Page 41 - Unit 731

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Human Experimentation: Medical Ethics and Medical Crimes of Unit 731

From its beginning in 1933 until 1945, Unit 731 conducted inhumane and unethical human experiments to benefit Japan’s biochemical warfare against
China.
A huge number of Chinese, Russians, and Koreans were subjected to experiments, including living dissection, bacterial infections, and frostbite
experiments. For ‘the nation, scientific research and the development of the medical field’, Unit 731 tortured and killed innocent citizens without
consequence. After the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East ignored these grave war crimes. Until now, many Japanese leaders have
chosen to forget these war crimes.
The Japanese doctors and researchers were exempted from responsibility for their acts. Furthermore, after the war, the perpetrators enjoyed privileges
and prestigious job offers and became high-ranking officials in Japanese military departments and educational institutions, including high-status
universities.
A number of them used data and statistics collected during experimentation in Unit 731 as material for their personal research through which they
obtained doctoral degrees. They received offers of professorships and assistant professorships, and a number of them opened their own private hospitals
and medical companies with their medical knowledge from Unit 731. These men did not regret their cruel behaviour at Unit 731 and enjoyed relatively
stable and luxurious lives after the war.
Thanks to their reputed status in Japanese society, the human experimentation during the Second World War and medical war crimes committed by
them while in the Japanese army were either covered up or ignored by the public.
It is time for Japan’s medical field to take responsibility and expose these war crimes and the inhumane acts at Unit 731.

Secrets Within Secrets
When Unit 731 moved to Harbin from Tokyo in 1933, it set up Dong Man Jail (東滿大獄) at Beiyinhe of Wuchang to incarcerate anti-Japanese and
ordinary citizens for experimentation. Construction of this jail marked the beginning of thirteen years of human experimentation by the Japanese.

Death Factory: The Square Quarter
In 1938, Unit 731 included in its headquarters design the Square Quarter, a core human experimentation venue, and a special jail to hold victims. The
Square Quarter consisted of four three-storey buildings of 150 metres long and 100 metres wide. The special jail enclosed within the Square Quarter was
made up of two two-storey buildings with capacity of up to 400 people. Unit 731 maintained close connections with the Kanto Army, the Japanese police,
the Security Bureau, and other covert agencies to secure smooth transportation of captives used for human experimentation.
In preparing for experimentation, Unit 731 set up two sub-branches: a bacterial research division and a bacterial experiment division. These two sub-
branches were mainly established for the creation and testing of bacteria before use on humans. Within the bacteria research division, there were sub-
classes using the supervisor’s name. For example, the ‘Takahashi Class’ was responsible for plague and the ‘Minato Class’ for Malaria. Unit 731 conducted
experiments and research on more than fifty kinds of germs and viruses. Moreover, outside the Square Quarters there were facilities to manufacture
poisonous gas, to conduct experiments on living humans, and to store these gas products and other protective devices (see Fig. 18).

Death Sequence Number of Maruta
Unit 731’s Square Quarter and the special jail were the axis of human experimentation, as well its darkest secret. Captives there were experimental objects
without basic human rights. They did not have a name, occupation, age, or background, only a three-digit number. They became ‘marutas’ (Japanese for
logs). When marutas arrived at the special jail, they were provided with food, drink, and exercise to keep them fit and healthy. Whenever a laboratory
needed testers for experiments, they would select a healthy inmate and wrote their sequence number on a blackboard. Each number was a human life.
Regarding the number of marutas, the head of the First Division of Unit 731, Major General Nagakawa Kiyoshi, gave the following statement in the
Khabarovsk Trial: ‘Between 1940 and 1945, more than 3,000 people were killed by bacterial infection in the murder factory. For the number of people
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killed before 1940, I am not sure’. Human experimentation had been carried out for a long time, its scale was large, and Japanese troops destroyed almost
all the official documents regarding the experimentation when they retreated from Harbin. Records of 1933 to 1938 remain undiscovered, but from the oral
narrative of former Japanese soldiers, it is confirmed that more than 3,000 people died in experimentation.
Death Laboratories

Unit 731 carried out large-scale human experimentation on war refugees, local labourers, peasants, craftspeople, men, women, and children. The
experiments varied from live dissection, bacterial infection, frostbite, and poison gas to airborne infection, medical experiments, sub-dermal injections, and
bombing.
Unimaginable Cruelty: Live Human Dissection
Until 731 staff dissected men, women, children, and even infants. The Japanese would not use the anaesthetics of maruta when they were in the process of
dissection. The subjects were gagged, and their head, legs, and arms were tied with ropes on the operating table, where dissection materials were prepared.
Oral Narrative of an Old Soldier