BW/ Japan's dark chapters

Japan's dark chapters

Of course when war is waging, terrible things happen. But what happened in Japan between 1930 and the end WWII can, if at all, only be described as inhumane cruelty.

Ever heard of Unit 731, or of people being dissected alive?  In this blog post I want to talk about something which should carry the same slogan as the Holocaust : NEVER AGAIN!

The dark chapters of Japan start with a man called Shiro Ishii.

He grew up as a son of a privileged family and soon developed an arrogance which led him to the belief that people below him were worth less. His major goal in life was to become the father of biological warfare. After obtaining a high rank in the Japanese military he started his research at the Tokyo Medical School and later became head of Japan’s bioweapon programme during WWII. When Japanese forces occupied parts of China he saw his chance for creating an institution, in which he could conduct his experiments. This institution, which later become known as Unit 731, was built in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and carried the official name Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. He chose the area and name to keep the public attention away from his laboratory.

In his laboratory Shiro Ishii and a large team of medical researchers experimented with biological warfare agents. They experimented on humans. Prisoners, which were kept in the middle and most secret part of the building, were injected with viruses. Then the medical researchers opened them up alive to see how their body reacted. The researchers referred to their prisoners as maturas which could be loosely translated into log. This shows that those prisoners were no longer perceived as humans.

The aim of Shiro Ishii’s programme was to attack Japan's counterparts, especially the US, with weapons they had never seen before.

Along with experiments on biological warfare agents Shiro Ishii was also searching for an effective delivery system – and he found it in fleas. A large quantity of rats was kept at Unit 731 as a flee factory. Then nearby villages were infected and again Japanese researchers went to those villages and performed vivisections on the victims. They even distributed chocolate with plague-infected fleas to little children! Also wells were poisoned to study the effects of typhus and cholera outbreaks.

Epidemics persisted for years and continued to kill more than 30,000 people until 1947, long after the Japanese had surrendered.

But what happened to Shiro Ishii and his team after the surrender? Were they found guilty for their warfare crimes?

No. They cleverly managed to get the US to grant them immunity of prosecution in exchange of information about their research on humans. The US believed, especially with the prospect of the Cold War, that they could profit from this information. Shiro Ishii died, well above his sixties, due to natural causes. His successor, Masaji Kitano, even published some research articles where he simply exchanged the term humans with monkeys. Actually most of Ishii’s team went on to hold high academic and political positions after the WWII and were far from receiving punishment.

today Unit 731 is a museum

Until this day the Japanese government  refused to apologize for the events in Unit 731. The problem is  that unlike Nazi human experimentation ,which is extremely well documented, the activities of Unit 731 are known only from the testimonies which apparently can not be used to verify the happenings. However, in October 2003, the Prime Minister stated that, while the current Japanese government does not possess any records related to Unit 731, they recognize the gravity of the matter and will publicize any records that are located in the future.

If you want to get further information I recommend you watch this documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgtIyNRv3g8

here is the transcript: http://www.targeted-individuals-europe.com/?q=node/7