10. Female prisoners of war were raped, deliberately infected with syphilis, and forcibly impregnated for the purpose of scientific research by the Japanese
Although male prisoners of war under the Japanese Empire endured intolerable and sustained abuse, female prisoners equally suffered. In addition to being used alongside men for forced labor, women serving as POWs under the Japanese were routinely the victims of sexual assault. In the reflections of one former prison camp guard, on one such occasion “there was still time to kill. So he and another member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her”. In addition to the everyday rape of their bodies, unfortunate female prisoners became the subjects of experimentation by Unit 731.
Seeking to explore the vertical transmission of diseases, especially syphilis, from mother to child, POWs were forcibly infected and impregnated. According to the testimony of a guard, “the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other…A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other”. After this process, the women were vivisected at various stages to observe the progression of the disease. Whilst it is known that “a large number of babies were born in captivity”, with recorded accounts of children at the facility, there are no records of children surviving Unit 731 suggesting these infants were put to death once they had served their scientific purposes.