VOLUME 34, NO. 04, January 27, 1998
To die in Unit 731
By Lawrence Segel
Though not as well known as the butchery of the Nazi doctors, the Imperial Japanese Army committed its own medical atrocities
"I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But, then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons ... "
One could be excused for confusing the above medical report as coming from one of the diabolical experiments of the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele.
Although befitting of Nazi butchery, it is not. Rather, the report illuminates one of the greatest secrets of the Second World War just now coming to light: Imperial Japan's vast research program to develop biological weapons.
Few of us have ever heard of the abominable medical research performed by the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 or the Pacific War's own "Angel of Death," Dr. Ishii Shiro. The horrific truth is at last receiving worldwide attention.
The task of developing Japan's biological warfare program fell upon Dr. Shiro's shoulders. Born in 1892, he graduated in medicine from Kyoto University in 1920. He was described by classmates as brilliant, arrogant and superhuman.
On graduation, he immediately joined the Japanese Imperial Army. Dr. Ishii would later go on to acquire his PhD, becoming an expert in bacteriology, immunology and preventive medicine.
Ironically, his excitement over biological warfare was prompted by the 1925 Geneva Convention outlawing chemical and biological weapons. In a twisted way of thinking, he surmised, "(it) must possess distinct possibilities, otherwise, it would not have been outlawed by the League of Nations."
He also championed the pragmatic, if not morally bankrupt, theory that modern war could only be won by science and technology, and that the manufacture of biological weapons was the most economical way for a resource-poor country like Japan to triumph. Events unfolding in China would allow him to test his theory.
In 1931, the Mukden incident provided the Japanese with an excuse to occupy Manchuria (a bomb placed by Japanese secret agents exploded under a Japanese-owned express train) and, in 1934, Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, was installed by the Japanese invaders as a puppet emperor.
In 1937, "The China Incident," a skirmish between Japanese and Chinese troops near Peking, sparked a full-scale invasion of the Chinese mainland. What was to shortly follow became known as the Nanjing Massacre or "other" holocaust.
Thousands of Chinese civilians were buried or burned alive, beheaded, used as targets for bayonet practice and shot in mass executions, while the countryside was raped and pillaged. A Tokyo Times reporter wrote, "I have never been to hell, but if there is a hell, it was in this city."
A Japanese soldier's memories corroborated that hell. "When we were bored, we had some fun killing Chinese. Buried them alive. Or pushed them into fire, or beat them to death with clubs."
Many of the atrocities were witnessed by Reverend John Magee, one of the Westerners in charge of an ineffective refugee area called the Nanjing International Safety Zone. He recorded the only known documentary of this holocaust on 16-mm film (available today on video).
At the time, the film was sent by an outraged German diplomat in Nanjing, George Rosen, to the attention of the Nazi government. He requested German intercession because "(the Japanese Army) was a violent killing machine!" It is estimated that 300,000 Chinese were killed and 20,000 women raped over the six-week period.
The Japanese army, with its control of China, now seized the opportunity to create a haven for its bacteriological research program. Dr. Shiro chose the city of Harbin as the headquarters for Unit 731.
Top secret from its inception, Unit 731 was piously labelled the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. It would eventually relocate to Pingfan, 20 km south of Harbin, where Dr. Shiro, now a full colonel, commanded 3,000 Japanese subordinates. The most sinister aspect of Unit 731, the involuntary germ warfare experimentation on live humans, now began in earnest.
Prisoners became nothing more than cheap research animals. Injected or sprayed with deadly biologicals such as plague, anthrax, cholera or typhoid, they would be tied down to tables and dissected without benefit of anesthesia.
"Vivisection should be done under normal circumstances. If we'd used anesthesia, that might have affected the body organs and blood vessels that we were examining. So we couldn't have used anesthetic," said a surviving Unit 731 medical assistant.
The "luckier" prisoners were anesthetized and then used as practice surgical subjects. Organs would be removed and limbs amputated. When the surgeons were done, the subject would be killed by lethal injection.
"Two Chinese men were brought in, stripped naked and given general anesthetic. The others began practising various kinds of surgery: first an appendectomy, then an amputation of an arm, and finally a tracheotomy," the medical assistant reported.
Some prisoners were used for "field tests" - taken to deserted areas and tied to stakes while planes sprayed the zone with plague culture or infected fleas. Others had limbs frozen to mimic frostbite, while some had deliberately inflicted shrapnel wounds infected with Clostridia to produce gas gangrene.
"The subjects were bound to stakes some 10 to 20 metres away from a shrapnel bomb that was loaded with gas gangrene. The object was not to kill the men by exploding the bomb, but to test the effectiveness of gas gangrene as a biological weapon ä All the subjects were wounded in the legs or buttocks, and seven days later they died in great torment," said the assistant.
Children did not escape the abhorrent experiments, but as always, there was contrived justification. "Of course there were experiments on children. But, probably their fathers were spies."
Sadly, no moral or ethical considerations ever entered into the equation. The prisoners were dehumanized and referred to as marutas, or "logs," a means to an end to satisfy the scientist's quest. They were identified by a three- or four-digit number.
Ironically, the "logs" were treated with good food and exercise - a "fattening up" period for the inhuman experimentation. The research facilities themselves came to be known as "lumber mills" and were surrounded by moats, tall brick walls, electric fences, watchtowers and patrolling aircraft.
A rationale for the use of prisoners was based on an old code of "honor in death." The Japanese had little tolerance for surrender and believed it was nobler to commit suicide than be captured. "They thought the prisoners would die an honorable death, if in the process they contributed to the progress of medical science,"noted one report.
But, by 1944, the tides of war had changed. Japan was nearing defeat. Unit 731's efforts became more frantic. Plans were made to launch huge balloons loaded with deadly bacterial pathogens with the hope that the prevailing winds would carry them to the U.S. West Coast.
In 1945, Unit 731 was working on the deadliest scheme of all, "Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night." It was a plan to use kamikazes to attack California and infect the state with bacteria-infected fleas. Luckily, this desperate lunacy was cut short by, arguably, another lunacy, the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was forced to surrender.
One of the last acts of Unit 731 was to cover up the secret operation by eliminating all the remaining "logs," about 150 prisoners. Overall, it has been conservatively estimated that 3,000 humans were killed in these medical experiments. As well, plague-infected animals were released into the Chinese countryside killing at least 30,000 people in the Harbin area from 1946-48.
One would assume that at the end of the War in the Pacific there would be the same cries of outrage that led to the Nuremberg war crimes trials in Europe. This was not to happen. A secret deal was cut between the U.S. (who feared the Japanese germ warfare data might fall into Russian hands) and Japan that kept Unit 731¼s activities classified and allowed immunity.
One week after Japan surrendered, Colonel Murray Sanders, head of the U.S. biological weapons program, was dispatched to Japan. His mission: to locate the Japanese biological war machine. He did not get to speak to Dr. Shiro, but dealt with his right-hand man, Naito.
Sanders was eager, perhaps overly so, to secure the data in this early Cold War environment. His recommendation: "That we promise Naito that no one involved in biological warfare will be prosecuted as a war criminal."
General Douglas MacArthur agreed, even after hearing of Unit 731's human experiments. "We need more evidence. We can't simply act on that. Keep going. Ask more questions. And keep quiet about it."
Dr. Shiro, taking his cues from the Americans, spoke as little as possible during interrogation, minimized the magnitude of the research, refused to admit to human experimentation and denied involvement of Japan's upper echelon, such as Emperor Hirohito.
The conspiracy of silence and rationale for immunity from war crimes was best summed up by a U.S. Committee for the Far East: "The value to the U.S. of Japanese biological weapon data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war crimes prosecution."
Dr. Shiro lived peacefully until his death from throat cancer in 1959. A handful of Japanese politicians and soldiers were eventually put on trial at the Allied War Crimes Trial in Tokyo from 1946-48, but reference to biological warfare was only briefly mentioned and never pursued.
Some individual countries such as the Soviet Union and China had their own trials. But, for the most part, Dr. Shiro's fellow officers in Unit 731 went on to high positions in post-war Japan.
Today, the official Japanese position on the crimes of Unit 731, as well as the Nanjing Massacre, is one of denial - a striking contrast to Germany's apology and reparations for the Holocaust. High-ranking officials continue to ignore the mounting evidence.
Former Japanese cabinet minister Shintaro Ishihara in an interview with Playboy magazine said, "It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie."
These are hollow-ringing words to those who were there. A remorseful former Imperial Army soldier exclaimed: "Japan is a very strange country, truth cannot prevail, so I am a citizen of the world and not a Japanese."
Dr. Ken Yuasa, a PoW until 1956 in China for war crimes, said apologetically, "It is scary. It's outrageous to murder a person. Yet, it's far worse to forget that you've done it. That's the most horrible thing imaginable."
In August 1997, the Japanese government was sued by a group of Chinese victims and relatives who claim they were sickened by Japanese germ warfare attacks. They are demanding 1.08 billion yen ($11.5 million) compensation.
The fight to break the conspiracy of silence continues. But, old imperialistic thinking dies hard. A now aged member of Unit 731 reflected on the future: "There's a possibility this could happen again. Because, in war, you have to win." Our best defence against such inhumanity is exposing the medical madness of Unit 731 and others like it.
Lawrence Segel is a physician and assistant vice-president, medical research and development, with a Toronto financial firm.
