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... ette's. They robbed the whole town clean. After looting buildings, the Japanese would then set fire to the buildings. They waited at the building for people who would run out, and then they would shoot them. The buildings would eventually burn down.
The Japanese army had burned to ashes what was once a beautiful and historic city. (The Nanking Massacre, p. 3) This whole massacre was all for no particular reason. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were brutally murdered. Through all of this, there was no consequence for the Japanese, making the family's lives a bit more painful. Perhaps the most abhorrent atrocities committed by the Japanese army were done by it's own Unit 731. They were in control of the chemical and biological warfare development and research. They were to develop weapons of biological warfare using the Bubonic plague, anthrax, cholera, and dozens of other pathogens.
The unit was comprised of over 3, 000 researchers and technicians as well as a compound over six square kilometers that included an airport and a railroad. (The Code of Silence, p. 1) Unit 731 had many tools to work with, and a huge research center to develop all of its biological weapons. The hint of Japanese interest in biological and chemical warfare came in 1925 when Japan refused to approve the Geneva Conventions ban on biological weapons. This first showed the world that Japan was interested in such experiments. The actual start of testing came when Japanese troops invaded the Chinese city of Manchuria. There, a physician and army officer by the name of Shiro Ishii began preliminary experiments.
By the year 1936, Unit 731 had formed. This was the first biological warfare unit of the Japanese Army. The Unit disguised itself as a water-purification unit, and started to build huge compounds for testing. The test area consisted of over 150 buildings over six kilometers.
That year alone, over 9, 000 test subjects, also referred to by the Japanese as logs, would die at the compound that year. (Germ Warfare Timeline, p. 1) There was more to the biological test than just at the compound. Unit 731 also conducted field tests. In the field tests, they would place diseases in bombs and then drop them over towns and villages to see if the disease would cause an epidemic. This worked very often and tens of thousands of people died this way. (Japanese War Crimes, p. 1) One of the biological warfare tests used animals to kill innocent civilians.
They Japanese would use animals to spread the most powerful of diseases. They would inject this extremely potent disease into rats. A member of Unit 731, Nobuo Kamada, said, On a 500 -gram rat, we would attach 3, 000 fleas. When the rats were released, the fleas would transmit the disease. The infected rats and fleas would then be carefully placed into to special porcelain bombs designed to keep the rat alive during the drop from the airplane. (Butler, Steven, p. 1) When the bomb was dropped, the people below would contract the disease, and a huge epidemic would break out and kill thousands at a time.
This was just one of the cruel experiments performed in hope of advancing their field of biological warfare. Perhaps the most gruesome crimes committed by Unit 731 were the human vivisection. As a part of the research, the Japanese would inject certain biological agents into the prisoners and would then dissect the prisoner alive to see what the agent would do to the persons insides. They inserted the scalpel directly from the logs (what the Japanese referred the prisoners as) neck and opened the chest, says Kamada, a doctor in Unit 731.
At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent. (Butler, Steven, p. 1) To get proper results from the tests, the bodies of the prisoners had to be healthy. Unless you work with a healthy body, you cant get results. So if we had a spy who was unhealthy we would feed him good food and make him exercise. It was the height of cruelty, says Kamada. (Butler, Steven, p. 1) After being cut open, the organs of the log would be briefly studied, and then his body would be thrown into the giant pile of bodies that had already met the same fate as the new one coming in. The entire purpose of the vivisection was to see what the disease would do to a person's inside. Other cruel forms of torture, which Unit 731 used, lied in a variety of different areas.
For instance, some prisoners were soaked in formaldehyde and preserved as a whole body forever. Others were locked up in pressure chamber to see how much pressure the body can withstand. Some were also locked in cages one meter by one meter large to study the effect of a disease on the body while in confinement. (Kristof, Nicholas D, p. 1) Overall, its is very easy to recognize the part Unit 731 played during the Nanking Massacre. One can easily point out that all the experiments were very cruel, but why was there no consequence imposed on the Japanese?
The main reason that the Japanese suffered no consequence is because the United States gave the Japanese doctors immunity in exchange for all their information. The United States did in fact cover the entire Unit 731 s doings because they wanted to keep this newly learned, dangerous material out of the hands of their enemies. This crucial information in the hands of the wrong people would have created many problems for the United States. The Japanese did in fact try to use the chemical and biological weaponry on the Untied States. They used balloon bombs to carry the disease over the Pacific. There are reports of a few people dying from these balloon attacks.
There were proposed kamikaze missions where pilots would dump infected fleas on San Diego, but there are no reports that these missions were carried out. Partly because the United States helped the cover-up of the biological warfare program in exchange for its data, General Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731 was allowed to live peacefully until his death from throat cancer in 1959. The doctors of Unit 731 saw their careers flourish after the War. Some doctors held positions including Governor of Tokyo, president of the Japan Medical Association, and head of the Japan Olympic Committee. (Kristof, Nicholas D, p. 1) This added insult to injury in a way because not only were the Japanese doctors not tried for their crimes, they became highly successful and lived a great life, something that the people they were killing might have lived also.
Towards the final days of the operations, the Japanese troops blew up everything to destroy any evidence that may have been left behind. They blew up all laboratories, and killed the remaining logs. An estimated 3, 000 people were killed in the laboratories and over 200, 000 in field experiments. (The Code of Silence, p. 1) Sixty years after the after the conclusion of these experiments, where men, women, and children were brutally murdered and sexually mutilated in every cruel manner possible, the Japanese government constantly denies the crimes of its Unit 731. In the Nanking Massacre, over 300, 000 civilians were killed along with the rape of over 20, 000 women. (Japanese War Crimes, p. 1) In the Unit 731 camps, over 3, 000 people were killed, and not a single person who went in, came out alive. Today, only a stone marks all these innocent people whose lives were taken for senseless reasons. These crimes committed by the Japanese Army's Unit 731 were very cruel, and there should have been some consequence for this atrocity.
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