thanks- Here’s anotherl ink to the basics on it for others
1925 — Japan refuses Geneva Convention ban on biological weapons.
1932 — Japanese troops invade Manchuria. Shiro Ishii, a physician and army officer who was intrigued by germ warfare, begins preliminary experiments.
1936 — Unit 731, a biological-warfare unit disguised as a water-purification unit, is formed. Ishii builds huge compound — more than 150 buildings over six square kilometers — outside the city of Harbin, Manchuria. Some 9,000 test subjects eventually die at the compound.
1942 — Ishii begins field tests of germ warfare on Chinese soldiers and civilians. Tens of thousands die of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases. U.S. soldiers captured in Philippines are sent to Manchuria.
1945 — Japanese troops blow up the headquarters of Unit
731 in final days of Pacific war. Ishii orders 150 remaining ‘subjects’ killed to cover up their experimentation.
1946 — U.S. makes a deal with Ishii for germ warfare data based on human experimentation in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution.
http://www.ww2pacific.com/unit731.html
Japan’s biological weapons program was born in the 1930s, in part because Japanese officials were impressed that germ warfare had been banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. If it was so awful that it had to be banned under international law, the officers reasoned, it must make a great weapon. Establishment of two biological warfare Units 731 and 100 in Manchuria in 1933 because of the number of test subjects available. Harbin in Manchuria was the headquarters of Unit 731. Ishii promoted to full colonel with 3,000 Japanese working under him. In addition of bacteriological warfare, studies were also conducted on human damage done by burns, freezing, high pressure, and bullets. Former members of the unit say that at least 3,000 people and by some accounts several times that number were killed in the medical experiments in which none survived.