In 2018, the National Library of Japan released for the first time the real names of 3,607 members of Unit 731, which attracted international attention, and under these names, there is a cruel history of Japan's invasion of China and the destruction of China.
The so-called Unit 731 was a germ warfare unit of the Kwantung Army during the Japanese invasion of China, and during its time in China, the unit used captured Chinese to conduct inhumane human experiments and carry out a bacteriological campaign against China. How exactly was Japanese Unit 731 established, and why did they conduct human experiments? What kind of harm has this force done to China?
After the "918" incident in 1931, in order to carry out the bacteriological campaign against China, Japan established several germ units, the most notorious of which was Unit 731. The so-called germ warfare refers to the extreme cruelty of war in which the army uses bacteria or viruses as weapons to create man-made plagues.
In 1925, Japan and the United States and other countries signed the Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use of germs in warfare, but Japan disregarded the constraints of international law during World War II and established the world's largest biological and chemical weapons force during World War II.
The establishment of Unit 731 has a lot to do with the support of the Japanese Army Ministry and the General Staff Headquarters. In 1928, the Japanese military department assigned Shiro Ishii, a doctor of pathology and bacteriology, to Europe to study and prepare for bacteriological warfare, and after returning to China in 1930, the Japanese military began to actively prepare for the development of bacteriological weapons.
In 1932, the bacteriological research laboratory of the Army Military Medical School was set up, and the bacteriological experts led by Shiro Ishii advocated bacterial warfare, which was paid attention to by the leaders of the Japanese Military Department, and the scale of research continued to expand since then, and in 1933, the research laboratory moved to Harbin, China, and set up a bacteriological experimental field, known as the "Kamo Unit", which belonged to the Kwantung Army, which was the predecessor of unit 731.
In 1941, the official code name was changed to "Manchurian Unit 731", and after that, under the planning of the Emperor and the Military Department, the number of scientific and technological experimenters was expanded to 3,000, and the facilities were complete, so that the germ warfare system of Unit 731 was basically formed.
Regarding the basic facilities of Unit 731, according to the post-war investigation report of the Japanese army, it probably includes a crematorium, a prison, a research room, a military barracks, etc., and two groups of experimenters are specially responsible for body experiments, electrical experiments, and poison gas and venom experiments.
As for why the bacterial apparatus was transferred to northeast China? Major General Kiyoshi Kawashima, the chief of production for Unit 731 and a military doctor, wrote lightly: "It is possible to obtain a large number of non-Japanese living people to do bacterial testing materials there." That is to say, from the beginning of the establishment of Unit 731, the Japanese decided to use chinese living people for human experiments.
The core organization of Unit 731 is the "First Bacteriological Research Department", which specializes in the development of bacterial weapons, including the cultivation of plague bacteria, gangrene bacteria, typhoid bacteria and other categories, and the various detachments of the unit can use the bacterial bombs and bacterial shells developed to directly attack northeast China and other places.
According to the confessions of the core members of the unit, Masuda Zhizhen and Hojo Yuan, during the invasion of China, the troops not only produced a large number of bacteriological warfare agents, but also manufactured bombs, artillery shells, and bacterial pathogens sprayed by aircraft carrying bacterial pathogens, and between 1937 and 1942 alone, unit 731 produced at least 1770 bacterial bombs.
After the war, the fourth divisional sub-minister, Shizomi Ozawa, confessed that his department alone produced 100 kilograms of plague bacteria per month, 200 kilograms of anthrax bacteria, 300 kilograms of typhoid bacteria, 300 kilograms of paratyphoid bacteria, and 330 kilograms of cholera bacteria, all of which were used to create bacteriological weapons to maim the Chinese army and civilians.
The prison set up by Unit 731 was not a prisoner, but a living experiment subject, most of whom were japanese prisoners of Chinese, and a few soviet soldiers. According to the excavation of the burning and burial pit of Unit 731 in Harbin's Pingfang District and the post-war investigation, Unit 731 not only conducted live experiments, but also performed human vivisection.
According to the Japanese military, the toxicity of bacteria needs to be tested experimentally, generally using animals to do experiments to observe toxicity, but Japan believes that the most suitable experimental material is living people, because these bacteriological weapons are to be used on the two enemies of China and the Soviet Union. During the invasion of China, the laboratory of Unit 731 injected various germs into living people, observed the infection situation, lesion results and recorded them, and finally dissected them vivisheally - without anesthesia, it was a live torture.
These Chinese who were caught doing experiments were men, women and children, even young and old, and even young children under the age of 5.
Unit 731 member Yataro Ueda confessed that he had participated in live experiments as an assistant, had been involved in autopsies and cremations, and that during his work, at least 200 Chinese had become substitutes for guinea pigs, which they used for bacterial experiments.
Another member, Ryo Tamura, also confirmed the human experiments of Unit 731, who presided over the implementation of the test of rattling on Chinese, and after four Chinese were injected, three died of plague. Masahiko Takahashi's experimental group also conducted tests for plague bacteria, and the team dissected a total of 57 people, the youngest living person was only 3 years old, and the oldest was 78 years old.
In addition to the experiments of bacteria on the human body, more cruel experiments include catching pregnant women pregnant with Liujia and injecting germs, dissecting her fetus alive to study infection, freezing people alive with frostbite experiments, amputating limbs and exchanging limbs, and using living people as surgical practice tools to train doctors.
In the view of Shiro Ishii, the core leader of Unit 731, the best way to use bacteriological weapons is to use infectious disease vectors to infect water and food. After the development and production of bacteriological weapons, Unit 731 carried out large-scale bacteriological warfare in northeast China, Zhejiang and other places.
The Nomonhan Germ Warfare was Unit 731's first germ warfare on the battlefield. From May to September 1939, in the Nomonhan area on the border between China and Mongolia, war broke out between Japan and the Soviet Union, and Unit 731 used bacteria such as plague bacteria, anthrax, typhoid fungus, cholera bacteria and erythrophyte bacteria developed to carry out actual combat.
In order to drop bacteria on the soviet site, the troops set up death squads and entered the Halaha River in Nomenhan to contaminate the water source. Although the Japanese ultimately lost the Battle of Nomonhan, the defeat of this actual battle only promoted the development of bacteriological weapons for Unit 731.
From 1940 to 1942, when southern China was repeatedly attacked by 731 Troops, Ishii ordered the production of bacteria to be increased and the scale of germ warfare was expanded. On November 4, 1941, at 5 a.m., Japanese military aircraft flew low in Changde and threw rice, cotton wool and some particulate matter into the crowded residential area.
The Changde government tested these unknown objects and found a large number of plague bacillus. In November, a rapid outbreak of large-scale plague infection occurred in Changde. The first victims died in 7,643 deaths.
The Japanese army's germ warfare in the Zhejiang region caused heavy suffering to the Chinese people. According to the statistics of scholar Yang Yanjun, in the 1942 Zhejiang-Gansu germ warfare, a total of 5294 people died of Japanese germ warfare, of which 1501 died of plague, 909 died of cholera, 2272 died of typhoid and paratyphoid fever, 407 died of dysentery, and 205 died of anthrax. Among the victims of germ warfare were 3,748 men and 1,546 women, of whom 871 were children under the age of 10.
Many years after the end of World War II, the haze left by the germ warfare of Japanese Unit 731 on Chinese soil still exists. Because of the long-term plague experiment in Japan, it has triggered a large-scale plague disaster, destroyed the local natural ecology, and the ordinary people infected by the plague are miserable.
War criminal Toyoki Yamauchi confessed that when Japan surrendered in August 1945, before the troops could evacuate, they threw hundreds of bacterial culture tanks into the deep sea outside the port of Dalian. As a result of the bombing of the main building, a large number of experimental animals such as rats carrying plague bacteria escaped from the wild, further polluting the natural environment. The vivisection and experiment of Unit 731 are even more cruel and inhumane crimes of torture and murder, which have been spurned by the world, and its cruelty to the Chinese people is a history that can never be forgotten.
Text/Lu soy milk
Resources: 1. "Research on the Formation of Bacterial Warfare System of the 731 Unit", Liu Yingying 2. "The Japanese Military Department and the 731st Bacteriological Unit", Wang Zuyuan 3. "Human Experiments of Unit 731 from the Excavations of the Sifang Building", Liu Yang 4. "Q Report and Germ Warfare of the Japanese Army Invading China", Zhou Liyan