The War Crimes that Went Unpunished

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It was a laboratory conceived in hell. A place where death was routinely met. Those who entered never left. When the war was over the United States covered up the atrocities to get the medical data to further our own biological weapons program. The unit formed in Manchuria would later be compared to Nazi Germany death camps and to this day the war crimes have gone unpunished (Williams & Wallace, 1989).

The Japanese first entered continental Asia in 1895 with the annexation of Korea, then moved into southern Manchuria following the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 (Williams & Wallace, 1989). Japan finished their takeover of Manchuria with the Manchurian Incident of 1931 (Japan invades Manchuria, n.d.).

Unit 731 was started in Harbin, Manchuria after an imperial order by Emperor Hirohito 1936 (Harris, 2002; Mangold & Goldberg, 2000; Williams & Wallace, 1989). Commanded by then Maj. Ishii Shiro, the unit was referred to as an epidemic prevention and water supply unit (Williams & Wallace, 1989). Manchuria was selected because it was far from the eyes of the homeland of Japan and it would give them their “Maruta” (wooden logs in Japanese) or people to test on and perfect the new biological weapons program of Japan (Harris, 2002).

It took until 1939 for the construction of over 75 structures on an area of six square kilometers in the suburb of Pingfan to be completed (Williams & Wallace, 1989). The compound consisted of an immense administrative building, multiple laboratories, dormitories for civilian workers, barracks, stables, barns, an autopsy and dissection building, green houses, three furnaces to dispose of bodies, and more (Harris, 2002). A special railroad connected the facility to Harbin, along with an air field that would as...

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...s, 2002). American investigators and military officials did a great disservice to the subjects used by Unit 731 and their families through the cover up of the Japanese unit’s actions.

Works Cited

Harris, S. H. (2002). Factories of death: Japanese biological warfare, 1932-1945, and the American cover-up (Rev. ed.). New York: Routledge.

Japan invades Manchuria. (n.d.). 1931. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/china/JapanManchuria.html

Manchurian Incident. (2013, January 1). Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Manchurian_Incident.aspx

Mangold, T., & Goldberg, J. (2000). Plague wars: the terrifying reality of biological warfare. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.

Williams, P., & Wallace, D. (1989). Unit 731: Japan's secret biological warfare in World War II. New York: Free Press.

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