War crimes by Japanese physicians in U 731

War crimes by Japanese physicians

can you guess what this is at the centre of the picture below?To you the map below might look likea game, but in reality it's as true as can be. Let me explain to you what this picture is about, but before I give it away easily let me take you on a trip down memmory lane. Let's imagine:

Picture A

Japan has occupied your hometown in NorthEast China and you're now a Prisoner of War (P.O.W).One day the doctors blind fold you, strap you and your cell mates onto wooden boards placed at strategic locations (See Picture A above) and refuse to disclose the ongoing situation to you.One minute Suddenly you hear a deafening nearby explosion and then, you cease to exist. can you guess what this is at the centre of the picture marked (?) ?To you the map below might look like a game, but to the Japanese Scientists working in Unit-731 it was plain human-subject based research in what's known as an "experimental field" the map of which is shown above, at the centre of which is placed a bomb. The experiment is designed to test the relationship between wounds caused by shrapnels and the distance away from the bomb.

Welcome to unit 731.

Shiro Shii

Dr Shiro Shii was the mastermind behind the formation of U-731. He located the Unit 731 laboratory in a remote area in the newly occupied Empire, Harbine. The aims of U-731 were simple: To sacrifice P.O.W for research subjects whose experiments were directed towards biochemical and chemical warfare, inorder to be able to eradicate Japan's enemies and also to provdie antidotes to Japan's soldiers who might have been afflicted by those biochemical diseases. Sounds like Frankenstein's lab, but you'll be surprised that this lab was fully funded by the Japanese government for the latest technology available. The location of Manchukuo , the occupied area of china, pprovided almost 600 test subjects per year [2]. Dr Shiroo Shii selected creme de la creme scientests and researchers to be part of the project. The experiments done on test subjects included injecting them with as many as 50 various potentially lethal germs, and testing the clinical effects this would have on them and how long it would take for them to die, as opposed to other test subjects who were vaccinated against the disease. This allowed them to craft vaccinations produced as prophylactic measures to biochemical warfare to perfection. This information was provided by Yoshi Shinozuku, a researcher who was part of the U-731 project and has come forward to state all he's witnessed and has been instructed to do by higher authorities after U-731 was disassembled.

The experiments were inhumane as mostly they did vivosection, inwhich the person remains alive meanwhile an autopsy is being carried out. How gruesome could it have been?! POWs were so disposable by the researchers they were given the term, "logs".

Shiro Shii not only gave permission to experiment with human subjects inside the laboratories, whenever they believed that they developed a prototype effective enough to kill many people, they would experiment on civilians in many parts of China that weren't even under the occupation of Japan.

Shiro Shii instructed the growth of thousands of plague infested rats in the lab, which allowed for bubonic bacteria to grow. 3 out of 4 people who contracted the disease died. He found this to be a perfect method of biological warfare, but he did not know how to spread the fleas which grew on infected rats to the area he wanted to infect. And since his interest now lied not within labatories, but in "experimentation fields" whereby neutral civilians resided. Initially he attempted spreading bubonic plague by fighter planes that would spray flees on nearby chinese countryside by placing the infected fleas within boxes that would be dropped from midair. In 1942, 1/3 of the villagers died, asWang Xuang, who is a representitive of Chinese Victims at the time stated. He also poisoned local water supplies to this very country village, which was another means of spreading plague. At the end of the field experiment almost 13 villages were wiped out as a result of plague, as a survivor of the U 731 Field Testing Huang YueFeng recalled. Shiro Shii knew this was the perfect warfare instrument to use so he attempted to perfect the means of spreading it.

His genius plan was to use ceramic bombs as means to spread the deadly fleas. Again he picked the villages he wanted to be part of his Field testing. Despite knowing fully well that this was going to eradicate their population without an ounce of a doubt, his mania towards perfectionism caused him to transport his very researchers to the infected villages so they would carry out autopsies. ofcourse the researchers were well protected by white masks and suits(Wang Xuang).

But who was Japan's greatest enemy that those weapons were developed to perfection aimed to fight?Sheldon Harris, the author of Factories of death, stated that It was the USA that Sheldon was aiming to destroy.

unfortunately, Shiro Shii's researchers should have known they were playing with fire as eventually they got a taste of their own medicine ; almost 1600 of them died as a result of lab acquired infections.

Crimes by Japanese physicians were not publicized as were those by Nazi physicians, nor were Japanese physicians tried in the Tokyo War Crimes trials. Evidence regarding the unethical Japanese wartime activities surfaced in the last decade particularly after a traveling exhibit on biological warfare research, which toured 61 locations in Japan during 1993 and 1994 [5]. Some researchers and staff members stepped forth to testify to what the crimes they’ve witnessed by the Japanese physicians to the Chinese civilians. Also some documentaries were produced about U 731 raising public awareness about this issue to the world. Japanese physicians and scientists undertook a massive program of biological warfare during WWII. A focus of this activity was a facility known as Unit 731, whose headquarters was near Harbin, China. Research at Unit 731 aimed to investigate infectious wartime disease, which was the leading cause of death to soldiers than trauma. Ishii supervised defensive research that would prevent disease in Japanese soldiers and instead increase disease in enemies of Japan both military and civilian. Substantial number of medical experiments performed on prisoners, often caused terrible suffering and eventually death either as a result of experimentation or intentional euthanasia . Of the prisoners were : Chinese civilians and military personnels, Russian locals and Korean “comfort women”. [5].

Research aimed at prevention of disease produced innovations at Unit 731, but at the cost of human life. Under Dr. Ishii's direction, researchers invented a portable water filtration system that allowed Japanese soldiers to use water that’s not usually potable. Also other investigations aimed to understand how to counteract frostbites soldiers are subjected so. Hence, they exposed prisoners to subzero temperatures in attempt to simulate war environments to study the physiology of freezing, but prisoners died both due to frostbite and due to the experimental treatments [6].

Research was conducted on sexually transmitted disease, always the scourge of armies. Unit 731 staff members reported witnessing forced sex acts by infected prisoners, including Korean comfort women. Former staff of Unit 731 have testified that vivisection was a common means of studying disease processes [5].

Unit 731 also conducted extensive research on biological warfare that was aimed towards spreading diseases like cholera,malaria & bubonic plague. The aftermath to such experiments lead to outbreaks in civilian area of Harbin, China for bubonic plague. [7]. Unit 731 researchers designed various bombs for biological warfare; these bombs were used in China and against Soviet troops [2]. Bombs carrying infected fleas were dropped in areas where prisoners were tied to stakes, and careful measurements were taken in order to determine the efficacy of different methods. Civilian water supplies in local areas were also reportedly subject to intentional infection as part of biological warfare research [5]. Large numbers of research subjects as well as local residents are said to have died as a result of intentional exposure to toxic agents, either as a way to study the natural history of a disease, or its most effective route of transmission [1].

However there’s much that we still don’t know about unit 731 as it was dismantled soon after the war, as a very Top-secret project. Oddly enough, there were no survivors of the victims from Unit 731as bodies were burned and prisoners executed. Also, research records were destroyed as to conceal any evidence to the highly sensitive and valuable information the Japanese have discovered in biological warfare.

However, not all evidence of Unit 731 was successfully suppressed. A few photographs remain, including photographs of bodies stacked and awaiting incineration. Likewise, some documents, including hundreds of autopsy reports of murdered research subjects, survived the attempt to destroy evidence [1].

Most of the senior staff of Unit 731, including Dr. Ishii, returned to Japan as the war ended. These highly ranked staff members came under the exclusive jurisdiction of US military forces at the end of the war.

All other ethical norms, including the norms of medical ethics, were subordinate to the higher goals physicians of Unit 731 aspired to. Research subjects were viewed not as suffering humans, but as non-human experimental material. Neither medical training nor medical ethics prevented these doctors from succumbing to the psychological and military structures that constitute "atrocity-producing situations" [9].

Non disclosure of medical information to patients can constitute an ethical problem unless if the physician’s intent in withholding information is to be beneficial to the patient and the patient must also view this practice as beneficial. Finally, the patient must at least agree to the practice of withholding information in that particular case. Physicians can consult the family to know more about the patient’s beliefs and assess the best way to disclose the diagnosis/information.[3]

By contrast, the abuse of research subjects as documented in Unit 731 can never be ethical. Research, unlike medical treatment, poses an inherent ethical challenge, because sometimes it may not be so beneficial for the test subject himself or herself but my bring greater good for many more people in the future. Consent is important in both treatment and in the ethical practice of research, as noted in various codes of research ethics. In the case of Unit 731, no pretense of consent was made; there was no pretense of benefit to the subject, instead the mentality was that the lives of those people would be beneficial to thousands if not many more millions in the future. It’s believed that the culture of japan may have supported such abuse of prisoners. Japanese citizens and soldiers made enormous sacrifices to support the war, even to the point of committing suicide. However, this should not be the basis of an ethical practice; it must at a minimum be accepted by those to whom it was applied to in such instance i.e. the prisoners. Considering that they were not “voluntary prisoners” we can conclude that none of them accepted to be subjected to research.

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