Page 7 - Marutas of Unit 731
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subsidiaries was not an isolated incident for the Imper ial Japanes e Army
during WWII.
My grandmother had always told me about their sur vival stories during
WWII. She told me about the executions that regularly were carried out in
King’s Park in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. Under threat of
severe punishment, families were forced to trade all their wealth for militar y
yen. Like most women at the time, my grandmother avoided being outside
and darkened her face with charcoal to prevent being raped by Japanes e
soldiers. However, having been educated in the United States, I had not
learned in school about the Paci c Asia War brutality and had ignored most
of what my grandma told me until I read the book Rape of Nanking.
Regretting not listening to my grandmother, my friend and I co-founded
Paci c Atrocities Education with the purpose of visiting the forgotten past of
the WWII Paci c eater. Curiosity led me to visit comfort women in
Shanxi in Northern China in 2014 which then led to my writing the
historical ction, e Undrowning Lotus. In 2015, I attended a conference
about the Paci c Asia War hosted by the Global Alliance. Wang Xuan spoke
about villagers with rotten legs who were victims of biological warfare
waged by the Imperial Japanese Army. It was there when I rst learned
about Unit 731. e biological weapons victims were unable even to put
socks on their legs which never healed from glanders and anthrax le on
Chinese soil during WWII. Seventy years aer the war, through Wang
Xuan’s relentless efforts, a means of curing rotten legs nally was found. To
learn more about Wang Xuan and her work, check out Seeking Justice for
Biological War fare Victims of Unit 731.
Aer years of researching Unit 731, I was appalled by the fact that most
of the scientists who worked there suffered no consequences nor faced any
criminal justice charges due to immunity granted to them by the United
