Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II

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Occupied City (2010), a novel by British author David Peace who lives in Japan, presents a mystery about a murder on 26 January 1948 in Tokyo. A murderer poisons bank employees by pretending to be a government official administering a dysentery vaccine. Gradually, through the testimonies of various people connected to the tragedy, it becomes clear that the poisoner has a shared history with Unit 731.

Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet (2016), South Korea, directed by Lee Junik, depicts dead poet Yoon Dong-juAt Tokyo's Kyushu Imperial University in 1945, US POWs from a shot down B-29 were subjected to fatal medical experimentation. [103] Surrender and immunity Unit 731: One of the Most Terrifying Secrets of the 20th Century". Archived from the original on March 8, 2017 . Retrieved November 8, 2015.

a b "(RARE) Unit 731 surgeon Okawa Fukumatsu (interview footage)". (RARE) Unit 731 surgeon Okawa Fukumatsu (interview footage). Archived from the original on 2021-10-07 . Retrieved 2021-10-07. Gold, Hal; Totani, Yuma. (2019). Japan's Infamous Unit 731: First-hand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program. United States: Tuttle Publishing. pp.169–170. ISBN 978-0804852197. Names of 3,607 members of Imperial Japanese Army's notorious Unit 731 released by national archives". The Japan Times. April 16, 2018. Archived from the original on April 18, 2018 . Retrieved April 17, 2018. Takashi Tsuchiya. "The Imperial Japanese Experiments in China". The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics, pp, 35, 42. Oxford University Press, 2011. Also in 1981, the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China was given by Ken Yuasa. Since then, much more in depth testimony has been given in Japan. The 2001 documentary Japanese Devils largely consists of interviews with fourteen Unit731 staff members taken prisoner by China and later released. [122] Significance in postwar research on bio-warfare and medicineOne can only hope that the perpetrators, who escaped prosecution as war criminals, achieved something positive in their postwar careers because the victims are still crying out for justice. The clash saw the first field operation of Japan’s biological warfare unit; it occurred in a desert region where water was scarce. To disable their Russian foes, the Japanese dumped large quantities of intestinal typhoid bacteria into the river.

a b "CIA Special Collection ISHII, SHIRO_0005" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-08-09 . Retrieved 2019-09-18. As noted earlier, the primary objective of Ishii and Unit 731 was the creation of biological and chemical weapons. To facilitate that end, wholesale human experimentation was utilized, including the vivisection of thousands of people. The justification for performing all these surgeries came from the expectation that human tests would create better weapons. The plan involved the use of five I-400 submarine aircraft carriers, each carrying three Aichi M6A Seiran floatplanes launched against San Diego, Los Angeles, and/or San Francisco. The aircraft were to spread bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, and dengue fever over the city, while the submarine crews infected themselves and ran ashore in a vast suicide mission. Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-05-28 . Retrieved 2017-10-27. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title ( link) Japan’s medical institutions enabled the work of Unit 731 by supplying Dr. Ishii with top Japanese scientists and physicians who would be labeled Hikokumin (traitors) if they refused to take part. Most medical professionals saw their work as noble service to the Emperor; the fact that they were killing non-Japanese meant nothing to them.Cholera was dumped into wells used by the Chinese populace. Fleas were carefully collected, infected with plague and then dropped in aerial bombs over Chinese cities and villages. From then on, the Japanese term for log, Maruta, was used to speak of the prisoners whose last days were spent being infected with lethal pathogens, torn apart, frozen, or gassed by Japanese researchers. The expression indicates a degree of racism far beyond disdain; it is evidence of a belief that torturing the Chinese was of no more consequence than squashing a bug. In 1997, international lawyer Kōnen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against the Japanese government, demanding reparations for the actions of Unit731, using evidence filed by Professor Makoto Ueda of Rikkyo University. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. No findings of fact were made about the existence of human experimentation, but the courts' ruling was that reparations are determined by international treaties, not national courts. [ citation needed]