Unit 731 Quotes

One could argue that these Japanese atrocities carried out were typical of the chaos and brutality that often accompany warfare; but this cannot be said for Unit 731. Much like their counterparts in Nazi Germany did in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the Japanese experimented on humans like lab rats, all in the name of medical and military advancement.

In 1938 the biological warfare establishment Unit 731 had been set up outside Harbin in Manchukuo, under the auspices of the Kwantung Army. This huge complex, presided over by General Ishii Shir, eventually employed a core staff of 3,000 scientists and doctors from universities and medical schools in Japan, and a total of 20,000 personnel in the subsidiary establishments. They prepared weapons to spread black plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera, and tested them on more than 3,000 Chinese prisoners. They also carried out anthrax, mustard-gas and frostbite experiments on their victims, whom they referred to as maruta or ‘logs’.

Perhaps the most shocking element in the whole story of Unit 731 was MacArthur’s agreement, after the Japanese surrender, to provide immunity from prosecution to all involved, including General Ishii. This deal allowed the Americans to obtain all the data they had accumulated from their experiments. Even after MacArthur had learned that Allied prisoners of war had also been killed in the tests, he ordered that all criminal investigations should cease. Soviet requests to prosecute Ishii and his staff at the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal were firmly rejected.

The impact of vaccination has been estimated during the “vaccines for children era” (1994–2013) at the total number of more than 322 million prevented cases of infectious diseases, 21 million avoided hospitalizations, and 731,700 avoided deaths in the United States.

The governments of the world went into a frenzy. While Wei sent relatives of the victims of Unit 731 into the past to bear witness to the horrors committed in the operating rooms and prison cells of Pingfang, China and Japan waged a bitter war in courts and in front of cameras, staking out their rival claims to the past. The United States was reluctantly drawn into the fight, and, citing national security reasons, finally shut down Wei’s machine when he unveiled plans to investigate the truth of America’s alleged use of biological weapons (possibly derived from Unit 731’s research) during the Korean War. Armenians, Jews, Tibetans, Native Americans, Indians, the Kikuyu, the descendants of slaves in the New World—victim groups around the world lined up and demanded use of the machine, some out of fear that their history might be erased by the groups in power, others wishing to use their history for present political gain. As well, the countries who initially advocated access to the machine hesitated when the implications became clear: Did the French wish to relive the depravity of their own people under Vichy France? Did the Chinese want to re-experience the self-inflicted horrors of the Cultural Revolution? Did the British want to see the genocides that lay behind their Empire? With remarkable alacrity, democracies and dictatorships around the world signed the Comprehensive Time Travel Moratorium while they wrangled over the minutiae of the rules for how to divide up jurisdiction of the past. Everyone, it seemed, preferred not to have to deal with the past just yet.

Some have said I should demand that the surviving members of Unit 731 be brought to justice. But what does that mean? I am no longer a child. I do not want to see trials, parades, spectacles. The law does not give you real justice.

Unit 731's crimes against humanity continue. Chinese citizens are still dying from the chemical weapons that Hirohito's henchmen unleashed on them. Many of them have sued. Japan's sanctimonious, parsimonious, and hypocritical position on financial compensation is that the issue was settled as part of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. In that treaty, Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally

As soon as the symptoms were observed, the prisoner was taken from his cell and into the dissection room. He was stripped and placed on the table, screaming, trying to fight back. He was strapped down, still screaming frightfully. One of the doctors stuffed a towel into his mouth, then with one quick slice of the scalpel he was opened up.” Even with the intestines and organs exposed, a person does not die immediately. It is the same physical situation as ordinary surgery under anesthesia in which a person is operated on and restored. Witnesses at vivisections report that the victim usually lets out a horrible scream when the cut is made, and that the voice stops soon after that. The researchers then conduct their examination of the organs, remove the ones that they want for study, then discard what is left of the body. Somewhere in the process, the victim dies, through blood loss or removal of vital organs.

As far back as 1945, the Japanese government has consistently denied that the Japanese army conducted human experiments and biological warfare. Admitting now that the bones are from Unit 731’s victims would amount to the admission of a half-century’s worth of lies. It would also raise the problem of compensation. Yet, until Japan makes some sort of concrete acknowledgment of what it did during the war, it seems consigned to permanent ostracism.

The story of Unit 731 may be the exception: Victor and vanquished colluded to cover up war crimes and genocide carried out with biological weapons.

While the Americans protected veterans of Unit 731, the Soviets captured twelve of them and charged them with war crimes. All were convicted and given prison terms ranging from two to twenty-five years. Their trials were not widely publicized.

Previous to 1872, nearly all the calicoes of the world were dyed or printed with a coloring principle extracted from the root known as "madder"; the cultivation and preparation of which involved the use of thousands of acres of land in Holland, Belgium, Eastern France, Italy, and the Levant, and the employment of many hundreds of men, women, and children, and of large amounts of capital; the importation of madder into England for the year 1872 having been 28,731,600 pounds, and into the United States for the same year 7,780,000 pounds. To-day, two or three chemical establishments in Germany and England, employing but few men and a comparatively small capital, manufacture from coal-tar, at a greatly reduced price, the same coloring principle; and the former great business of growing and preparing madder with the land, labor, and capital involved is gradually becoming extinct; the importations into Great Britain for the year 1885 having declined to 2,472,000 pounds, and into the United States to 1,458,313 pounds.

... having been educated in the United States, I had not learned in school about the Pacific Asia War brutality and had ignored most of what my grandma told me until I read the book Rape of Nanking.

Many who might be considered more culpable were never brought to trial. Among those who escaped trial were the staff of the unit 731, who had conducted numerous biological and chemical warfare experiments on civilians and prisoners of war. The whole business of 731 was hushed up by the Americans, who offered immunity in return for scientific data from the experiments that their own ethics and laws prevented

In one of the Khabarovsk trial transcripts conducted by the Soviets, a former Unit 731 colonel said that he saw the secret decree that Hirohito issued to create Unit 731 in 1936.

America wanted Ishii, Ishii’s group, and the emperor protected. More than that, it wanted secrecy and exclusivity. The Soviets pressed to bring them all to trial, so that the secrets America had obtained from the Japanese could be made available to everyone (especially them). America won. And Unit 731 made its contribution to the Cold War.