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Unit 731 TYOH-Riven Christy

Unit 731 was a Japanese concentration camp in Harbin, China, active during World War II, where inhumane biological warfare experiments were conducted on prisoners, primarily Chinese, Koreans, and European PoWs. Following Japan's surrender, the unit's documents were destroyed, and the U.S. granted immunity to its scientists in exchange for information on their experiments. Japan only acknowledged the existence of Unit 731 in 1988 and has yet to apologize or compensate the victims' families.

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41 views3 pages

Unit 731 TYOH-Riven Christy

Unit 731 was a Japanese concentration camp in Harbin, China, active during World War II, where inhumane biological warfare experiments were conducted on prisoners, primarily Chinese, Koreans, and European PoWs. Following Japan's surrender, the unit's documents were destroyed, and the U.S. granted immunity to its scientists in exchange for information on their experiments. Japan only acknowledged the existence of Unit 731 in 1988 and has yet to apologize or compensate the victims' families.

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rivenchristy
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Riven Christy

Chase Periods 3-4

Toot Your Own Horn Essay

June 3, 2024

Unit 731

Unit 731 (Short for Manchu Detachment 731) was an Imperial Japanese

Concentration camp in Harbin, China. It was active during World War Two/The

Second Sino-Japanese war. The prisoners were majority Chinese, but also

included Koreans and European PoWs (prisoners of war), especially ethnic

Russians.

I do not really “enjoy” anything that happened here, but it is interesting and

important to the history of World War Two.

All evidence, since all documents from the unit were destroyed after Japan

surrendered, is from outside witnesses or perpetrator testimony. The kinds of

experiments performed there were mainly biological warfare (which they

used during their occupation of China) related. They would give prisoners

diseases like the plague and anthrax. Then they would vivisect them at

various stages of the disease to see the damage it did to their bodies (they

would sometimes remove the fetuses of pregnant women with the disease).

They also performed other experiments, however, including frostbite

experiments, where they would freeze prisoners limbs and then put them in
varying water temperatures to see how to best treat frostbite, gas

experiments, like the gas chambers used by Nazi Germany, but on a smaller

scale (they had multiple chambers, all with a chair that the unfortunate

victim would be tied to), weapon experiments, where they would tie

prisoners to posts and shoot them or throw grenades at them from various

distances, hypobaric pressure chambers that they would put prisoners in to

test the endurance of human organs at high altitudes, controlled

dehydration, injecting prisoners with saltwater or animal blood, exposing

them to deadly levels of x-rays, and forcing prisoners to sexually assault

each other under threat of death to give them STDs so they could see how to

prevent them on the battlefield. They would call the prisoners “marutas” the

Japanese word for log, to dehumanized them.

Unit 731 was created in 1935 as a replacement for the Zhongma Fortress. It

operated until August of 1945, when Japan surrendered, and before it could

enact Operation Cherry Blossoms At Night, also known as Operation PX,

which was planned for September of 1945 to attack cities in Southern

California with plague flea bombs from Unit 731. All the documents were

destroyed, and all prisoners killed. The Unit was bombed, but the ruins of

several of the buildings exists today. After Japan’s surrender, much like we

did with several Nazi scientists, we granted scientists from Unit 731

immunity from punishment in exchange for information on the biological

warfare experiments conducted in Unit 731. Some of these scientists even


went on to assist the U.S government in their own biological warfare

development, which was used in the Korean war. Japan did not acknowledge

Unit 731 until 1988, and have yet to apologize or compensate the victims'

families.

In conclusion, I think people should be more aware of the atrocities Japan

committed during World War 2, and this is one of them. And, the fact that we

excused these crimes for our own benefit.

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