Unit 731
| Unit 731 | |
|---|---|
The Unit 731 complex | |
| Location | Pingfang, Harbin, Heilongjiang, Manchukuo (now part of China) |
| Coordinates | 45°36′31″N 126°37′55″E / 45.60861°N 126.63194°E |
| Date | 1936–1945 |
Attack type |
|
| Weapons | |
| Deaths | Estimated 200,000[1] to 300,000[2] |
| Perpetrators |
|
Unit 731 (Japanese: 731部隊, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai),[note 1] officially known as the Manchu Detachment 731 and also referred to as the Kamo Detachment[4]: 198 and the Ishii Unit,[6] was a secret research facility operated by the Imperial Japanese Army between 1936 and 1945. It was located in the Pingfang district of Harbin, in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now part of Northeast China), and maintained multiple branches across mainland China and Southeast Asia.
Unit 731 was responsible for large-scale biological and chemical warfare research, as well as lethal human experimentation. The facility was led by General Shirō Ishii and received strong support from the Japanese military. Its activities included infecting prisoners with deadly diseases, conducting vivisection, performing organ harvesting, testing hypobaric chambers, amputating limbs, and exposing victims to chemical agents and explosives. Prisoners—often referred to as “logs” by the staff—were mainly Chinese civilians, but also included Russians, Koreans, and others, including children and pregnant women. No documented survivors are known.
An estimated 14,000 people were killed inside the facility itself.[7] In addition, biological weapons developed by Unit 731 caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Chinese cities and villages, through deliberate contamination of water supplies, food, and agricultural land.[1]
After the war, twelve Unit 731 members were tried by the Soviet Union in the 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials and sentenced to prison. However, many key figures, including Ishii, were granted immunity by the United States in exchange for their research data. The Harry S. Truman administration concealed the unit's crimes and paid stipends to former personnel.[8][9]
On 28 August 2002, the Tokyo District Court formally acknowledged that Japan had conducted biological warfare in China and held the state responsible for related deaths.[10][11] Although both the United States and Soviet Union acquired and studied the data, later evaluations found it offered little practical scientific value.[12]
- ^ a b c Kristof, Nicholas D.B. (17 March 1996). "Unmasking Horror – A Special Report. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 July 2019. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
- ^ Watts, Jonathan (28 August 2002). "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 August 2019. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
- ^ Liu, Huaqiu, ed. (2000). 军备控制与裁军手冊 [Handbook on Arms Control and Disarmament] (in Chinese). National Defense Industry Press. p. 368. ISBN 7118022829.
- ^ a b Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged With Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons. Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1950.
- ^ Harris, Sheldon (December 1992). "Japanese Biological Warfare Research on Humans: A Case Study of Microbiology and Ethics". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 666 (1): 30–31. Bibcode:1992NYASA.666...21H. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1992.tb38021.x. PMID 1297279.
- ^ "Human Experimentation at Unit 731". Pacific Atrocities Education. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
- ^ Hill, Amelia (2 March 2003). "The day the earth died". The Observer.
- ^ Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p. 109.
- ^ Guillemin, Jeanne (2017). Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-18352-9.
- ^ "Ruling recognizes Unit 731 used germ warfare in China". The Japan Times. 28 August 2002. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
- ^ "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese". The Guardian. 28 August 2002. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
- ^ Leitenberg, Milton (January 2001). "Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century: A Review and Analysis". Critical Reviews in Microbiology. 27 (4): 270. doi:10.1080/20014091096774. PMID 11791799.
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