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Unit 731 was a covert medical experiment unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, which researched biological warfare through human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel.

The unit was disguised as a water purification unit, and was based in the Pingfang district of the northeast Chinese city of Harbin, part of the puppet state of Manchukuo. Unit 731 was officially known as the Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory.

As many as ten thousand people, both civilian and military, of Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Soviet origin were subjects of experimentation by Unit 731.<ref>http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-10/17/content_273165.htm - Book on Japan's germ warfare crimes published.</ref> Some American and European Allied prisoners of war also died at the hands of Unit 731.<ref>http://english.people.com.cn/200508/03/eng20050803_200004.html - Archives give up secrets of Japan's Unit 731.</ref> In addition, Unit 731's bioweapons research resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates.<ref>http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/japan/bw.htm - Biological Weapons Program.</ref>

Unit 731 was one of many units used by the Japanese to research biological warfare; other units included Unit 516 (Qiqihar), Unit 543 (Hailar), Unit 773 (Songo unit), Unit 100 (Changchun), Unit 1644 (Nanjing), Unit 1855 (Beijing), Unit 8604 (Guangzhou), Unit 200 (Manchuria) and Unit 9420 (Singapore).

Many of the scientists involved in Unit 731 went on to prominent careers in politics, academia and business. Some were arrested by Soviet forces and tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials; others, who surrendered to the Americans, were granted amnesty in exchange for the data collected.<ref>http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/cbw/bw.htm - Biological Weapons.</ref>

Because of their brutality, Unit 731's actions have now been officially considered by the United Nations as war crimes.

Contents 1 Formation 2 Activities 2.1 Vivisection 2.2 Weapons testing 2.3 Germ warfare attacks 2.4 Other experiments 3 Biological warfare 4 Unit members 5 Divisions 6 Facilities 7 Disbanding and the end of World War II 8 Cultural depictions and representations 9 See also 9.1 Pacific War (World War II) 9.2 Nazi Germany 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External links 12.1 Resources 12.1.1 Images 12.2 Accounts 12.3 Articles

[edit] Formation

In 1932, Shiro Ishii and his men built the Zhong Ma Prison Camp (whose main building was known locally as the Zhongma Fortress), a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a village 100 kilometers south of Harbin. In 1935, a jailbreak and, later, an explosion (believed to be an attack) forced Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. He later moved to Pingfang, approximately 24 kilometers south of Harbin, to set up a new and much larger facility.<ref>Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0-415-09105-5 ISBN 0-415-93214-9. Page 26 for the Zhong Ma Prison Camp's creation, page 33 for the Pingfang site's creation.</ref>

[edit] Activities

A special project code-named 'Maruta' used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes known as "logs" (maruta, 丸太). This term originated as a joke from the fact that the official cover story for the facility given to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. The test subjects included infants, the elderly, and pregnant women (including unborn fetuses). Many experiments were performed without the use of anesthetics because it was believed that it might have affected the results.

[edit] Vivisection

• Vivisections were performed on prisoners infected with various diseases. Scientists would perform invasive surgery on prisoners removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body.<ref>

Interview with former Unit 731 member Nobuo Kamada </ref> The infected and vivisected prisoners included women, children and infants.

• Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the baby removed.
• Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.
• Those limbs that were removed were sometimes reattached to opposite sides of the body.
• Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and sawn off.
• Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus was reattached to the intestines.
• Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

[edit] Weapons testing

• Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.
• Flame throwers were tested on humans.
• Human targets tied to stakes were used to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.

[edit] Germ warfare attacks

• Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100 etc.) went beyond the "testing" phase of biological weapons, and actively committed epidemic-creating germ warfare assaults against the Chinese people (both civilians and soldiers) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the lab facilities of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes over Chinese populated locations, such as the coastal city of Ningbo in 1940, and the city of Changde, Hunan province in 1941. This military aerial spraying resulted in human epidemics of bubonic plague (the "Black Death") that killed thousands of innocent Chinese civilians.<ref>Barenblatt, Daniel. A Plague Upon Humanity: the Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation, HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN 0-06-018625-9

</ref>

[edit] Other experiments

• Some prisoners were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time before death.
• Some prisoners were placed into high pressure chambers until they died.
• Some prisoners were exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans can survive with such an affliction.
• Some experiments were performed to determine the relationship between temperature, burns and human survival.
• Some prisoners were placed into centrifuges and spun until death.
• Animal blood was injected into some prisoners and the effects of this studied.
• Some prisoners had lethal doses of x-ray radiation administered.
• Gas chambers tested various chemical weapons on some prisoners.
• Air bubbles were injected into some prisoners' bloodstreams to simulate a stroke.
• Sea water was injected into some prisoners to determine if it could be substituted for saline.

[edit] Biological warfare

Japanese scientists performed tests centering around the plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases on prisoners.

The research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague. Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii Shiro in 1938.

These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks by infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrying fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera and other deadly pathogens.

In addition to this, infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by planes in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces.

[edit] Unit members

• Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii
• Lieutenant Colonel Ryoichi Naito
• Dr. Masaji Kitano
• Yoshio Shinozuka

[edit] Divisions

Unit 731 was divided into eight divisions:

• Division 1: Research on bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, tuberculosis on live subjects. For this purpose a prison was constructed to contain around three to four hundred people.
• Division 2: Research for biological weapons used on the field, in particular the production of devices to spread germs and parasites.
• Division 3: Production of shells containing biological agents. Stationed in Harbin.
• Division 4: Production of other miscellaneous agents.
• Division 5: Training of personnel.
• Division 6-8: Equipment, medical, and administrative units.

[edit] Facilities

The Unit 731 complex covered six square kilometers and consisted of more than 150 buildings. The facilities were very well designed making it hard to destroy them. Some of Unit 731's satellite facilities still remain and are open to tourists.

The complex contained various factories. It had around 4,500 containers to be used to raise fleas, six giant cauldrons to produce various chemicals and around 1,800 containers to produce biological agents. Approximately 30 kg of bubonic plague bacteria could be produced in several days.

Tens of tons of these biological weapons (and some chemicals) were stored in various places in northeastern China throughout the war.

The Japanese attempted to destroy evidence of the facilities after disbanding. This failed as evidence has occasionally harmed civilians even recently.

In August 2003, 29 people were hospitalized after a construction crew in Heilongjiang inadvertently dug up chemical shells that had been buried deep in the soil more than fifty years ago.

[edit] Disbanding and the end of World War II

Shiro Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific conflict since May 1944, but his attempts were repeatedly foiled by poor planning and Allied intervention.

When it was clear that the war would soon end, Ishii ordered the destruction of the facilities and told his men "to take the secret to the grave."

Ishii's Japanese troops blew the compound up in the final days of the war to destroy evidence of their activities. They also released thousands of plague-infected rodents and other animals such as horses, infected with diseases communicable to humans. Chemicals were dumped into rivers or buried. Some of these chemicals continue to pollute China.^{[citation needed]}

After Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation.

At the end of the war he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological warfare. The United States believed that the research data were valuable because the allies had never publicly conducted or condoned such experiments on humans due to moral and political revulsion. The U.S. also did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons, not to mention the military benefits of such research.<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1796044.stm - Unit 731: Japan's biological force.</ref>

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal has heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was actioned by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor.

Japanese defense counselor, Michael Levin, argued the claim was vague and uncorroborated and it was dismissed by the tribunal president Sir William Webb for lack of evidence. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton who was likely aware of Unit 731 activities. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental.

Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted twelve top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and its affiliated bio-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing, and Unit 100 in Changchun, in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trial. Included among those prosecuted germ warfare criminals was General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria.

Many Soviet POWs held by Axis Japan, and Russian civilians, including women and children were cruelly killed in chemical and biological warfare experiments at Unit 731, along with Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, and other nationalities. The trial of those captured Japanese perpetrators was held in the city of Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East near the border with northeast China, in December of 1949. A lengthy partial transcript of the trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by a Moscow foreign languages press, including an English language edition: Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950). This book remains an invaluable resource for historians on the organization and activities of the Japanese biological warfare "death factory" lab-prisons. The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, who had been one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, against the Nazi doctors who had committed human experiment atrocities at such death camps as Auschwitz and Dachau.

The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 atrocities and germ warfare received sentences ranging from 2 to 25 years in a labor camp from the Khabarovsk court.

Many former members of Unit 731 became part of the Japanese medical establishment. Dr Masaji Kitano led Japan's largest pharmaceutical company, the Green Cross. Others headed U.S.-backed medical schools or worked for the Japanese health ministry.

[edit] Cultural depictions and representations

• Japanese author Morimura Seiichi published the book The Devil's Gluttony (悪魔の飽食) in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony - A Sequel in 1983, which were the first Japanese language publications to reveal the dark history of Unit 731 in Japan.
• The Chinese movie Men Behind the Sun is a film about the atrocities committed by Unit 731.
• Two episodes of the television show The X-Files weave Unit 731 into the series' complex alien abduction/government conspiracy mythology. In the episodes "Nisei" and "731", Japanese scientists who were given amnesty in the U.S. after World War II are said to be continuing their work in secret, experimenting with creating an alien-human hybrid, possibly as a weapon to be immune to biological weapons. The name of the doctor in charge of the secret Japanese group of former Unit 731 doctors, Takeo Ishimaru, and his alias, Shiro Zama, is an amalgamation of the name of the real head of Unit 731, Dr. Shiro Ishii. Camp Zama is the name of a U.S. Army base in Sagamihara, Japan.
• The British comics writer Warren Ellis wrote a John Constantine story ("Setting Sun," Hellblazer #142, DC Comics) about a fictional version of one of the doctors who performed the experiments and his guilt-ridden desire to have done to him what he did to others.
• Japanese director Minoru Matsui's 2001 documentary Japanese Devils was composed largely of interviews with 14 members of Unit 731 who had been taken as prisoners by China and later released.

[edit] See also

[edit] Pacific War (World War II)

• Changde chemical weapon attack
• Japanese war crimes
• Manila Massacre
• Nanking Massacre
• Kaimingye germ weapon attack
• Second Sino-Japanese War
• Sook Ching Massacre

[edit] Nazi Germany

• Nazi human experimentation
• Josef Mengele

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

[edit] Resources

• The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) — The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
• History of Japan's biological weapons program — The Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
• History of United States' biological weapons program — The Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
• Dan Barenblatt's A Plague Upon Humanity: The Continuing Story — an internet gathering place for news and emerging information about Japan's human experiment and biological warfare program of the 1930s and '40s, commonly known in shorthand as "Unit 731".
• UNIT 731: Japanese Experimentation Camp (1937-1945) — information site.

[edit] Images

• The forgotten victims of biological warfare — online slideshow from the Sunshine Project.
• Unit 731: Auschwitz of the East — AII POW-MIA images.

[edit] Accounts

• Army Doctor — a firsthand account by Yuasa Ken.

[edit] Articles

• Theodicy - through the Case of “Unit 731” — by Eun Park (2003).
• Why the past still separates China and Japan — by Robert Marquand (2001), Christian Science Monitor.
• China recalls germ warfare experiments — Agencies (2005), China Daily.
• Ex-Japanese Soldier Deemed War Criminal — by Michael Zielenziger (1998), Houston Chronicle.
• US paid for Japanese human germ warfare data — Australian Broadcasting Corporation News Online.
• Japan's sins of the past — by Justin McCurry (2004), The Guardian.
• The Asian Auschwitz of Unit 731 — by Shane Green (2002), The Age.
• Unit 731: a half century of denial — by Steven Butler.

IJA special research units
Unit 100 | Unit 200 | Unit 543 | Unit 731 | Unit 773 | Unit Ei 1644 | Unit 1855 | Unit 8604 | Unit 9420

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