[Japan’s Unit 731 remains central to the fiercely contested China-Japan controversy over war crimes and war memory, and to the international debate on science and ethics. With a staff of more than 10,000, including many of Japan’s top medical scientists, 731 and its affiliated units conducted human experiments, including vivisection, on Chinese and other victims in Manchukuo and throughout China between 1933 and 1945. The experiments tested, among other things, the lethality of biological weapons and sought to determine the ability of the human body to survive in the face of various pathogens and in conditions such as extreme cold.
Tsuneishi Keiichi is Japan’s leading specialist on biowarfare. His voluminous studies conducted over thirty years in Japan, China, the United States and Europe, have provided core material for all writing hitherto on the Ishii Network. In the following careful resumé essay, he concentrates on organization and function, omitting much of the horrific detail covered elsewhere. Drawing on Japanese military records, this study documents the deaths of 850 victims in the years up to 1943, the largest number infected with plague, cholera, and epidemic hemorrhagic fever. It also makes use of American records and interviews.
Unit 731 not only conducted tests but also led the way in waging biological warfare on numerous occasions throughout the war, the best documented being attacks on Ningbo and throughout Zhejiang province. As in the case of the Nanjing Massacre and the ‘comfort women,’ casualty figures remain contested. The figure of 3,000 persons exterminated at Pingfan, the major experiment site of the Ishii Network, is widely accepted among specialists for the period ending in 1945. The post-surrender destruction by the Japanese authorities both of the research sites and the military documents, has made precise casualty estimates difficult.
As Tsuneishi documents, attacks in Zhejiang resulted in more than 10,000 Japanese military casualties including the death of 1,700 Japanese soldiers, revealing the difficulty of waging effective biowarfare. No estimate is provided here of Chinese deaths. a reminder of contemporary practice in providing only American body counts in Iraq, but also of the difficulty of establishing Chinese casualties.
Japan’s grim experiment with biowarfare pales in comparison with the estimated 10-30 million Chinese who died as a result of war and associated conditions of famine in the years 1931-45. But the findings of Ishii and his colleagues were important enough for American authorities to grant immunity from prosecution in exchange for evidence of the research findings of Unit 731. The 731 scientists, who were evacuated to Japan prior to the defeat, continued their careers as eminent figures in the postwar medical and scientific establishment. Japan Focus.]
The Ishii Network
Unit 731 was the common name of a secret unit of Japan’s Manchuria-based Kwantung Army whose official name was the Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department. [1] The leader of the unit was Ishii Shiro, who held the rank of lieutenant general at the end of World War II. The unit epitomized the extensive organization for the development of biological weapons within the imperial army, which was referred to, beginning in the late 1930s, as the Ishii Network.
The network itself was based at the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, established in 1932 at the Japanese Army Military Medical School in Tokyo. Unit 731 was the first of several secret, detached units created as extensions of the research lab; the units served as field laboratories and test sites for developing biological weapons, culminating in the experimental use of biological weapons on Chinese cities. The trial use of these weapons on urban populations was a direct violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlawed the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. It was also understood by those involved that the use of human subjects in laboratory and test site experiments was inhumane. This was why it was deemed necessary to establish Unit 731 and the other secret units.
Lt. General Ishii Shiro
The Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory was created under the initiative of Ishii Shiro after he returned from two years of field study of American and European research facilities. It was set up, with the approval of top-level army authorities, as a facility to develop biological weapons. It is said that Ishii first became convinced of the need to develop biological weapons with the signing of the Geneva Protocol in 1925.
The biological weapons Ishii sought to develop had humans as their target, and Unit 731 was established with this goal in mind. In order to produce biological weapons as quickly as possible, Ishii considered it essential to have a human experimentation site at the disposal of his research laboratory. Japan had occupied northeastern China and in 1932 the puppet state of Manchukuo was established. Within this ‘safe zone,’ Ishii set up what was called the Togo Unit, based in the village of Beiyinhe, about 100 kilometers south of Harbin. Human experimentation began there in the fall of 1933. The Togo Unit was a secret unit under the vice chief of staff of the Kwantung Army. It was set up to determine whether it was possible to conduct human experiments in northeastern China, and if it was possible, whether the experiments would produce useful results. The launching of this feasibility study reflects the deliberate nature of Ishii as the organizer of the research, and you could say it was marked with his character. All of those involved in this research and development were military doctors, but they all used false names. At this stage, the scale of the project involved about ten doctors, along with a staff of about one hundred.
The Inauguration of Unit 731
Unit 731 was officially established in 1936. Its establishment is reflected in a memo dated April 23, 1936, entitled ‘Opinion Regarding the Reinforcement of Military Forces in Manchuria,’ from the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army to the vice minister of the Ministry of War (contained in the Ministry of War Journal for the army in Manchuria, Rikuman Mitsu-dainikki). Under the heading ‘Establishment and Expansion of the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention Department,’ the memo states that the department will be ‘newly established’ in 1936 and ‘one part of the department will be expanded in fiscal 1938.’ This is the oldest official document concerning Unit 731 that has been found to date.
In addition to inaugurating Unit 731, this memo also laid the foundation for establishing two other units. It called for the establishment of an additional biological weapons development unit, independent of Ishii’s unit, which was called the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 100), and for preparations to set up a chemical weapons development unit called the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 516).
Several months later, the memo’s recommendations were approved by Emperor Hirohito, the two units were established, and preparations began for creating the Testing Department. The Ministry of War Journal for May 21, 1936 recorded this development under the heading. ‘Imperial Hearing on Military Force Improvement Consequent upon Budget Approval.’ The journal noted: ‘Units concerned with epidemic prevention: One unit each is established for epidemic prevention among humans and horses.’
Having been officially established, Unit 731 moved its facilities from Beiyinhe to a newly established laboratory at a hospital in Harbin. This laboratory served as a front-line headquarters while the unit’s permanent facilities were being built in Pingfan, outside of the city of Harbin. These facilities were completed and capable of conducting research in the fall of 1939, after the hostilities at Nomonhan (on the border between Manchuria and Mongolia) had ended.
With the construction of the Pingfan facilities, the primary research staff changed in composition from the military doctors of the Togo Unit to private-sector medical researchers affiliated with universities and other institutions. The first group to be posted to the unit was a team of eight assistant professors and instructors from Kyoto Imperial University in the spring of 1938. The group consisted of two bacteriologists, three pathologists, two physiologists, and one researcher specializing in experiments using animals. Within a year, a second group had arrived at the facility, and the research staff had expanded considerably. The prominence of researchers in pathology and physiology in the development of biological weapons reflected the need for specialized judgment in assessing the results of human experimentation.
The Unit 731 Building Reconstructed as a Museum at Pingfan
With the expansion of the war front throughout China after 1937, sister units affiliated with Unit 731 were established in major Chinese cities. These units were also called Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Departments. (Unit 1855 was established in Beijing on February 9, 1938; Unit 1644 in Nanjing on April 18, 1939; and Unit 8604 in Guangzhou on April 8, 1939). Later, after Japan occupied Singapore a similar unit (Unit 9420) was established there on March 26, 1942. These affiliates comprised the scope of the Ishii network through the end of the war. As of the end of 1939 (that is, before the establishment of the Singapore unit), the network had a total staff of 10,045, of which 4,898 were assigned to the core units in Tokyo and Pingfan.
Human Experimentation
Human experimentation took place at all of the units of the Ishii network, but it was conducted systematically by Unit 731 and Unit 1644. Of these two, there are extant reports from a US Army survey of human experimentation by Unit 731, so the general outline of its program is known.
The following table was compiled from two sources: a report to US occupation authorities dated December 12, 1947 by Edwin Hill and Joseph Victor, concerning human experimentation by Unit 731 and related facilities; and a list of specimens brought back to Japan by a Unit 731 pathologist in July 1943. Aside from Ishii and another unit leader, Kitano Masaji, the names of individual researchers do not appear; they are identified as military personnel (M, primarily military doctors), (C) civilian technicians conducting research within the military, and (PT) part-time researchers working outside of the military.
The number of specimens reflects the number of subjects who died as a result of human experimentation as of July 1943. Consequently, the total number of victims of human experimentation at the time of Japan’s surrender two years later would be higher than these figures. The figures also do not include victims of germ bomb tests at the Anda field test site or from other experiments.
موضوع
محقق
Total Specimens
Medically Usable Specimens
اينٿراڪس
M
36
31
botulinus
اسحاق
2
0
بروڪويلسس
Ishii, M, C, M
3
1
CO زهر ڏيڻ
1
0
کلورا
C, C
135
50
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