Unit 731 (大日本帝国陸軍第731 部隊) was a covert biological warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal 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. Officially known by the Imperial Japanese Army as the Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, it was initially set up as a political and ideological section of the Kempeitai military police of pre-Pacific War Japan. It was meant to counter the ideological or political influence of enemies, and to reinforce the ideology of military units.

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Description

The unit was disguised as a water purification unit (and shoe-lace factory, as per a History Channel documentary film) and was based in the Pingfang district of the northeast Chinese city of Harbin in the puppet state of Manchukuo. It worked through Japanese political propaganda and as an ideological representative of the Imperial Japanese Army's Kōdōha (Imperial way faction, or war party). In the first phase, this section worked against communist propaganda, but extended its responsibilities in other directions, at home and overseas.

Unit 731 promoted the belief in Japanese racial superiority, racialist theories, counterespionage, intelligence, political sabotage and infiltration of enemy lines. It also liaised with the Manchukuo military police, the Manchu intelligence service, regular Manchu police, Manchu Residents committees, local Nationalist Manchu Parties, and the Japanese Secret Service detachment in Manchukuo. Its section in Manchukuo used some agents from White Russian, Chinese, Manchu, Mongol and other foreign backgrounds for special services, or covert actions at home and abroad.

As many as ten thousand people, both civilian and military, of Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Russian origin were subjects of the experimentation conducted by Unit 731. Some American and European Allied prisoners of war also died at the hands of Unit 731. In addition, the use of biological weapons researched in Unit 731's bioweapons program resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates.

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, business, and medicine. 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 access to the data collected by them.

Because of their brutality, Unit 731's actions have now been declared by the United Nations to be war crimes.

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Formation

In 1932, General Shiro Ishii (石井四郎) was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. He 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. Manchu railway lines were set up for transport of materials and equipment. Ishii organized the secret research group "Togo Unit" for the conduct of chemical and biological investigations. 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.

This unit later was integrated into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department, but was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From 1941 on all these units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)", or "Unit 731" (満州第731部隊) for short. They had support from the Imperial Young Corps, Japanese university research, and the Kempeitai. Some sources even link them with the Mitsui zaibatsu monopoly on poppy farming in Manchukuo (for production of heroin).

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Activities

A special project code-named 'Maruta' used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes referred to euphemistically as "logs" (maruta, 丸太). This term originated as a 'joke' on the part of the staff due to 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. Many experiments and vivisection were performed without the use of anesthetics because it was believed that it might affect the results, or that it was unnecessary because the subjects were tied down.

Vivisection

* Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.
* Vivisections were performed on prisoners infected with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was felt that the decomposition process would affect the results. The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.
* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.
* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.
* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.
* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.
* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.
* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

In 2007, Doctor Ken Yuasa testified to the Japan Times that "I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it." He believes at least 1,000 persons, including surgeons, were involved in vivisections over mainland China.

Weapons testing

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

Germ warfare attacks

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.
* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea via rape, then studied.
* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare.
* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese.
* Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians before World War II.
* Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) actively committed epidemic-creating germ warfare assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying aeroplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.

Other experiments

Prisoners were subjected to cruel and inhuman experiments such as:

* being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.
* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.
* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.
* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.
* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.
* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.
* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.
* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.
* having animal blood injected into some prisoners and the effects studied.
* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.
* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.
* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.

---

i was reading singapore's war history on wiki and i spotted this article.
sigh, it made me sad, sort of

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

Labels: discovery

Unit 731 (大日本帝国陸軍第731 部隊) was a covert biological warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal 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. Officially known by the Imperial Japanese Army as the Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, it was initially set up as a political and ideological section of the Kempeitai military police of pre-Pacific War Japan. It was meant to counter the ideological or political influence of enemies, and to reinforce the ideology of military units.

---

Description

The unit was disguised as a water purification unit (and shoe-lace factory, as per a History Channel documentary film) and was based in the Pingfang district of the northeast Chinese city of Harbin in the puppet state of Manchukuo. It worked through Japanese political propaganda and as an ideological representative of the Imperial Japanese Army's Kōdōha (Imperial way faction, or war party). In the first phase, this section worked against communist propaganda, but extended its responsibilities in other directions, at home and overseas.

Unit 731 promoted the belief in Japanese racial superiority, racialist theories, counterespionage, intelligence, political sabotage and infiltration of enemy lines. It also liaised with the Manchukuo military police, the Manchu intelligence service, regular Manchu police, Manchu Residents committees, local Nationalist Manchu Parties, and the Japanese Secret Service detachment in Manchukuo. Its section in Manchukuo used some agents from White Russian, Chinese, Manchu, Mongol and other foreign backgrounds for special services, or covert actions at home and abroad.

As many as ten thousand people, both civilian and military, of Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Russian origin were subjects of the experimentation conducted by Unit 731. Some American and European Allied prisoners of war also died at the hands of Unit 731. In addition, the use of biological weapons researched in Unit 731's bioweapons program resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates.

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, business, and medicine. 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 access to the data collected by them.

Because of their brutality, Unit 731's actions have now been declared by the United Nations to be war crimes.

---

Formation

In 1932, General Shiro Ishii (石井四郎) was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. He 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. Manchu railway lines were set up for transport of materials and equipment. Ishii organized the secret research group "Togo Unit" for the conduct of chemical and biological investigations. 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.

This unit later was integrated into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department, but was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From 1941 on all these units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)", or "Unit 731" (満州第731部隊) for short. They had support from the Imperial Young Corps, Japanese university research, and the Kempeitai. Some sources even link them with the Mitsui zaibatsu monopoly on poppy farming in Manchukuo (for production of heroin).

---

Activities

A special project code-named 'Maruta' used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes referred to euphemistically as "logs" (maruta, 丸太). This term originated as a 'joke' on the part of the staff due to 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. Many experiments and vivisection were performed without the use of anesthetics because it was believed that it might affect the results, or that it was unnecessary because the subjects were tied down.

Vivisection

* Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.
* Vivisections were performed on prisoners infected with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was felt that the decomposition process would affect the results. The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.
* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.
* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.
* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.
* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.
* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.
* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

In 2007, Doctor Ken Yuasa testified to the Japan Times that "I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it." He believes at least 1,000 persons, including surgeons, were involved in vivisections over mainland China.

Weapons testing

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

Germ warfare attacks

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.
* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea via rape, then studied.
* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare.
* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese.
* Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians before World War II.
* Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) actively committed epidemic-creating germ warfare assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying aeroplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.

Other experiments

Prisoners were subjected to cruel and inhuman experiments such as:

* being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.
* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.
* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.
* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.
* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.
* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.
* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.
* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.
* having animal blood injected into some prisoners and the effects studied.
* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.
* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.
* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.

---

i was reading singapore's war history on wiki and i spotted this article.
sigh, it made me sad, sort of

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

Labels: discovery