Unit 731
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Body disposal at Unit 731.Unit 731 (731 , Nana-san-ichi butai?) was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (19371945) 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 under the Kempeitai military police of the Empire of Japan to develop weapons of mass destruction for potential use against Chinese, and possibly Soviet forces.

Contents [hide]
1 Description
2 Formation
3 Activities
3.1 Vivisection
3.2 Weapons testing
3.3 Germ warfare attacks
3.4 Other experiments
4 Biological warfare
5 Unit members
6 Divisions
7 Facilities
7.1 Anta testing site
7.2 Hsinking (Changchun) HQ
7.3 Peking (Peiping) HQ
7.4 Nanking HQ
7.5 Kwangtung (Canton) HQ
7.6 Syonan (Singapore) HQ
7.7 Hiroshima HQ
7.8 Manchuria HQ (Unit 200)
7.9 Manchuria HQ (Unit 571)
7.10 Special Mobile Teams
7.11 Special Operations units
8 Disbanding and the end of World War II
9 Cultural depictions and representations
10 In fiction
11 See also
11.1 Pacific War (World War II)
11.2 Nazi Germany
11.3 In Asia
12 References
13 Further reading
14 External links



[edit] Description
Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China).


Shiro Ishii, commander of Unit 731More than ten thousand people,[1] from which around 600 every year were provided by the Kempeitai,[2] were subjects of the experimentation conducted by Unit 731.

More than 95 percent of the victims who died in the camp were Chinese and Korean, including both civilian and military.[3] The remaining 5 percent were South East Asians and Pacific Islanders, at the time colonies of the Empire of Japan, and a small number of the prisoners of war from the Allies of World War II.[4]

According to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000.[5] According to other sources, the use of biological weapons researched in Unit 731's bioweapons and chemical weapons programs resulted in possibly as many as 200,000 deaths of military personnel and civilians in China.[6]

Unit 731 was the headquarters of many subsidiary 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 Ei 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 post-war politics, academia, business, and medicine. Some were arrested by Soviet forces and tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials; others surrendered to the American Forces.

On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."[7] The deal was concluded in 1948.

Because of their brutality, Unit 731's actions have now[when?] been declared by the United Nations to have been crimes against humanity.


[edit] Formation
In 1932, General Shiro Ishii ( Ishii Shir), chief medical officer of the Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki 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 on the South Manchurian Railway.

Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Togo Unit", for the conduct of various 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.[8]

In 1936, Hirohito authorized, by imperial decree, the expansion of this unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department.[9] It was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From August 1940, all these units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army ()"[10] or "Unit 731" (731) for short.


[edit] Activities

Weapons of
mass destruction

By type
Biological
Chemical
Nuclear
Radiological
By country
Albania
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
PR China
France
Germany
India
Iran
Iraq
Israel Japan
Netherlands
North Korea
Pakistan
Poland
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
Sweden
Syria
Taiwan (ROC)
United Kingdom
United States

List of treaties
v d e
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?).[11] 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.[12]

The test subjects were selected to give a wide cross section of the population, and included common criminals, captured bandits and anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, and also people rounded up by the secret police for alleged "suspicious activities". They included infants, the elderly, and pregnant women.


[edit] Vivisection
Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.[13][11]
Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them 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 feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.[14][11] The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.[15]
Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.[16]
Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.[11]
Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.[11]
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.[11]
Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.[17][13][11]
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 per

Shir¨­ Ishii
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Shir¨­ Ishii
June 25, 1892(1892-06-25) ¨C October 9, 1959 (aged 67)

General Shir¨­ Ishii
Place of birth Chiba prefecture, Japan
Place of death Tokyo, Japan
Allegiance Empire of Japan
Service/branch Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service 1921 -1945
Rank Lieutenant General
Commands held Unit 731, Kwantung Army
Battles/wars Second Sino-Japanese War
World War II
In this Japanese name, the family name is Ishii.
Shir¨­ Ishii (ʯ¾®ËÄÀÉ, Ishii Shir¨­?, June 25, 1892 ¨C October 9, 1959) was a Japanese microbiologist and the lieutenant general of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early years
1.2 Biological warfare project
1.3 Immunity
2 See also
3 References
3.1 Books
3.2 External links



[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years
Ishii was born in the former Shibayama Village of Sanbu District in Chiba Prefecture, and studied medicine at Kyoto Imperial University. Although he was considered a selfish, pushy, and sometimes disturbed individual, he excelled in his studies,[citation needed] and in 1922 was assigned to the 1st Army Hospital and Army Medical School in Tokyo. There his work impressed his superiors enough to gain him, two years later, post-graduate medical schooling back at the Kyoto Imperial University.

Beginning in 1928, Ishii took a two-year tour of the West. In his travels, he did extensive research on the effects of biological warfare and chemical warfare developments from World War I onwards. It was a highly successful mission and helped win him the patronage of Sadao Araki, Minister of the Army.


[edit] Biological warfare project
In 1932, he began his preliminary experiments in biological warfare as a secret project for the Japanese military at Zhongma Fortress. In 1936, Unit 731 was formed. Ishii built a huge compound ¨C more than 150 buildings over six square kilometers ¨C outside the city of Harbin, China. The research was secret, and the cover story was that Unit 731 was engaged in water-purification work. The film Men Behind the Sun (Hong Kong, 1988, directed by Mou Tun Fei) includes a scene in which Ishii demonstrates to his fellow soldiers a machine he has invented to purify urine into drinking water.

From 1940, Ishii was appointed Chief of the Biological Warfare Section of the Kwantung Army, holding the post simultaneously with that of the Bacteriological Department of the Army Medical Academy.[1]

In 1942, Ishii began field tests of germ warfare agents developed, and various methods of dispersion (i.e. via firearms, bombs etc.) both on Chinese prisoners of war and operationally on battlefields and against civilians in Chinese cities. Some historians[citation needed] estimate that tens of thousands died as a result of the bio-weapons (including bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and others) deployed. His unit also conducted physiological experiments on human subjects, including vivisections, forced abortions, and simulated strokes and heart attacks.

From 1942-1945, Ishii was Chief of the Medical Section of the Japanese First Army[1]

In 1945, in the final days of the Pacific War and in the face of imminent defeat, Japanese troops blew up the headquarters of Unit 731 in order to destroy evidence of the research done there. As part of the cover-up, Ishii ordered 150 remaining subjects killed. More than ten thousand people,[2] from which around 600 every year were provided by the kempeitai,[3] were subjects of the experimentation conducted by Unit 731. These were called by Ishii and his peers maruta (ÍèÌ«) "logs," a reference to their view of subjects being inert, expendable entities, or is possibly related to the cover story told to locals that the facility contained a sawmill.


[edit] Immunity
Arrested by the American occupation authorities at the end of World War II, Ishii and Unit 731 leaders received immunity in 1946 from war-crimes prosecution before the Tokyo tribunal in exchange for germ warfare data based on human experimentation. On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."[4] The deal was concluded in 1948.[5]

Ishii was never prosecuted for any war crimes. According to Richard Drayton, a Cambridge University history lecturer, Ishii later moved to Maryland where he conducted research into bio-weapons.[5] But according to Ishii's daughter Harumi, he stayed in Japan,[6] where he died of throat cancer at the age of 67.[7]

Masaji Kitano
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Masaji Kitano (kì­ July 14, 1894 - May 17, 1986) was a medical doctor, microbiologist and the lieutenant general of the Imperial Japanese Army. He was the 2nd commander of Unit 731, where extensive human experimentation was conducted.


[edit] Biography
Kitano graduated from School of Medicine, Tokyo Imperial University in 1919 with a medical doctor degree. In 1921, he was commissioned lieutenant as an army surgeon. In 1932, he worked in the First Army Hospital in Tokyo. He later left the hospital service transferring to the Army Surgeon School. In 1936, he was dispatched to Manchukuo, part of the Empire of Japan and became a professor of Manchu School of Medicine, teaching microbiology. In 1942, he was appointed the 2nd commander of Unit 731. His predecessor was Shiro Ishii. In April, 1945, he was promoted to lieutenant surgeon general and appointed commander of the 13th Army Medical Corps.

After Japanese surrender, August 1945, he was detained in POW camp in Shanghai. Like all involved with Unit 731 or Japanese biological warfare, he was repatriated to Japan without any accusation in January 1946.

After he came back to Japan, he worked for Green Cross, a Japanese Pharmaceutical company. In 1959 he became head of the plant in Tokyo and the chief director of that company. He was the chief funeral commissioner of Shiro Ishii, a fellow Unit 731 member.

In 1986, Kitano died in Tokyo.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaji_Kitano"