Unit 731

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The unit 731 ( Jap. 731部隊 , 731 butai ) was the one secret of several facilities Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army in the occupied Manchuria , the biological and chemical weapons researched, tried and began. The name is an abbreviation of the military code name ( tsūshōgō ) Manshū dai-731 butai ( 満 州 第七 三 一 部隊 ), while the actual name "Main Department of the Department of Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply of the Kwantung Army" ( 関東軍 防疫 給水 部 本部 , Kantō -gun bōeki-kyūsui-bu honbu ) was.

To this end, experiments were also carried out on living people. An estimated 3,500 Korean and Chinese civilians, as well as American, British and Soviet prisoners of war, were killed in these attempts. In addition, between 1940 and 1942, at least six field tests were carried out with pathogens, including anthrax and plague , which killed several thousand people. At the end of the war in 1945, when the production facilities were destroyed by the Japanese army, rats infected with the plague were released, which caused an epidemic in the provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin that killed over 20,000 people.

The name Unit 731 is used today to represent the entire program of the Imperial Japanese Army for the production of biological weapons, although the unit was not the only Japanese association that developed biological weapons.

Origin and deployment

Ishii Shirō 1932 - Image from Unit 731 Bulletin

The medical director of the facility was Lieutenant General and doctor Ishii Shirō . In 1932 he and his unit built the Zhoghma Fortress, a prison on the outskirts of Harbin City . This was in the puppet state of Manchukuo , which had been established in 1932 after the occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese. In 1935, an inmate breakout forced Ishii to close the Harbin facility. Instead, the prison was rebuilt in Pingfang , a town near Harbin, and was later expanded to include additional branches (Linkou, Sunio and Hailar halfway between Mukden and the Soviet border). From 1936, unit 731 was used as the name for Shirō Ishii's facilities.

The unit enjoyed the full support of the future Japanese Prime Ministers Hideki Tōjō and Kuniaki Koiso , who came into contact with Shirō Ishii several times during their service in the staff of the Kwantung Army and therefore had very precise knowledge of the unit's field of activity. The Japanese imperial family was also aware of Unit 731 through Princes Mikasa and Takeda.

activities

General description of the activity of unit 731:

  • Medical experiments on humans (comparable to medical animal experiments ) were carried out as part of a project called Maruta (丸 太; German: "Holzklotz; round, only debarked tree trunk"). The test persons were selected from the Chinese population in the vicinity. The unit-internal name for these people was like the name of the Holzklotz project .
  • The effects of grenades have been tested on people from different distances and positions
  • Hypothermia experiments as well as experiments with high pressure differentials have been done on humans
  • The development of a biological weapon in the form of a bomb filled with bacterial powder (similar to the warfare agent with anthrax bacteria )
  • The development of another bomb as a biological weapon, the bacteria are exposed to fleas were included

Documented activities:

  • Use of plague bacteria against the residents of the city of Chü Hsien on October 4, 1940, which killed 21
  • Use of plague bacteria against the residents of the Chinese city of Ningbo on October 29, 1940 with 99 victims
  • A failed attempt on November 28, 1940 against the town of Kinhwa, where the plague did not break out
  • 3,000 Chinese prisoners of war were infected with food contaminated with typhoid pathogens at the end of 1941 and then released. The "donation" of food by the Japanese was filmed for propaganda purposes.
  • As a result of the bomb attack on Tokyo known as the Doolittle Raid , the Japanese army launched the Zhejiang-Jiangxi offensive on May 5, 1942 , in which 250,000 Chinese civilians were murdered. Unit 731 produced approx. 130 kg of anthrax warfare agent in the course of this campaign, which contaminated lakes, rivers and wells in the area of ​​the cities of Yüshan, Kinhwa and Futsing. The Japanese troops, with the exception of the members of Unit 731, had previously withdrawn from this area. In some cases, the warfare agent was also sprayed from airplanes or thrown directly into residential buildings. The following epidemic caused a large proportion of the above mentioned deaths. However, around 1,700 Japanese soldiers were also killed by the agent when they accidentally recaptured a contaminated area. This incident therefore led to the replacement of Shirō Ishiis as commander of unit 731, although the mission was rated as a success.
  • In 1943, white people's susceptibility to disease was tested on American prisoners of war.

All of the unit's projects were kept strictly confidential. It was therefore camouflaged to the outside world as a department of the Kwantung Army for epidemic prevention and water purification . The unit's trial zones were restricted air areas .

Known members

Kitano Masaji (1944)

The unit had up to 3,000 members, most of whom were bacteriologists. Well-known members of the unit were:

  • Major General Kiyoshi Kiwashima , military leadership
  • Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii , scientific director 1932 to July 31, 1942 and from March 1, 1945
  • Lt. Col. Ryōichi Naitō , doctor and interpreter for Col. Sanders, the first US officer to investigate the war crimes. Later founder of the Japanese blood bank Green Cross .
  • Kitano Masaji , scientific director from August 1, 1942 to February 28, 1945
  • Shinozuka Yoshio

In the later trials in Khabarovsk (1949) and Shenyang (1956), some of the lower-ranking officials were convicted who, unlike their superiors and the vast majority of the members of Unit 731, had failed to flee to Japan at the end of the war. Among them was the soldier Shinozuka Yoshio . The main perpetrators with Ishii Shirō at the top, however, went unpunished in the Tokyo trials because the US government, at the instigation of Charles Willoughby, granted them impunity in exchange for the research results of Unit 731.

Departments

The unit consisted of eight different departments:

  • Department 1: Research into the effects of plague , cholera , anthrax and tuberculosis pathogens on living people. This division had a prison for about 300 to 400 people.
  • Department 2: Development of practically applicable biological weapons, especially of devices that spray germs and parasites.
  • Department 3: Production of grenades and bombs (including porcelain) for biological warfare agents, stationed in Harbin .
  • Department 4: Production of non-biological warfare agents.
  • Department 5: Personnel Training.
  • Department 6–8: Equipment, Medical Care and Unit Administration departments.

Facilities

Founded in 1935, the complex covered an area of ​​six square kilometers and consisted of more than 150 buildings. The buildings were very solid, so that destruction was sometimes impossible. Parts of the facilities have been preserved to this day and are accessible to tourists.

The complex consisted of various production facilities. There were 4500 containers for fleas, six gigantic boilers for the production of chemicals and around 1800 containers for the production of biological warfare agents on the site. In one day the facility was able to produce 10 kg of plague bacteria. These capacities were fully utilized from November 1944.

Several dozen tons of the biological warfare agents produced by Unit 731 have been stored in various locations in northern China. At the end of the war, the Japanese tried to destroy any evidence of the existence of these warfare agents. For example, all infected animals (fleas, rats, ...) were released. Even so, it failed to destroy all of the evidence. The action also resulted in the warfare agents harming the people in this region to this day. An example of this is an incident in August 2003 when 29 people were hospitalized after construction workers accidentally dug up chemical warfare grenades made by Unit 731.

Dissolution at the end of the Second World War

Shirō Ishii advocated the use of biological weapons in the Pacific War since May 1944, but his attempts repeatedly failed due to poor planning, negative attitude of superior officers or the intervention of Allied troops. When, after the beginning of the Soviet attack on Manchuria, it became apparent that the war would soon be over, Ishii ordered the factory to be destroyed. He ordered his subordinates to "take the secret with them to the grave." The entire complex was destroyed by the Japanese in the last days of the war in order to destroy all evidence of their experiments. The prisoners who remained alive were first executed without exception using the chemicals available in the facilities. As a result, there were no surviving witnesses from Unit 731 prison. After that, all evidence such as specimens and scientific equipment and documents were destroyed. Finally, the buildings of the facilities were blown up as much as possible. Most of the unit's members were evacuated by train to Korea and shortly afterwards by ship to Japan to the city of Kanazawa . Here they parted and waited for the reaction of the American occupation forces advancing in September.

Commemorative plaque for the crimes of Unit 731 on the former site of the bioweapons factory

The US military believed that the research obtained by Unit 731 was indeed of great scientific value, especially since the Allies never seriously considered the method of experiments on humans practiced there. Nor did the United States want the Soviet Union to receive data on biological weapons manufacturing. Therefore, the members of Unit 731 were assured of impunity in exchange for their data. Furthermore, the results were partially used by the Americans later in the Vietnam War.

On the other hand, the case was investigated very carefully by the Soviet Union, since in addition to the Chinese, Mongolian and Korean victims, several hundred Soviets were also killed by the unit. The unit members captured by the Soviets were convicted in the Khabarovsk war crimes trials and later extradited to China, where they were tried again in the Shenyang war crimes trial.

Many former members of Unit 731 who had escaped to Japan worked in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry after the war. Ryōichi Naitō founded the first commercial blood bank, the Green Cross, in Japan in 1950 , which became the largest pharmaceutical company in the country. In addition to Ryōichi Naitō, Dr. Kitano Masaji the Green Cross . Others founded schools for medical professionals or worked for the Japanese Ministry of Health.

successor

The Americans bought the research results of Unit 731 from its former members through the G-2 Section of the Occupation Forces. For their part, the armed forces began developing their own biological weapons as the Cold War began. The prototypes of these weapons were tested by the USAF with little success during the Korean War . Like the Japanese, the development of reliable transmission mechanisms for the pathogens failed at first. However, this did not mean the end of American biological weapons research. The development of suitable cluster munitions could already have been an important step towards solving this problem. Soviet B-weapons research, which had been carried out since the 1920s, also benefited from the findings of the employees of Unit 731 who were captured by the Soviets, although the information was not as detailed as that which was available to the USA.

Japanese processing

Building on the site of Unit 731's former bio-weapons factory

The Japanese government denied the existence of Unit 731 until the late 1990s, has refused to discuss its actions to this day and has kept archival material under lock and key.

Nationalist Japanese historians to this day deny the actions of Unit 731, claiming that it was a construct of Chinese propaganda. Reports about Unit 731 were circulated from other sources, mainly relating to the later trade with the Americans and the cover-up that went with it. The deeds of Unit 731 are omitted from many Japanese history books about World War II. There is a monument to unity in Tokyo.

It was only after the Japanese government received a complaint from 180 Chinese for admission, apology and redress for the crimes committed by Unit 731 and some members of the unit publicly admitted their crimes that the Japanese changed their attitude towards their own story. In August 2002, the Tokyo District Court first admitted in its judgment that Unit 731 and the war crimes it had committed actually existed. The former soldier Shinozuka Yoshio , who could not bear to actually carry out the last instructions of his superior Shirō Ishii, played a major role in this step . Compensation for the victims was rejected with reference to the joint communiqué of the governments of Japan and China of September 29, 1972, which excluded any claims for reparations on the part of China. This judgment was upheld on July 19, 2005 in the second instance by the Tokyo High Court . The case was then brought to the Supreme Court , which upheld the judgments of the lower courts on May 9, 2007.

It was only in 2018 that the Japanese government accepted a request from Katsuo Nishiyama of Shiga Medical University ( Shiga Ika Daigaku滋 賀 医科大学) in Ōtsu and released the names of 3607 members of Unit 731.

Other Japanese biological weapons development associations

  • Unit 100 : founded in the 1920s, originally engaged in the development of chemical weapons, this unit has been increasingly involved in the development of biological weapons in collaboration with Unit 731
  • Unit 200: Facility for research into plague pathogens, subordinate to unit 731
  • Unit 571: Research into biological weapons in parallel with unit 731
  • Unit Ei-1644: Field tests with biological weapons, headquarters in Nanking
  • Unit 1855: Research facility of the Japanese military police Kempeitai in Beijing
  • Unit 8604: Headquarters in Canton, human experiments with food and water deprivation, transmission of typhus through contaminated water
  • Unit 9420: founded 1942, headquarters in Singapore, research into malaria and plague pathogens

References

See also

Movies

literature

  • [Anonymous editor:] Trial materials in the criminal case against former members of the Japanese army for the preparation and use of the bacterial weapon . Moscow: Publishing House for Foreign Language Literature 1950 (611 pp.). - This edition in an anonymous German translation contains "only the official trial materials" (preface, p. 4), i. H. 'Documents of the preliminary investigation' (pp. 5–258: 'Indictment'; 'Statements of the accused and witnesses'; 'Documentary evidence' [numerous original files in photocopy]), 'Statements of the accused and witnesses in court' (p. 259 -441); 'Expert reports' (pp. 442–452); State Prosecutor's Speech (pp. 453-528); 'Pleadings of the Defenders' (pp. 529-596); "Judgment of the Military Tribunal" (pp. 597–611).
  • Peter Williams, David Wallace: Unit 731 - Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II. Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., London 1988, Free Press, New York 1989. ISBN 0-02-935301-7 .
  • Hal Gold: Unit 731 Testimony. Yenbooks, Tokyo 1996. ISBN 4-900737-39-9 .
  • Toshiyuki Tanaka, Yukiko Tanaka: Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II , Westview Press Inc. 1998 ISBN 0-8133-2718-0 .
  • Stephen Endicott, Edward Hagerman: The United States and Biological Warfare. Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea. Indiana University Press, Bloomington Ind 1998, 1999. ISBN 0-253-33472-1 .
  • Stephen Handelman, Ken Alibek: Biohazard. The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It. Random House, New York 1999. ISBN 0-375-50231-9 .
  • Wendy Barnaby: The Plague Makers. The Secret World of Biological Warfare. Frog Ltd, London 1999. ISBN 1-883319-85-4 .
  • Sheldon H. Harris: Factories of Death. Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-up. Routledge, New York 2002. ISBN 0-415-93214-9 .
  • Robert Harris, Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing - The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare. Random House, New York 2002. ISBN 0-8129-6653-8 .
  • Wieland Wagner: Collective bloodlust. 70 years of Nanjing. in: Der Spiegel. Spiegelverlag Rudolf Augstein, Hamburg 2007,50, 124ff. ISSN  0038-7452 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Peter Williams, David Wallace: Unit 731 - Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II. Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., London 1988., Free Press, New York 1989. ISBN 0-02-935301-7 .
  2. ↑ All information according to Weltwoche No. 31/06 - "The devil wore smock"
  3. ↑ US paid Unit 731 members for data Japan Times August 15, 2005, citing newly released files from US archives
  4. ↑ Endicott, Hagerman: The United States and Biological Warfare - Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea ; ISBN 0-253-33472-1 .
  5. ↑ http://www.bu.edu/iscip/vol9/Alibek.html
  6. ^ A b Justin McCurry: Unit 731: Japan description details of notorious chemical warfare division The Guardian , April 17, 2018.
  7. ↑ Unit 731: Nightmare in Manchuria in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  8. ↑ Japanese soldiers of the devil in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  9. ↑ Chris D. Nebe: Unit 731 July 1, 2015, accessed March 7, 2018 .

Web links

Commons : Unit 731  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files