We all have heard or read about the two world wars, and yeah, it was terrifying. For sure, most of us don’t even want to hear about the suffering, let alone go through it.
But for those steel stomached viewers who like their reads terrifying and gory, we have a treat!
Today I am going to share this forgotten incident from WW2, which could very well be called a tragedy against Humanity, Unit 731.
THE ORIGIN OF THIS SPINE CHILLING STORY
In 1930, Surgeon General Shiro Ishii proposed the idea of building a unit for chemical and biological experiments. The chilling part was that he meant experiments on humans. Finally, with the help of the royal decree, this little dream of Ishii came true.
In 1932 he was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory.
Ishii made a secret organization called the “Togo Unit” in the Zhongma Fortress, about 100 km south of Harbin. This secret unit did various horrible human experiments(which we will discuss later in this article).
But the Zhongma Fortress had to shut down in 1935 due to several prison breaks and an explosion. But all is well as long as the royal family’s support is there. So yeah, with the help of another royal decree, this unit moved to Pingfang and integrated into the Kwantung Army as an “Epidemic Prevention Unit.”
Later in august 1940, it got the name “Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army,” and just like me, they realized the term was too long. Hence, they called it “Unit 731.”
THE SPINE CHILLING SECRET ACTIVITIES
Many things happened in there, many horrible things. A special project called “Maruta” used humans as test subjects. They referred to these test subjects as “logs,” as in “How many logs fell?” which gave them a great cover-up story.
Yes, they told the local authorities that it’s just a lumber mill, and with the royal family support, nobody would dare to question the or go for inspections.
THE TEST SUBJECTS
Their choice of test subjects was BIG TIME disturbing. Criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, homeless, mentally handicapped, people caught by the military police for “suspicious” activities.
And here’s the worst part: pregnant women and infants. What’s even more bizarre is that they were taking the risk by publishing these researches in peer-reviewed journals where the human test subjects were referred to as “long tailed monkey.”
During the war, Nakagawa Yonezo was studying at the Kyoto University, watched some footage, and quoted, “Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: ‘what would happen if we did such and such?’. What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? Nothing at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like play.”
THE EXPERIMENTS
In unit 731, They used to inject the prisoners with different things, dehydrate them, drain all the blood out slowly, remove some organs to study its side effects.
They removed the stomachs of some and connected the oesophagus to the intestines, chopped some limbs off, and stitched them on the opposite sides.
Many were vivisected (without any anesthesia) to study the internal organs at different stages of different infections. They forced the prisoners to have intercourse to study STDs, forced many women to get pregnant to study the possibilities of disease transfer to the baby.
Even though many were born within these walls of the unit 731 experiment, no survivor was found. It is believed that the babies were either aborted or killed after birth. They even spread some deadly plagues in some Chinese cities. Twelve plagues were spread in 11 cities. Through these experiments, they were able to determine the fastest spreading pathogens.
WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE TALK ABOUT THIS?!
These studies were then used to develop bombs that were going to be used on 22 September 1945 in San Diego, California but Japan surrendered five weeks ago due to America’s surprise attacks. About half a million Chinese civilians died.
When Japan surrendered, all the evidence was burnt, all the living evidences were shot. Not many members gave testimony, and those few who gave their testimonies weren’t much help.
America helped Japan bury these crimes, but a few decades later, they resurfaced. The Japanese textbooks don’t talk much about this. For many years they didn’t accept what they did. In 2013, however, the former prime minister, Hatoyama Yukio, offered a personal apology for Japan’s wartime crimes.
“As a Japanese citizen, I feel that it’s my duty to apologize for even just one Chinese civilian brutally killed by the Japanese soldiers and that such action cannot be excused by saying that it occurred during the war.” -Hatoyama Yuki.
I don’t think an apology or, to be honest, ANYTHING can make up for all the torture and suffering those “test subjects” went through.
We hope their souls rest in peace and their families get justice( which seems bleak).
