Juliana Kennedy
DeVry University
HUMN – 410 X
September 9, 2002
Historical Amnesia in Japan
During World War II, Japan set up a lab headquartered in northeast China to research biological and chemical warfare (Time, 1). This lab was manned by Japan’s imperial army's Epidemic Prevention and Water-Supply Unit, better known as Unit 731. The chief responsibility of Unit 731 was to develop biological and chemical weapons based on the experimentation practiced on Chinese, Korean, Russian, and American POW’s (Time, 1).
When a POW entered Unit 731, he did not leave alive. The victims were subject to a myriad of gruesome torments under the guise of “research”. Often prisoners received injections of biological or chemical nature; he would then be observed to follow the pathology of whatever ailment or poisoning that was induced. This process usually culminated in the vivisection of the prisoner without use of anesthesia. This was done to observe the reaction of the internal organs to the induced pathogen. Often prisoners were stripped of their clothes in the winter and have an extremity soaked or sprayed with salt water. This was done to “research” the effects of frostbite and implement treatments for Japanese soldiers who may be afflicted. When the prisoner’s extremity became rigid or gangrene it was summarily lopped off. This sometimes continued until the prisoner was nothing more than a torso with a head. If the trauma of losing his limbs without anesthesia did not kill him the next round of experiments certainly would. The Japanese experimented with electricity, diseases, chemicals, endurance to heat, cold and hunger (Japanese Times, 3). Unfortunately, the list keeps going.
