Unit 731 Manchuria War

Harbin, Manchuria, 1942. A man stands outside, arm in a tub of freezing cold water. Armed guards hit his arm with a stick, returning a resounding THUNK. He is ready. The guards drag the man inside the compound, where doctors put the frozen arm into water around 100 degrees fahrenheit. The doctors take notes. The man’s frostbite slowly goes away. The doctors are impressed. The man gets to live another day. Unfortunately, he will soon join the over 3,000 men, women, and children that were killed at the Unit 731 compound in Manchuria. The worst possible war crimes ever committed by the Japanese Empire were committed In Unit 731, a secret biological and chemical warfare research center. Under today’s standards, the entire Unit would have been tried

Many hid behind a facade, and denied their wrongdoing. Some, however, felt guilt. One man in particular, a farmer from Morioka, Japan, knew what he did, and was guilty(Kristof).This man was once part of Unit 731, and had conducted such horrible experiments such as conducting a vivisection on a still awake man. He described the screams of the man being cut open, and was very disturbed by it, saying that “it was [my] first time”. The farmer didn’t want to be associated with Unit 731, so he decided to remain anonymous. There were also other workers in Unit 731 that came forward with evidence of wrongdoing, such as doctor Ken Yuasa, a former army medic that still practices at his clinic. Dr. Yuasa described how in China, where he was stationed, awake vivisections on patients were very common and widespread. They were, in fact, merely practice for medical experience rather than for conventional research. The Doctor is now “very apologetic” over what he has done, providing more proof that the unethical experiments were indeed, unethical. Another former member of Unit 731, Ishio Obata, refused to speak of the experiments, citing them as “such a terrible memory that I don’t want to talk about it”. The fact that so many of the former scientists were guilty of their experiments proves their unethical nature, and how horrible the experiments really