in his secret report from 1946 that the "information
was absolutely invaluable it could have never been obtained in the United States because
of scruples attached to experiments on humans and the information was obtained fairly cheaply."
On May 6, 1947 General Douglas MacArthur wrote to president Harry S. Truman and the Judge
Advocate General's office that additional data possibly some statements from Ishii probably
can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence
channels and will not be employed as war crimes evidence. Basically it was a get out of jail
free card. As a result the horrors perpetrated by Unit 731 never became public knowledge
in the west until recently although some information was gathered by the Soviets who placed several
of Unit 731 personnel in the docks at the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials. The Japanese themselves
knew nothing about this unit and its activities for decades. In fact its existence was even
denied and it is not taught in schools nor are any other Japanese war crimes. This was
only possible due to the protection the United States government gave to Ishii and his men
keeping the story secret as a reward for gathering all their medical research. Their primary Japanese
war criminals such as Hideki Tojo were put on trial at the International Military Tribunal
for the Far East which was better known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Testimony from
General Ishii which was taken from his post-war interrogation in Maryland was submitted as
evidence. Ishii and his officers, doctors and scientists were never charged with war crimes.
In another incredible sense of irony the surviving members of Unit 731 held annual
reunions to where they gathered in mutually respected comradeship. General Dr. Shiro Ishii
retired rather comfortably and he died in Tokyo on October 9, 1959 from laryngeal cancer
at the age of 67.
Prior to his death he was baptized into the Catholic faith by Dr. Herman Heuvers the former
president of Sophia University in Tokyo whom Ishii had known before the war. His funeral
was chaired by Lieutenant General Dr. Masaji Kitano his second in command at Unit 731. And
the irony continues. Kitano was one of the founders of the Japanese pharmaceutical company
and first commercial blood bank the Green Cross which was renamed Welfide in 1998 and
which became part of Mitsubishi Pharma in 2001.
Kitano died on May 19 1986.
He was never charged with a crime either, but in 2018 things began to change and the Japanese
government seemed to be acknowledging part of its violent past. As it happens people talk
and as the men involved with Unit 731 grew older a few probably decided that they could
live no longer with their conscience. The government provided a list of names of more than 3,600
members of Unit 731 to a Japanese scholar for his research. Much of this forthrightness
was due to intense pressure from China and South Korea both nations with its own database
on Unit 731 and its activities over the years. As more information emerged it became harder
for Japan to ignore its past and hide the truth. For example in 1995 an article in the
New York Times published the comments from a medical assistant assigned to Unit 731 under
Ishii. To quote the article< "...the Chinese prisoner had been deliberately infected with the plague
as part of a research project, the full horror of which is only now emerging, to develop plague
bombs for use in World War II. After infecting him the researchers decided to cut him open
to see what the disease does to a man's inside. No anesthetic was used." The former medical
assistant said, "out of concern that it might have an effect on the results." So remember
that at least the Germans apologized for what their previous government did to the peoples
of Europe. Japan has never made such an overture.
Thank you for watching Forgotten History. Please click like, subscribe and share. Send us comments
and show ideas and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Until next time [Music]
thank you
[Music]