For forty years after World War 2, the Japanese managed to keep one of the most grotesque and inhumane war crimes a secret. This was their institution, unit 731. Here, groups of medical scientists and doctors conducted unbearable human experiments on captured POW’s or innocent civilians. These included weapons testing of biological warfare.
Thesis: The aftermath of unit 731 still has a psychological and physiological affect today.
Thesis: The events that occurred in unit 731 were unjustified
Thesis: Those responsible for the actions of Unit 731 have not received fair punishment.
Unit 731 was located at Pingfan, Manchuria at a 6 square kilometer facility that was known by the public as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army.
The activities and experiments carried out are now known as some of the most notorious war crimes in history. Prisoners were subject to live vivisections after infecting them with various diseases. Organs were removed in order to test the diseases’ effect. These were most commonly done without anesthetic, in fear that it would alter the results. Prisoners had limbs amputated to study blood loss. Prisoners were tied up outside in temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius and then had their limbs sprayed with salt water in order to study frostbite. Doctor would then find different ways of reheating the prisoners, most of which died from shock.
But despite the death of more than 2,000 of innocent men, women, and even infants from these experiments, these were mostly isolated incidences. Unit 731 did a lot more long lasting damage that is still visible today. They secretly dropped germ-releasing bombs on villages. Planes dropped plague infested fleas on Chinese cities of Changde and Ningbo to test the affects of this tactic on population centers.
Despite being one of the worst war crimes in history, those involved received little to no punishment at all. After Japan surrenders in World War 2,