Unit 731 (officially known as Epidemic)The Prevention and Water Treatment Department of the Kwantung Army (an army group of the Imperial Japanese Army) was a secret biological and chemical warfare research facility used during the Second Sino-Japanese War in World War II between Conducted unethical/lethal experiments on humans in 1937 and 1940 in 1945. During this time, Imperial Japan conducted what is known as the Asian Holocaust, which committed some of the most heinous war crimes of all time.
History and Formation of Unit 731
The unit was the brainchild of the Japanese Army’s Chief Medical Officer, Surgeon General Shiro Ishii. Born on June 25, 1892 in Chiba Prefecture, Ishii studied medicine at Kyoto Imperial University before being enlisted in the army in 1921. He enlisted as a Second Class Army Surgeon (Surgeon First Lieutenant) and was subsequently assigned to the 1st Army Hospital and Army Medical School in Tokyo. After a few years, Ishii went back to school to study medicine at his alma mater. He has been noted by university staff for his odd practice of raising bacteria as pets rather than research subjects.
Shiro Ishii was promoted to an Army Surgeon First Class (Surgeon Captain) by 1925. Through his position, he pushed for the creation of a biological weapons program by the Imperial Japanese Army after conducting research and a tour of the West, and concluded that Western powers created their own programs. For this work, Army Minister Sadao Araki took a liking to Ishii and soon after promoted him to Senior Army Physician Third Class (Senior Physician) in 1931.
A year after his promotion, Ishii received the go-ahead for initial experiments on a secret bioweapons program at the Zhongma Fortress detention center. By 1935 he was promoted to second-class lieutenant colonel and built a much larger facility just outside the Chinese city of Harbin, dealing with water treatment. This was regulated by a decree of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, which approved the expansion of the unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army.
By 1939, Unit 731 had become a huge attraction for medics from Japan as well as from China and Korea due to the huge financial backing from the Imperial Army. Similar labs have continued to open in other Chinese cities; Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Singapore, with allegedly tens of thousands of employees due to Japanese control of the region.
human experiments
Unit 731 conducted its testing on a broad cross-section of people, which included the elderly, infants, and even pregnant women. These people were either caught thieves or political prisoners, although it has sometimes been claimed that they were only arrested for suspected suspicious activity for the purpose of experimentation.
Some of the experiments performed include vivisection; Surgery to view and examine a person’s internal structure without anesthesia, which often resulted in the death of the victim. This usually happened in people who were intentionally infected with STDs in order to understand the effects of these diseases on the organs. Some of the other diseases tested include cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, botulism, anthrax, and tularemia.
Other experiments performed by the lab include frostbite, effects of flamethrowers and grenades based on distance to subject, period of starvation leading to death, and effectiveness of high-pressure chambers, centrifuges, and temperatures.
Japanese surrender and end of Unit 731
After Japan’s surrender in World War II in August 1945, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Unit 731 had to stop working and return to Japan to avoid being captured by the Soviet Red Army. General Shiro Ishii had by this time ordered the destruction of their work while also prohibiting other members from continuing such research in mainland Japan.
The American Army had occupied Japan by this time and was beginning to study its biological warfare. Lt. Col. Murray Sanders, a microbiologist and a member of the US Military Biological Weapons Center, discovered the activities of Branch 731 and secretly granted immunity to doctors willing to share information about their work, including General Ishii.
Issues related to Unit 731’s activities were never discussed publicly in Japan and remained a secret until the 1950s, after the United States ended its occupation of Japan.