Unit 731

Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the WW2. It was initially set up under the Keppeitai military police of the Empire of Japan to develop weapons of mass destruction for potential use against Chinese, and possibly Soviet forces.

Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of the city of Harbin. Under the command of Shiro Ishii, commander of Unit 731, unimaginable human body experiments were performed here. More than 10,000 people, both civilian and military of Chinese, Korean, Mongolian & Russian origin were subjects of the experiments. In addition, the use of biological weapons researched in Unit 731 was the headquarters of many subsidiary units used by the Japanese to research biological warfare.

These are some of examples of experiments done in Unit 731.

Vivisection without anesthetic, observing the results of electrical shock, food poisoning, burning, dehydration, frost bite, radiation, medicating, blood transfusion with horse blood, animal organ transplant to human body, virus injection, toxic gas chamber and etc. In the museum you can see all these lists of activities(?) done in unit 731 on one of the wall. As I go through the lists of these experiments done in Unit 731, the question of 'How could they?' was numerously repeated in my head.

When the Japanese army was retrieved from China in 1945, they burned down the most of the facilities & disposed barrels of chemicals in the river or buried them in the mountain. The problem caused by these abandoned chemicals are still lingering in the Chinese society. When the Chinese people are still suffering to this day, where are all the responsible ones? The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 atrocities and germ warfare experiments received sentences ranging from 2 to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp from the Khabarovsk court. Some 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. Shiro Ishii in particular moved to Maryland to work on bio-weapons researcher. Is that mean that we all are benefiting from Japaneses inhumane experiments in expense of these human subjects? I wonder!!!