Unit 731: One of World War Two’s Most Shocking Secrets
by Most people have heard of the concentration camps run by the Nazis during the Second World War and of the punishments dealt to the people who ran these camps. Fewer people are aware that the Japanese Imperial Army also had such camps and that the men who ran them were treated as heroes and celebrities
after the war.
Unit 731 was a Biological and Chemical warfare research plant run by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during WW11 (1937-1945).
Tens of thousands of Russians, Mongolians, Chinese, Korean, European and American prisoners perished in experiments carried out in Unit 731 under the most horrible and painful conditions imaginable.
Men and women would be dissected alive and sometimes left with internal organs hanging out of the bodies and were then kept alive for days or even weeks that way. No painkilling methods were ever used and operations were carried out with no anaesthetics whatever.
Human subjects were also used to test new weapons such as grenades and flame throwers and again would be kept conscious for weeks with no treatment.
Legs and arms would be swapped around on bodies. Bacteria and Virus’s were released on innocent civilians then victims would be dissected to test the results.
This is just a small sample of what went on at Unit 731, but the point of this article isn’t so much to talk about the atrocities committed there (which were bad enough), the question is why justice was not executed on any of the people who run this Unit.
The answer is fairly straight forward but pretty shocking too. At the end of the war the American military wanted the documents containing the research results from Unit 731, and in exchange for them amnesty was granted to the personnel who had run it.
Many of these men went on to have distinguished and successful careers (one of them founded the Japanese Green Cross), others went on to lucrative positions in medical establishments worldwide, all as free men.
The victims and their families never received any form of justice or compensation for the treatment that they had endured and Unit 731 was swept under the carpet. Only now are the facts emerging 60 years later when most of the people who were responsible are dead.
It’s my hope that this kind of thing will never be allowed to happen again. I wouldn’t bank on it though.
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