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:
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