The Haunting Experiments of Unit 731
The ruins in this photograph look like they could be almost anywhere on earth.
The stone foundations are strongly reminiscent of the remains of Pompeii, and the stone columns wouldn’t look too out of place holding up the Acropolis.
But you might be surprised to learn that the ruins are actually in mainland China, and they were built thousands of years after Rome or Sparta held sway over the Mediterranean.
It’s also fitting that such an unremarkable structure be given such an unremarkable name – that of the disarmingly dull ‘Unit 731’.
But what happened in Unit 731 was anything but mundane, and it's no exaggeration to say that what occurred there in the mid-twentieth century - was an atrocity of nightmarish proportions.
On the 18th of September, 1931, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria began.
A large area of northeastern China, Manchuria primarily consists of the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning; and just like today, China dwarfed its much smaller Japanese neighbours, much to their chagrin.
Invoking the Japanese underdog-spirit of ‘gekokujō’, a small force of just five hundred Japanese soldiers took on a much larger force of five thousand; and their victory marked an almost spontaneous, wider invasion of the region.
In February of 1932, the Japanese declared themselves victorious, establishing complete control over the newly named puppet state of ‘Manchukuo’ - and it was here that a Doctor Shirō Ishii would find himself posted.
Surgeon General Shirō Ishii was the chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, and was commanding officer of the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory.
During his service, Ishii had spent two years abroad researching the medical capabilities of various western militaries.
It was on this trip that he became morbidly fascinated by the multitude of chemical and biological warfare programs each country had in place, particularly the gas attacks of World War I; and when he returned to Japan, he insisted his own country follow suit.
His compelling arguments caused army top-brass to greenlight the creation of a secret unit, known only as ‘Unit Tōgō’, who based themselves at the Zhongma prison camp on the South Manchuria Railway.
But Zhongma was no ordinary prison camp, as its occupants discovered to their boundless detriment.
On their arrival, prisoners of the Zhongma prison camp couldn’t believe their luck.
While most Chinese prisoners of war were on a diet of just water and plain rice, the Zhongma prisoners were stunned to find the mess halls filled with fresh meat and fish, rice and bread, and even the occasional ration of alcohol.
Stories of the Japanese military’s cruelty towards prisoners were widespread, so the prisoners of Zhongma must’ve been pleasantly surprised at their generosity.
Perhaps some of their number had suspicions that the conditions were too good to be true, but found no solace in their vindication; because the prisoners were being kept in peak physical condition...
...so that they could be experimented on.
Over the weeks that followed, handfuls of prisoners were selected for what were called ‘special work assignments’ in the surrounding countryside.
They were never seen again.
Instead of being assigned to farm work or mining expeditions, which would explain why they were being fed so well, those unfortunate enough to be selected were starved, deprived of water, and slowly drained of blood to weaken their immune systems.
Japanese military scientists made notes on the deterioration of their bodies, all before deliberately infecting the wasting prisoners with virus or bacteria, some of which included bubonic plague.
As they died in their hundreds, Japanese scientists coldly and clinically made notes on their worsening conditions and deaths, even performing vivisections on an unlucky few, slicing open their abdominal cavities while they were still alive to observe their festering organs with the naked eye.
However, the experiments were cut short in the fall of 1934, when a series of prison breaks and sabotage attempts made for unworkable scientific conditions.
Yet to Japanese high command, General Ishii’s experiments had yielded such incredible results that he and his pet project were to receive a rather drastic upgrade.
He and his team were given a much larger facility in a place called Pingfang, just fifteen miles south of the city of Harbin; and they called it ‘Unit 731’.
Although the site itself was called Unit 731, the official codename for Ishii’s experiments was ‘Project Maruta’.
But this time, in addition to using Chinese prisoners of war, General Ishii began gathering test subjects from the local populace.
The idea was to get a cross section of society, not just fighting age males, so that a wider and more reliable array of results could be collected.
These included, the elderly, infants, mentally and physically disabled people – and even pregnant women.
General Ishii’s medical team comprised of around three-hundred researchers, doctors and bacteriologists, with Ishii noting that the best of them came from animal-testing backgrounds; as they were already desensitized to the horrors of live, mammalian experimentation.
But even so, attempts were made to protect the mental health of the team members.
For example, test subjects were referred to as ‘logs’ instead of ‘patients’ or ‘people’, and if a test subject died, the staff would refer to the death as a “fallen log”.
This kind of language gave rise to the cover story that the facility was actually a lumber mill, thus keeping the entire project shrouded in secrecy.
Horrifyingly, some of the research and data gathered from the Unit 731 experiments actually made it into some peer-reviewed journals of the period.
By simply changing the wording of their conclusions from ‘human beings’ to ‘long-tailed monkeys’, General Ishii and his colleagues managed to trick the international community into thinking that they were conducting legitimate research, and lauded them for their efforts.
Yet their scientific peers had absolutely no idea of the true horrors occurring behind the scenes.
But what exactly was going on at Unit 731?
The Unit’s main purpose was being the Japanese military’s primary biological weapons division, and worked to research, develop and test a variety of terrifying, unconventional armaments.
For example, Unit 731 had a team that was dedicated to breeding fleas infected with bubonic plague.
These fleas were then somehow corralled into wheat, corn, scraps of cotton cloth and sand, before being dropped onto Japanese cities by low flying airplanes.
Once such attack, on an area of the port city of Ningbo, resulted in hundreds of infections, bodily mutilations and deaths.
Chinese authorities erected a fourteen-foot wall around the area, and enforced a strict quarantine in an attempt to isolate the infected.
But later, when the infection spread out of control, the area was set aflame and burned to the ground – with all the infected and their families still trapped inside.
This horrifyingly creative ‘flea-bomb’ idea eventually resulted in a concrete plan to infect the US city of San Diego with the bubonic plague.
The plan was scheduled for September 22nd of 1945, but thanks to the Japanese surrender of August of the same year, the fiendish scheme was thwarted.
In the city of Nanking, the conditions for civilians were so dire that Japanese soldiers began to distribute food to the starving locals.
They came in their droves to collect the free sacks of rice and grain, the operation originated in the bowels of Unit 731, and the food was infected with paratyphoid germs.
Researchers were said to be ecstatic when a massive outbreak killed ten thousand Chinese civilians, but the bacteria spread so rapidly that it even managed to find its way into the water supply of the local Japanese garrison.
Almost two thousand Japanese soldiers died as a result of the outbreak, but instead of a court-martial, General Ishii got away with little more than a slap on the wrist.
The fact was, by using such diabolical biological weaponry, Japan stood a chance of toppling much larger foes. They could subdue all of China in a matter of months with a few well-placed flea-bombs.
After such a cataclysmic demonstration of their power, the British would surely give up their southeast Asian holdings without a shot being fired in anger.
Then, the Japanese could turn their sights on other foes, such as the United States...
As for the human experimentation that occurred on-site at Unit 731, the list reads like a catalogue of horrors.
Prisoners were tied to stakes before being used to test hand grenades, which were positioned at various distances and angles to measure their effectiveness.
The Japanese also tested both flamethrowers and napalm bombs on innocent Chinese civilians, and certain unfortunate victims were repeatedly bayoneted to gauge what constituted a killing blow.
Some of these Chinese prisoners were lucky enough to survive the blasts, and Japanese doctors then nursed them back to health in order to determine the most effective method of treatment.
Some of these same survivors ended up right back in the testing-chamber, only to find a much larger explosive charge had been placed much closer to their place of restraint.
None were said to have survived this second round of testing.
In other experiments, innocent Chinese civilians were deprived of both food and water to measure how long it took someone to die of complete deprivation.
Other were locked inside of low-pressure chambers, forced to remain inside until their eyes burst from their sockets.
Some prisoners were subjected to horrific third-degree burns, simply to enable scientists to study the relationship between temperature, burns and the subsequent mortality rate.
It might sound ludicrously cruel, but there is ample evidence to suggest that certain Chinese prisoners were hung upside down, with researchers being fascinated when they began to inexplicably pass away from prolonged periods of suspension.
Other prisoners were crushed to death with heavy objects to measure how much force it took to kill someone; some were electrocuted to death to measure fatal voltages.
Japanese scientists actually spun prisoners in centrifuges, to see how much g-force a person could handle until they expired.
Some were injected with animal blood or sea water; others were exposed to lethal doses of x-rays until their organs literally cooked in their bodies.
To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then were observed as they slowly succumbed to the symptoms.
The scientists of Unit 731 even experimented by injecting prisoners with pufferfish venom, causing almost instant respiratory failure.
They also experimented with heroin, measuring the amount that constituted an overdose in the hopes it might be used as a deadly weapon.
In a scheme that sounds like something out of a bad spy movie, the Japanese actually planned an ecological attack on the United States, one that would come in the form of bombing farmland with Korean bindweed seeds.
Korean bindweed is an invasive species in the United States, and in 1998, it was responsible for crop more than $370,000,000 in crop losses in North America alone.
What’s more, certain animals can develop photosensitization after ingesting Korean bindweed, basically meaning they become allergic to sunlight.
It sounds like some supervillain’s hair brain scheme, but a well-executed ecological attack on the American heartland could be nothing short of devastating, and the effort represented a secretive but serious threat to American citizens.
One of the largest and longest lasting projects that took place at Unit 731 was the study of blood loss and its effect on the body.
Certain prisoners were strapped down to tables before having massive amounts of blood drained from their bodies.
Former vivisectionist, Okawa Fukumatsu, said that in one case, at least half a liter of blood was drawn at two-to-three-day intervals, with the venepuncture occurring over and over until the victim’s body simply gave out.
Scientists also performed a series of ‘transfusion experiments’ which involved giving people the wrong blood types.
Former Unit researcher, Naeo Ikeda, later wrote -
“In my experience, when A type blood was transfused to an O type subject, whose temperature was 35.4 degrees C, 30 minutes later the temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with slight trepidation. Sixty minutes later the pulse was 106 per minute and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. Three hours later the subject recovered. When AB type blood was transfused to an O type subject, an hour later the subject described nausea and a feeling of coldness in both legs”
The Prisoners of Unit 731 were also subjected to experiments involving chemical weapons, and had an entire building full of dedicated gas chambers.
Some the gases tested included mustard gas, the skin-blistering agent lewisite, cyanide gas, and phosgene, which causes a person to drown in their own lung fluid.
On occasion, prisoners were permitted to wear gas masks to test their effectiveness, other times they were forced to stand completely naked in the sealed chambers as the skin blistering agents burned them alive without anyone even striking match.
After the war, an anonymous member of the Unit 731 research team gave the following testimony -
“In 1943, I attended a poison gas test. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square and two meters high was used. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was Adamsite, and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians were present. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it anymore, and left the area. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there, and the man choked on his own vomit”.
Researchers also tested mustard gas filled artillery shells on tight groupings of Chinese civilians, observing the effects over time in entries that read as follows:
September 7th, 1940, 6pm (around an hour after the test): Subject is tired and exhausted. Looks with hollow eyes. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. Eyelids swollen with excessively watery eyes that appear extremely red.
September 8th, 1940, 6am: Neck, breast, and upper abdomen weeping, reddened and swollen. Covered with bean-size blisters. Subject had difficulties opening the eyes.
September 8th, 6pm: Subject feels sick. Body temperature, 37 degrees Celsius. Mucous and bloody erosions across the shoulder girdle. Abundant mucous nose secretions. Abdominal pain. Mucous and blood in the urine and diarrhea.
September 9th 1940, 7am: Subject is almost deceased. Weakness of all four extremities. Very low morale. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Skin of the face still weeping.
Just when you thought Unit 731 couldn’t sound any more like hell on earth, allow me to introduce Japanese Army Engineer, Hisato Yoshimura.
Yoshimura conducted experiments by taking Chinese prisoners outside in the dead of winter, dipping their limbs into cold water, then forcing the prisoner to remain outside until the selected arm or leg froze solid.
Then, to the prisoner’s absolute horror, Yoshimura would hit the affected limbs with a hardened stick, later saying that it “emitting a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck”.
The ice was then chipped away by researchers, with the affected area being subjected to various experiments such as being doused in water, exposed to flame, or simply broken off entirely.
Even the other equally monstrous members of the research team seemed to think Yoshimura was beyond the pale, referring to him as a “cold-blooded animal” or a “devil of science”.
One of his colleagues, Naoji Uezono, remembered when Yoshimura had “put two naked men in an area 40-50 degrees below zero and researchers filmed the whole process until the subjects died. The subjects suffered such agony they were digging their nails into each other’s flesh”.
Incredibly, after the war, Yoshimura was more than happy to talk about his time at Unit 731, and wrote an article for the Journal of Japanese Physiology in which he admitted to subjecting over twenty children, including a three-day-old infant, to frostbite experiments.
What’s more, Yoshimura denied he had any blame to share in the atrocities that occurred at Unit 731, insisting that not only was he “just a scientist”, but that his work was to the benefit of humanity.
It’s definitely a horrifying thought that such hideously fatal human experimentation actually yielded viable results, but neither is it true that all of Unit 731’s experiments were performed in the name of science.
Renowned Japanese scholar Nakagawa Yonezo studied at Kyoto University during the war, and while he was there, he witnessed video footage of human experiments and executions from Unit 731; and to the horror of war crimes investigators, later claimed there was a certain playfulness to some of the experiments.
He described some of the experiments as being “psychopathically sadistic, with no conceivable military application”.
He went on to cite one instance where a prisoner infected with syphilis was forced to sleep with another uninfected prisoner, simply to catalogue the transmission.
This could’ve easily been done without such crude methods, but such was the cruelty of the Japanese research teams.
“Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine”, Yonezo added, “But - there is such a thing as professional curiosity: ‘What would happen if we did such and such?’ What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? None at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like to play”.
Towards the end of the war, General Ishii repeatedly proposed using biological weapons on the US Marines invading Iwo Jima and Okinawa, but thankfully, these proposals were rejected by the Japanese high command, citing the overwhelming risk to friendly troops.
Within months of these proposals, the Soviet Red Army invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria, and Unit 731 was ordered to hastily destroy the evidence of their experiments – including their unfortunate test subjects.
Around three hundred of the remaining prisoners were crammed into the Unit’s gas chambers before scientists pumped in poisonous vapor. Another six hundred were taken out into the surrounding countryside and shot.
General Ishii then distributed potassium cyanide capsules to the Unit’s staff and soldiers, telling them to “take [their] secrets to the grave”.
A small group of Japanese troops then used explosives to destroy the majority of the compound’s structures, but a handful remained when approaching Soviet troops forced them to flee.
Following the Japanese surrender, when General Douglas MacArthur learned of Unit 731’s existence, he struck a deal with the Japanese scientists that’d worked there.
“Give us your research”, they were told “and we’ll give you immunity”.
Their reasons for doing so are extremely complicated and convoluted, and actually included pressure from the wider scientific community, but the primary reason was to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring valuable data on biological and chemical weapons.
It was believed that much of the data acquired from Unit 731 would provide a cutting edge insight into certain fields of military research, but when US scientists got their hands on the research, many noted that it was “crude, ineffective and amateurish”, with several researchers noting that many of the experiments were a sick parody of scientific endeavour.
Almost all of us recognize the word ‘Auschwitz’ when we hear or read it, it’s become a synonym for the pointlessly insane slaughter of innocents.
But very few of us would recognize the name ‘Unit 731’, nor have many people heard of the atrocious experiments that were occurred there.
This is in no small part due to the overwhelming attention that the German death-camps receive, and rightfully so, they were a nightmare all unto themselves.
But while the likes of Auschwitz were geared to slave-labor and mass-execution, Unit 731 has an overarching theme of grotesque experiments and mad scientists.
They weren’t so much trying to kill people, as they had a cold indifference as to the fate of their subjects.
Remember, some were even given medical treatment following their ordeals, only to be sent right back into the experimental meat-grinder once they were fit enough.
Auschwitz and Unit 731 are equally horrifying, there’s no placing one over the other. But Unit 731 is a different kind of horrifying, a new kind of horrifying; one that I’m sure will stick with us all for quite some time.