Unit 731. Manchukuo 1935-1945
Unit 731 was part of the Japanese Army in the puppet state of Manchukuo, used to conduct human experimentation, biological, and chemical warfare experiments. For purposes of these experiments, which were conducted covertly, Chinese, Soviet, and other Allied prisoners were selected for study. Those who survived the experiments were routinely executed.
Unlike the Nazis in Europe, who left behind detailed records of similar activities to be captured by the Soviets and Western Allies, the Japanese destroyed much of the evidence chronicling their war crimes prior to and just following their surrender to the Allies. Following the war, the United States offered immunity to members of Unit 731 in return for any records of their experiments. Unit 731 was located in Harbin, then the largest city in the Manchukuo province.
The Japanese researchers at Unit 731 referred to their victims as logs and when they were finished with them disposed of them via incineration. Some victims were deliberately infected with diseases and after symptoms presented they were subjected to vivisection, usually without any anesthetics. These procedures were conducted on men, women, and children, and were almost always fatal.
Female prisoners were often raped prior to being used for experimentation and sometimes as part of the experiments. One form of the experiment required the infection of one prisoner with syphilis followed by forced sex with other prisoners. Other prisoners were forced to acquire frostbite, which was then left alone to become gangrenous. Still, others were deliberately impregnated after being exposed to syphilis.
Japanese experimentation led to the development of bacteriological weapon, one of which was scheduled to be used against San Diego on September 22, 1945. Those who argue that the atomic bomb should not have been used should consider the effect of a plague bomb being used in the California city should the war have continued. Following the war those members who had been captured by the Americans were granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes, which were never mentioned in their testimony and reports to American and British investigators, a policy endorsed by General Douglas MacArthur. Those captured by the Soviets, who had invaded Manchukuo late in the war, were prosecuted and convicted, although the sentences they received were not very strict by Soviet standards. By the 1950s all of the prisoners who had been held by the Soviets were back in Japan.