Imperial Japan’s Unit 731

The relations between India and its southeastern neighbours have historically been strong in view of her famous export of Buddhism, and other influences on their respective cultures. However, in modern times, India’s relations with Japan has been defined by the latter’s strained relations with China, the most recent sparring between the two powers being the dominance of the East China Sea for a set of eight uninhabited islets. Sino-Japanese relations, however, are heavily influenced by the traditional rivalry between the two powers which dates back to two wars conducted in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A major stumbling block to their relations has been the contested claims of war atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese Army on Chinese civilians, especially during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) which is claimed to have led to the death of 1 to 2.5 crore Chinese civilians. The scale of deaths though contested or altogether denied by Japanese sources, has led to the affair being labelled by many historians as the ‘Asian Holocaust’. One of the lesser discussed atrocities by the Japanese were committed by a clandestine biological warfare unit called ‘Unit 731’ which conducted lethal medical experiments on Chinese citizens during this conflict which merged with the Second World War, after the Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

Officially played down as the ‘Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department’ of the Kwantung Army on its inception in 1934, it was initially connected to the imperial Kempeitai police; being headed by General Shiro Ishii of the Kwantung army unit shortly after, in 1938, making him responsible for its operations for the entire war period. The department was housed in a big complex built by the Japanese between 1934 and 1939 in the Pingfang District of Harbin city, located in the Manchukuo state, ‘Manchuria’, a puppet state in North-east China controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army till 1945. It was renamed ‘Unit 731’ in 1941 and was officially projected as a lumber factory with the workers referring to the victims as ‘logs’ (Maruta in Japanese), and deaths being referred to by the workers as the ‘number of logs fallen’.

The devious activities of Unit 731 included vivisection (cutting victims alive after infecting them with various diseases, usually under minimal or no anaesthesia to study the change in their bodies and its organs). Some prisoners had their limbs frozen to study the development of frostbite and the consequent gangrene of the affected limb with no care or empathy for the fate of the prisoner.

The Kwantung army (Chinese) rushing to the front, five miles south-east of Waichon. The Japanese occupied the town on October 15, 1938.  — Getty IMAGES

Many other detrimental surgeries were performed on the victims’ internal organs to study the effects of their removal. Unfortunately, Unit 731 employed professional army surgeons to perform these, which violated the basic tenets and ethics of the medical profession in a major way. Other medical experiments included injecting the victims with viruses and bacteria, causing various ailments disguising them as vaccinations. This was done to men, women, and even children, to study the effects of these diseases on various age groups and sexes. Conducted with minimal adherence to medical decorum, these procedures violated the human rights of the detainees who comprised majorly of Chinese civilians with fewer Russian and Allied Prisoners of War, captured after encounters with the Americans. These experiments were conducted as future biological warfare weapons in collaboration with two other units, Unit 100, and Unit 1644. The experiments were conducted for dangerous ailments like cholera, plague, and anthrax; spores of the pathogens were dispersed using bombs on civilian areas resulting in the deaths of an unascertained number of Chinese civilians.

The Japanese narrative has been that these claims are exaggerated and are a part of Communist propaganda to defame the country and paint it as a hub of war criminals. However, the Chinese sources speak of various units acting against its civilian population.

The other alleged tests conducted on the test subjects who chiefly comprised of Chinese criminals, anti-Japan protesters, dissidents guilty of seditious activities, or people rounded up by the Kempetei police for suspicious activities; children and elderly subjects were not spared by Unit 731 either. ‘Unit 731’ Complex was huge (about 6 sq km) with around 150 buildings housing various units and personnel for mass production of lethal biological weapons and chemical components of various types. The Unit also housed an X-Ray laboratory to test the effects of high radiation on its victims. Though the official purpose of Unit 731 was epidemic prevention, it was involved in breeding  rat fleas which cause bubonic plague, and was an unethical activity to say the least. It was believed of being capable of producing 30 Kg of plague bacteria in a few days.

Chinese civilians being buried alive by the Imperial Japanese Army — WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Some of the prisoners were also subjected to weapon testing, especially grenades and flame throwers, which were tested from different distances and positions to maim and kill the prisoners. Though the victims were largely Chinese, later, Russian, and Allied POWs were also used for testing these since the Unit’s organisers wanted to test the effects on various ethnicities.

Ishii wanted to deploy the biological weapons developed by Unit 731 in the Pacific War between Imperial Japan and the Allied Powers in 1944, but his efforts were unsuccessful. He had plans to bomb San Diego with Kamikaze planes carrying his biological weapons to this war. However, fortunately he was unsuccessful in executing the plan because the Japanese soon began losing the War to the Allies along with the Red Army. The Unit was thus folded in August 1945 in anticipation of the arrival of the Chinese Red Army by Gen. Ishii ordered the Unit complex to be bombed and destroyed, and the members and their families to be evacuated. Many local recruits were given cyanide capsules to carry the truth to their graves while he himself escaped to Japan.

He was captured by the Americans in 1946 and was to be tried by the Soviet Army. However, he managed to procure immunity for himself along with the other prominent members of Unit 731 at the Tokyo War Tribunal by promising the Americans exclusive access to the results of their biological warfare and human trials.

The Americans did not want the information especially on biological warfare being passed to Soviet Russians who soon became their rivals in the Post-War period. Thus, surviving members of Unit 731 escaped all the major punishments akin to the Nazi war criminals. There was only one trial where the Unit’s activity was discussed in front of the Tokyo War Tribunal dominated by American prosecutors who called it off for want of proof.

A Chinese POW being executed by the Japanese Army — WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Soviets conducted separate trials on 12 members of Unit 731, Unit 100 and Unit 1644, including General Otozo Yamada, the Commanding Chief of the Kwantung Army at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949, condemning some of the perpetrators to sentences ranging from two to 25 years. However, the Soviets also managed to extract enough information from the detainees to build their own biological warfare unit in the country. The American authorities as well as the Japanese authorities refused to recognise the activities of Unit 731 calling them a joint propaganda of two Communist powers, Soviet Russia and People’s Republic of China.

The Chinese authorities have however created a war memorial museum at Harbin called the ‘Unit 731 Museum’ which houses the black-and-white photographs of the era and relics donated by the local residents to the authorities. The Museum along with 23 sites spread over the sprawling complex showcases the base of the unit termed as the ‘den of the cannibals’ by the museum authorities. In the Chinese authorities’ own words, “As the world remembers Japan’s surrender 60 years ago, today ending World War II, the Communist Party of China won’t let its people forget the atrocities that Japanese soldiers and scientists committed in China during the war.”

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History is a subject that merits discussions and debates beyond the confines of a classroom. Its purpose is to create a sense of inquiry and engage us in conversations and explorations of the past; because that is what defines our present. Decoding History is a weekly Saturday page where we explore an event in World and Indian history for answers to questions about the past that may lead us straight across the boundaries of nations, empires, and civilizations. It is a page to educate and familiarise teens and adults with historical events that continue to hold relevance at a personal, national and global level.