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A look into Japanese war crimes:
A look into Japanese war crimes:
Unit 731, USA cover ups, and the Russian Khabarovsk trials.
Unit 731, USA cover ups, and the Russian Khabarovsk trials.
What was Unit 731?
Unit 731 was a research unit where series of torturous human experiments and biological warfare took place which the Japanese conducted on innocent civilians while they were still alive without any offer of pain management, anesthesia, or mercy. The Japanese took thousands of Chinese mainlanders, Russians, Koreans, and allied prisoners of war and subjected them to these experiments and established Pingfan, where Unit 731 originated from. Although they were operating back in the early 1930's through the mid 1940's, this puts them back at the time of World War II, and their atrocities may sound eerily similar to those of Auschwitz and Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, there are some major differences between the two. The Japanese physicians and researchers that played major roles in the suffering of thousands ended up receiving immunity for the atrocities they committed so Unit 731 essentially slid under the radar while the rest of the world was paying attention to the unfortunate events happening in Nazi Germany. This is just a peek at what was really going on during WWII.
Photo on the left is Lieutenant General officer Shiro Ishii. Photo on the right is the ruins of Unit 731.
Let's start at the beginning when Japanese medical officer Shiro Ishii started Pingfan that Unit 731 came to be a part of with the goal of carrying out human experiments relating to biological warfare in order to test different theories and to see exactly what would kill a person. It is important to note that during this time, America and Great Britain were also testing subjects for biological warfare but due to ethical and moral concerns, they carried out their experiments with animals. Part of this biological warfare testing at Unit 731 included infecting people with different viruses, the bubonic plague, sexually transmitted diseases, and then tried to test possible medications to see what would cure these illnesses. Unfortunately most died from negligence of care and often times they were infected with a disease and left to suffer and eventually die so the Japanese researchers could record how long it took for a certain illness to kill a person and what effects it would have on the human body, which they would find out after performing vivisections (live dissections) on test subjects, also called "logs".
Unit 731 during the time it was operating.
Where was Unit 731?
Unit 731 headquarters originated in Manchuria located in Northern China, which at the time was Japanese territory.
Similarities and Differences Between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japanese...
A pressing question regarding Unit 731 involves the comparison between Nazi Germany with Dr. Josef Mengele and why Unit 731 essentially went undetected even though it arguably performed some of the most brutal and vile experiments on humans to this day. A couple reasons for this has to do with the fact that Unit 731, although may have performed far more torturous tests than that of the Nazi's, was on a much smaller scale and was no where near as large as the concentration camps in Germany at the time that were killing millions, not to mention the significant military involvement in Germany. The Nazi's also singled out certain groups of people and committed horrific hate crimes. In this case, Unit 731 was not racially motivated but rather scientifically motivated since the Japanese were preparing for biological warfare. Test subjects at Unit 731 were not killed because of who they were, but rather were treated like experimental guinea pigs.
What happened to Unit 731?
Unit 731 was so isolated and went undetected for a long time, and unfortunately due to a deal the USA made with Japan covered up a lot of what happened. The USA and Russia wanted to prosecute Shiro Ishii but in order to gain information about Unit 731, there was a deal made between the USA and General Ishii, and eventually he passed away as a free man in his home in 1959.
Pictured above was from Unit 731 trials
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