For the rest of the year, I don't plan to go into any major topics, I'll pick and choose a few things that haven't been covered yet. This article was inspired by watching a 1988 film in Hong Kong, which was banned in several countries when it was released, but caused such outrage in Australia that the director even received death threats. The film itself is based on real events, and depicts the activities of Unit 731 (also known as the 731 Manchu Detachment, Kamo Detachment or Ishii Unit) operating in Japanese-occupied territory in China (Manchuria). Please note that this is a tougher subject than usual, with both story and visuals that may be disturbing to the reader, so if you can't take it, DO NOT READ FURTHER!
The entrance to the camp site in 1936
It has been said before that the Japanese were fond of committing atrocities wherever they went, starting with Nanjing at the end of 1937. The vendetta has continued in other parts of China, to such an extent that I seriously wonder why it is not taught in almost any school curriculum, or if it is, the subject is not given enough detail. In 1937, Unit 731 in Harbin, China, was established by the Japanese government with entirely legitimate intent. Unit 731 was intended to be an agency whose driving force was the advancement of general public health, and in which research was to be carried out for the benefit of Japanese soldiers. The aim was to equip Japanese soldiers with more knowledge about the limits of tolerance of the human body, such as how to better resist hunger and thirst or how to overcome certain diseases. The early experiments were carried out on volunteers who signed a consent form giving permission for the staff to carry out the experiments, but as the war escalated and progressed, these methods and objectives slowly evolved into something quite different.
Unit 731 building. The two prisons are hidden in the middle of the main building
hidden in the centre of the building, so that they were not visible from aerial photographs.
Lieutenant General Shiro-ishii
Ruins of the boiler house (Xinhua/Wang Kai)
Although the Geneva Convention of 1925 strictly prohibited the use of biological and chemical weapons in warfare, the Japanese wanted to be prepared for this type of warfare. Since most people with common sense would not, of course, participate in this type of experiment voluntarily, the Japanese decided to use prisoners of war as test subjects. The victims of Unit 731 were mainly Chinese and Russians, but they did not exclude Mongols and Koreans.
Lieutenant General Shiro-ishii
Unit 731 was led by Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii and was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. They routinely carried out experiments on people who were dehumanised and internally labelled 'logs'. The experiments included disease injections (testing how the bodies of subjects infected with various diseases react to pathogens in order to create new, artificial diseases...), controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, hyperbaric pressure chamber experiments, vivisection, organ harvesting, amputation and standard weapons testing. Victims included not only abducted men, women (including pregnant women) and children, but also babies born as a result of systematic rape by staff inside the camp. Unit 731 also produced biological weapons that were used in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces, including Chinese cities and towns, water sources and fields. It is estimated that up to half a million people have been killed by Unit 731 and its associated programs, and none of the prisoners have survived. In the final moments of World War II, all prisoners in the camp were killed to conceal evidence.
EXPERIMENTS:
There was a special project here in Japan, code-named Maruta, which also used humans for experiments. The subjects were gathered from members of the surrounding population, and were sometimes euphemistically called "logs" (丸まる太た, maruta), in contexts such as "How many logs fell?". This term was a joke of the staff, as the official cover story given to the local authorities was that the facility was a sawmill. According to a uniformed civilian employee of the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731, the project was internally called "Holzklotz", which means log in German. In another parallel, the bodies of the "sacrificed" subjects were disposed of by burning. Researchers from Unit 731 also published some of their findings in peer-reviewed journals, writing as if the research had been carried out on non-human primates, so-called "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys".
EXPERIMENTS:
There was a special project here in Japan, code-named Maruta, which also used humans for experiments. The subjects were gathered from members of the surrounding population, and were sometimes euphemistically called "logs" (丸まる太た, maruta), in contexts such as "How many logs fell?". This term was a joke of the staff, as the official cover story given to the local authorities was that the facility was a sawmill. According to a uniformed civilian employee of the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731, the project was internally called "Holzklotz", which means log in German. In another parallel, the bodies of the "sacrificed" subjects were disposed of by burning. Researchers from Unit 731 also published some of their findings in peer-reviewed journals, writing as if the research had been carried out on non-human primates, so-called "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys".
Ruins of the boiler house (Xinhua/Wang Kai)
According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris:
"The Togo Unit used cruel tactics to obtain samples of selected body organs. When Ishii or one of his colleagues wanted to research the human brain, they would order the guards to find them a usable sample. One prisoner was taken from his cell and held down by the guards while another guard smashed the victim's head with an axe. The brain was removed for the pathologist and the body was then taken to the crematorium for routine disposal."
Photo: chinadaily.com.cn
Photo: chinadaily.com.cn
Photos: Xinhua
Nakagawa Yonezo, Professor Emeritus at Osaka University, studied at Kyoto University during the war. While he was there, he had the opportunity to watch footage of Unit 731's human experiments and executions. He later testified about the playfulness of the experimenters:
"Some of the experiments had absolutely nothing to do with the advancement of germ warfare or medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: "What would happen if we did such and such?". What was the medical purpose of performing and studying beheadings? Absolutely none. It was just a game. Professional people like to play games too."
Photo: chinadaily.com.cn
More than once, prisoners were given diseases disguised as vaccines to study their effects. In order to study the effects of untreated STDs, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhoea/tripper and then studied at length. Prisoners were also regularly subjected to cruelty by guards, and rape was considered commonplace. Despite the fact that the experiments were mainly carried out on Chinese, members of Unit 731 were not exempted from possible experimentation.....
Photo: chinadaily.com.cn
VIVISECTION:
The practice of performing surgery on living organisms for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research. In Unit 731, vivisection is performed without anesthesia to study the functioning of living body systems. It was performed on thousands of victims, mainly Chinese Communist prisoners, children and elderly peasants. They were infected with diseases such as cholera and plague, and before death their organs were removed for examination so that the effects of the disease could be studied without decomposition after death. After the body subjected to the experiments had been worn out and completely exhausted, the subjects were usually shot or killed by lethal injection.
The practice of performing surgery on living organisms for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research. In Unit 731, vivisection is performed without anesthesia to study the functioning of living body systems. It was performed on thousands of victims, mainly Chinese Communist prisoners, children and elderly peasants. They were infected with diseases such as cholera and plague, and before death their organs were removed for examination so that the effects of the disease could be studied without decomposition after death. After the body subjected to the experiments had been worn out and completely exhausted, the subjects were usually shot or killed by lethal injection.
Photos: Xinhua
Thousands of men, women, children and infants interned in prisoner-of-war camps were subjected to vivisection, often without anesthetic and usually with fatal results. In a video interview, Okawa Fukumatsu, a former member of Unit 731, admitted to having performed CPR on a pregnant woman. Prisoners have been subjected to vivisection after contracting various diseases: researchers have performed invasive surgeries on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of diseases on the human body. Prisoners' limbs were regularly amputated to study the effects of blood loss. The limbs were sometimes reattached to the other side of the victims' bodies, but some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and their aesophagus reattached to their intestines, while others had parts of their organs removed, such as the brain, lungs and liver. According to Ken Yuasa, a surgeon in the Imperial Japanese Army, the practice of performing live cuts on human subjects was widespread outside Unit 731, and he estimates that at least 1,000 Japanese personnel have participated in the practice in mainland China. Yuasa said that when he performed vivisection on prisoners, it was "more for practice than for research" and that such practices were "routine" among Japanese doctors stationed in China during the war.
Photo: Associated Press/LIFE magazine
Breeding rooms
Photo: Xinhua
Start of destruction of the site
The New York Times interviewed a former member of Unit 731. The former Japanese medical assistant, who insists on anonymity, recounted his first experience of being a live human being deliberately infected with plague to develop "plague bombs" to win the war as quickly as possible:
"This fellow knew it was all over for him, so he didn't resist when he was led into the room and tied down, but when I picked up the scalpel he started screaming at the top of his voice. I cut him from his chest to his stomach and he screamed horribly, his face twisted up in agony. He was making unimaginable noises, screaming so terribly, but then he finally stopped. It was just a day's work for the surgeons, but it left a big mark on me because it was the first time."
Other sources mention that after a while it was common practice in the unit for the surgeons to stuff a rag (or medical gauze) into the prisoners' mouths before starting the "operation", in order to suppress any screams.
WEAPON TESTS:
Human targets were also used to test grenades placed at different distances and in different positions. They have also been used to test flamethrowers on covered and uncovered skin, while victims have been tied to stakes and used as targets for pathogen bombs, chemical weapons, cluster bombs containing various amounts of shrapnel, explosive bombs, bayonets and knives. In addition, Unit 731 tested bayonets, swords and knives on prisoners, but also set up gas chambers to test subjects with blister gas and nerve gas. They also studied bodies exposed for long periods to X-rays, which sterilised and killed thousands of test subjects within a short time.
Other sources mention that after a while it was common practice in the unit for the surgeons to stuff a rag (or medical gauze) into the prisoners' mouths before starting the "operation", in order to suppress any screams.
WEAPON TESTS:
Human targets were also used to test grenades placed at different distances and in different positions. They have also been used to test flamethrowers on covered and uncovered skin, while victims have been tied to stakes and used as targets for pathogen bombs, chemical weapons, cluster bombs containing various amounts of shrapnel, explosive bombs, bayonets and knives. In addition, Unit 731 tested bayonets, swords and knives on prisoners, but also set up gas chambers to test subjects with blister gas and nerve gas. They also studied bodies exposed for long periods to X-rays, which sterilised and killed thousands of test subjects within a short time.
Photo: Associated Press/LIFE magazine
"In order to determine the best way to treat the varying degrees of shrapnel injuries suffered by Japanese soldiers in the field, Chinese prisoners were subjected to direct bombardment. Unprotected, they were strapped to wooden planks, which were stabbed into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb, which was then detonated. Most were operated on, the others were autopsied.
- Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria - "
BIOWEAPONS:
The 731 and its units (including the 1644 and 100) were actively involved in the research, development and experimental use of biological weapons to cause epidemics during the Second World War, during attacks on the Chinese population (military and civilian). Plague-infected fleas cultivated in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644 were spread by low-flying aircraft over Chinese cities, including the coastal cities of Ningbo and Changde in Hunan province, in 1940 and 1941 (see my article on the siege of Changde: https://ghostdivision74h.blogspot.com/2022/04/changde-ostromabattle-at-changde.html). In 1940 and 1941, these operations killed tens of thousands of people with artificially generated bubonic plague epidemics. During an expedition to Nanking, typhoid and paratyphoid bacteria were sprayed into the city's wells, swamps and houses, as well as into snacks distributed to locals. Shortly afterwards, epidemics broke out, much to the delight of many Japanese researchers, who concluded that paratyphoid was by far the "most effective" of the pathogens.
BIOWEAPONS:
The 731 and its units (including the 1644 and 100) were actively involved in the research, development and experimental use of biological weapons to cause epidemics during the Second World War, during attacks on the Chinese population (military and civilian). Plague-infected fleas cultivated in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644 were spread by low-flying aircraft over Chinese cities, including the coastal cities of Ningbo and Changde in Hunan province, in 1940 and 1941 (see my article on the siege of Changde: https://ghostdivision74h.blogspot.com/2022/04/changde-ostromabattle-at-changde.html). In 1940 and 1941, these operations killed tens of thousands of people with artificially generated bubonic plague epidemics. During an expedition to Nanking, typhoid and paratyphoid bacteria were sprayed into the city's wells, swamps and houses, as well as into snacks distributed to locals. Shortly afterwards, epidemics broke out, much to the delight of many Japanese researchers, who concluded that paratyphoid was by far the "most effective" of the pathogens.
The Japanese have conducted at least 12 large-scale biological weapons tests and attacked at least 11 Chinese cities with biological agents. An attack on Changde in 1941 reportedly infected some 10,000 people with cholera bombs dropped there and caused 1,700 deaths among ill-prepared Japanese troops. In 1941, Japanese researchers conducted experiments on prisoners with bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases, and later led to the development of the defoliating bacillus bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague. In 1938, based on an idea proposed by Ishii, some of these bombs were designed with porcelain shells so that the bombs fired/thrown did not overheat during the journey, which significantly reduced the effectiveness of the bombs dropped (during the journey, the heating caused a good proportion of pathogens to die in the projectiles with other shells).
In November 1941, under pressure from numerous reports of biological attacks, Chiang Kai-shek sent a delegation of army and foreign medical personnel to document the evidence and treat those affected. The following year, a report on the Japanese use of plague-infected fleas in Changde was made widely available, but the Allied powers pretended it was a high profile issue and ignored it until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 condemning the attacks.
In December 1944, the Japanese navy also explored the possibility of attacking US cities with biological weapons, known as Operation PX or Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan of attack was to use Seiran aircraft launched from submarine aircraft carriers to attack the west coast of the United States, specifically the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The planes were to have spread bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, dengue fever and other pathogens to the population in a biological terror attack. The crew of the submarines would have been infected and fled to shore on a suicide mission. On 26 March 1945, the planning for Operation PX was finalised, but soon afterwards it was shelved due to strong opposition from Chief of Staff Yoshijirō Umezu. Umezu later explained his decision: 'If bacteriological warfare is undertaken, it will grow far beyond the scope of the war between Japan and America and will culminate in a never-ending battle of mankind against bacteria. Japan will earn the hatred of the world."
OTHER EXPERIMENTS:
Members of the unit referred to Yoshimura as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded beast" because of the rigour with which he did his job. Naoji Uezono, a member of Unit 731, described in an interview in the 1980s a gruesome scene in which Yoshimura "placed two naked men in a -40-50 degree Celsius area, and the researchers filmed the whole process until the subjects died, suffering such agony that they dug their fingernails into each other's flesh." Yoshimura's lack of remorse was evident in a 1950 article for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology, in which he admitted to using 20 children and a three-day-old infant in experiments in which they were exposed to zero degree Celsius ice and salt water. Although the article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Yoshimura developed a "freezing resistance index" based on the average temperature measured 5 to 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion and the time taken for the first temperature rise after immersion. Then, in a series of separate experiments, they determined how these parameters depended on the time of day the victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the ambient temperature and humidity during immersion, how the victim was treated before immersion ("after an overnight fast", "after 24 hours of fasting", "after 48 hours of fasting", "immediately after a heavy meal", "immediately after a hot meal", "immediately after muscle work", "immediately after a cold bath", "immediately after a hot bath"), the type of diet the victim received in the five days preceding the dives in terms of nutrients in the diet ('high protein (animal)', 'high protein (vegetable)', 'low protein' and 'normal diet') and salt intake (45 g NaCl per day, 15 g NaCl per day without salt).
FORCED PREGNANCY:
Female prisoners were regularly forced to become pregnant in order to be used in experiments. The torture was justified on the grounds of disease, in particular the presumed possibility of vertical (mother-to-child) transmission of syphilis, where fetal survival and damage to the mother's genital organs were of interest. Although 'a large number of babies were born in captivity', no survivors, including children, of Unit 731 were subsequently reported. It is suspected that female prisoners' children were killed or aborted after birth.
In November 1941, under pressure from numerous reports of biological attacks, Chiang Kai-shek sent a delegation of army and foreign medical personnel to document the evidence and treat those affected. The following year, a report on the Japanese use of plague-infected fleas in Changde was made widely available, but the Allied powers pretended it was a high profile issue and ignored it until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 condemning the attacks.
In December 1944, the Japanese navy also explored the possibility of attacking US cities with biological weapons, known as Operation PX or Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan of attack was to use Seiran aircraft launched from submarine aircraft carriers to attack the west coast of the United States, specifically the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The planes were to have spread bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, dengue fever and other pathogens to the population in a biological terror attack. The crew of the submarines would have been infected and fled to shore on a suicide mission. On 26 March 1945, the planning for Operation PX was finalised, but soon afterwards it was shelved due to strong opposition from Chief of Staff Yoshijirō Umezu. Umezu later explained his decision: 'If bacteriological warfare is undertaken, it will grow far beyond the scope of the war between Japan and America and will culminate in a never-ending battle of mankind against bacteria. Japan will earn the hatred of the world."
OTHER EXPERIMENTS:
In other experiments, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the time until death, as well as:
- they were placed in low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped out of their sockets
- experiments to determine the relationship between temperature, burns and human survival
- hanging subjects upside down until they died
- crushed them with heavy objects
- electrocuted
- used hot fans to dehydrate the prisoners
- placed in centrifuges and spun to death
- they were injected with animal blood, especially horse blood
- they were subjected to various chemical weapons in gas chambers
- they were injected with seawater and burnt alive or buried
In addition to chemicals, the unit has also investigated the properties of a number of different toxins. To name just a few, prisoners were exposed to tetrodotoxin (pufferfish or fugu poison), heroin, Korean bindweed, bacteria and ricin seeds (ricin). According to Okawa Fukumatsu, a former live-in doctor of Unit 731, huge amounts of blood were drawn from some prisoners to study the effects of blood loss. In one case, at least half a litre of blood was drawn every two to three days.
FROSTBITE EXPERIMENTS:
War engineer Hisato Yoshimura conducted experiments by taking prisoners outdoors, dipping different limbs in water at different temperatures and allowing the victim's limb to freeze. After the body part was frozen, Yoshimura would strike the affected limbs with a short stick, "making a sound like that made by a board when struck." The ice was then cut off the area and the affected area was subjected to various treatments, such as being immersed in water, exposed to the heat of a fire, etc.
In addition to chemicals, the unit has also investigated the properties of a number of different toxins. To name just a few, prisoners were exposed to tetrodotoxin (pufferfish or fugu poison), heroin, Korean bindweed, bacteria and ricin seeds (ricin). According to Okawa Fukumatsu, a former live-in doctor of Unit 731, huge amounts of blood were drawn from some prisoners to study the effects of blood loss. In one case, at least half a litre of blood was drawn every two to three days.
FROSTBITE EXPERIMENTS:
War engineer Hisato Yoshimura conducted experiments by taking prisoners outdoors, dipping different limbs in water at different temperatures and allowing the victim's limb to freeze. After the body part was frozen, Yoshimura would strike the affected limbs with a short stick, "making a sound like that made by a board when struck." The ice was then cut off the area and the affected area was subjected to various treatments, such as being immersed in water, exposed to the heat of a fire, etc.
The remains of the frostbite laboratory building in 2014
Photo: Xinhua
Members of the unit referred to Yoshimura as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded beast" because of the rigour with which he did his job. Naoji Uezono, a member of Unit 731, described in an interview in the 1980s a gruesome scene in which Yoshimura "placed two naked men in a -40-50 degree Celsius area, and the researchers filmed the whole process until the subjects died, suffering such agony that they dug their fingernails into each other's flesh." Yoshimura's lack of remorse was evident in a 1950 article for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology, in which he admitted to using 20 children and a three-day-old infant in experiments in which they were exposed to zero degree Celsius ice and salt water. Although the article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Yoshimura developed a "freezing resistance index" based on the average temperature measured 5 to 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion and the time taken for the first temperature rise after immersion. Then, in a series of separate experiments, they determined how these parameters depended on the time of day the victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the ambient temperature and humidity during immersion, how the victim was treated before immersion ("after an overnight fast", "after 24 hours of fasting", "after 48 hours of fasting", "immediately after a heavy meal", "immediately after a hot meal", "immediately after muscle work", "immediately after a cold bath", "immediately after a hot bath"), the type of diet the victim received in the five days preceding the dives in terms of nutrients in the diet ('high protein (animal)', 'high protein (vegetable)', 'low protein' and 'normal diet') and salt intake (45 g NaCl per day, 15 g NaCl per day without salt).
FORCED PREGNANCY:
Female prisoners were regularly forced to become pregnant in order to be used in experiments. The torture was justified on the grounds of disease, in particular the presumed possibility of vertical (mother-to-child) transmission of syphilis, where fetal survival and damage to the mother's genital organs were of interest. Although 'a large number of babies were born in captivity', no survivors, including children, of Unit 731 were subsequently reported. It is suspected that female prisoners' children were killed or aborted after birth.
Breeding rooms
Photo: Xinhua
While male prisoners were often used in single studies so that the results of experiments on them would not be obscured by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sexual experiments and as victims of sexual crimes. The testimony of one of the members of the guard unit illustrated this reality:
"One of the former researchers I found told me that he had planned a human experiment one day, but still had time to kill. So he and another member of the unit took the keys to the cells and opened one of them containing a Chinese woman. One member of the unit raped the woman; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. This cell also contained a Chinese woman who was used in a freezing experiment. Several fingers were missing, her bones were black and she was gangrenous. The man was about to rape her when he saw her genitals festering and pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, and later continued his experiment."
ESCAPE ATTEMPTS:
Unfortunately, no information about a successful escape attempt has been released. Although there were examples of escape attempts, for the prisoners of Unit 731, escape was absolutely impossible. Even if they had managed to escape from the rectangular building (itself a fortified, staffed building), they would have had to pass through a three-metres high brick wall surrounding the complex and then through a dry trench, which was supported by an electric wire running around the perimeter of the complex.
THE END:
"One of the former researchers I found told me that he had planned a human experiment one day, but still had time to kill. So he and another member of the unit took the keys to the cells and opened one of them containing a Chinese woman. One member of the unit raped the woman; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. This cell also contained a Chinese woman who was used in a freezing experiment. Several fingers were missing, her bones were black and she was gangrenous. The man was about to rape her when he saw her genitals festering and pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, and later continued his experiment."
ESCAPE ATTEMPTS:
Unfortunately, no information about a successful escape attempt has been released. Although there were examples of escape attempts, for the prisoners of Unit 731, escape was absolutely impossible. Even if they had managed to escape from the rectangular building (itself a fortified, staffed building), they would have had to pass through a three-metres high brick wall surrounding the complex and then through a dry trench, which was supported by an electric wire running around the perimeter of the complex.
THE END:
Start of destruction of the site
In 1945, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet army invaded Manchuria, destroying the remaining Japanese units, and the Japanese Emperor officially announced the surrender over the radio. Unit 731 was disbanded, and the documents (13 years of research material), prisoners and most of the buildings stored there were destroyed. The members of the unit slowly trickled back into civilian life as if nothing had happened, many of them having a fine career undisturbed on their own turf. Unfortunately, even at the time, official sources confirmed the fact that during the war the Americans not only knew about the location of Unit 731 in Harbin and what was going on within its walls, but also gave support to the Japanese. So that they could later get their hands on the 'research material' (let's call it scientific merit), preferably before the Soviets, no known member of Unit 731 was prosecuted or persecuted. General MacArthur granted immunity to those involved in exchange for information gathered during their experiments. He believed that any lawsuits against them would prevent the US from obtaining medical information documented from the experiments. Despite this, the Russians did get their hands on some of the Japanese researchers, 12 in all, 11 of whom were allowed to return to Japan after 1950, the remaining one died in his cell.
The layout of the cells, based on the remembrances of a former member of Unit 731.
From the top left, the second room with the hexagonal shape is the pressure chamber.
Photo: Xinhua
VICTIMS:
Roughly 12,000 people died in Camp 731 itself, and between 300,000 and 400,000 more are thought to have died across China as a result of the use of biological weapons tested there.
BOOKS,MOVIES:
Documentary:
https://videa.hu/videok/film-animacio/egy-kes-filozofiaja-2008-feliratos-drama-horror-nr9Bjb04lBqNwPY6
On the top of these all, the biological weapons created by Unit 731 were also used in the Korean War (1950-1953), of course by the Americans, and because of these decisions, there was never any justice served for the genocide committed by Unit 731.
To this day, Japan has not apologised for what happened, and China will presumably never forget the countless atrocities committed by the Japanese invaders between 1931 and 1945. As older and older witnesses to history pass away, this story will presumably fade into oblivion as time goes on.
Photo: Xinhua
VICTIMS:
Roughly 12,000 people died in Camp 731 itself, and between 300,000 and 400,000 more are thought to have died across China as a result of the use of biological weapons tested there.
BOOKS,MOVIES:
The subject of Japanese-run death camps in Harbin and other places around China has been the subject of many books and films, of which I would recommend (for those with a strong stomach) Men Behind the Sun and Unit 731: Nightmare in Manchuria.
Documentary:
https://videa.hu/videok/film-animacio/egy-kes-filozofiaja-2008-feliratos-drama-horror-nr9Bjb04lBqNwPY6
Books:
- Peter Williams: "Unit 731: Japanese Biological Warfare in World War II"
- Mark Felton: "The Devil's Doctors: Japanese Human Experiments on Allied Prisoners of War"
- Sheldon H. Harris: "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-Up"
- FrederickR. Sidell, Ernest B. Hook and David R. Franz: "Japanese Biological Warfare: A History, 1932-45"
- Gavan Daws: "Prisoners of the Japanese: Pows of World War II in the Pacific"
- Derek Pua: "Unit 731"
- Hal Gold: "Japan's infamous Unit 731"
USED SOURCES:
USED SOURCES:
- Wikipedia
- https://opposingfronts.com/unit-731-experiments/#gsc.tab=0
- https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/unit-731/
- https://allthatsinteresting.com/unit-731
