Back الوحدة 731 Arabic ইউনিট ৭৩১ Assamese Escuadrón 731 AST 731-ci dəstə Azerbaijani Атрад 731 Byelorussian Отряд 731 Bulgarian ইউনিট ৭৩১ Bengali/Bangla Unitat 731 Catalan Jednotka 731 Czech Einheit 731 German

Unit 731

Unit 731
The unit 731 complex
LocationPingfang, Harbin, Heilongjiang, Manchukuo (now China)
Coordinates45°36′31″N 126°37′55″E / 45.60861°N 126.63194°E / 45.60861; 126.63194
Date1936–1945
Attack type
Weapons
  • Biological weapons
  • Chemical weapons
  • Explosives
DeathsEstimated 200,000[1] to 300,000[2]
  • 200,000 from biological warfare[1][3]
  • Over 3,000 from inside experiments from each unit (not including branches, 1940–1945 only)[4]: 20 
  • At least 10,000 prisoners killed[5]
  • No documented survivors
Perpetrators

Unit 731 (Japanese: 731部隊, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai),[note 1] short for Manchu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment[4]: 198  and the Ishii Unit,[6] was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. Estimates vary as to how many were killed. Between 1936 and 1945, roughly 14,000 victims were murdered in Unit 731.[7] It is estimated that at least 200,000 individuals have died due to infectious illnesses caused by the activities of Unit 731 and its affiliated research facilities.[1] It was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China) and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia.

Established in 1936, Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs". Victims were further dehumanized by being confined in facilities referred to as "log cabins". Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, hypobaric pressure chamber testing, vivisection, organ harvesting, amputation, and standard weapons testing. Victims included not only kidnapped men, women (including pregnant women), and children but also babies born from the systemic rape perpetrated by the staff inside the compound. The victims also came from different nationalities, with the majority being Chinese and a significant minority being Russian. Additionally, Unit 731 produced biological weapons that were used in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces, which included Chinese cities and towns, water sources, and fields. All prisoners within the compound were killed to conceal evidence, and there were no documented survivors.

Originally set up by the military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shirō Ishii, a combat medic officer. The facility itself was built in 1935 as a replacement for the Zhongma Fortress, a prison and experimentation camp. Ishii and his team used it to expand their capabilities. The program received generous support from the Japanese government until the end of the war in 1945. On 28 August 2002, Tokyo District Court ruled that Japan had committed biological warfare in China and consequently was responsible for the deaths of many residents.[8][9]

Both the Soviet Union and the United States gathered data from the Unit after the fall of Japan. While twelve Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, they were sentenced lightly to the Siberian labor camp from two to 25 years, in exchange for the information they held.[10] The Soviet Union built their bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from the Unit in Manchuria.[11][12] The researchers captured by the US military were secretly given immunity.[13] The Harry S. Truman administration helped cover up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1][14][15] The cover-up of Japanese war crimes and biological warfare capabilities was motivated both by an interest in the data collected by the Japanese and by a desire to prevent the Soviets from gaining information. However, the information obtained was not of significant value, as the U.S. biological warfare program had surpassed the capabilities of Unit 731 by 1943.[16][17]

  1. ^ a b c d Kristof, Nicholas Db. (17 March 1996). "Unmasking Horror – A special report. Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 July 2019. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  2. ^ Watts, Jonathan (28 August 2002). "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 August 2019. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  3. ^ Liu, Huaqiu, ed. (2000). 军备控制与裁军手冊 [Handbook on Arms Control and Disarmament] (in Chinese). National Defense Industry Press. p. 368. ISBN 7118022829.
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference trialmaterials was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Harris, Sheldon (December 1992). "Japanese Biological Warfare Research on Humans: A Case Study of Microbiology and Ethics". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 666 (1). Wiley: 30–31. Bibcode:1992NYASA.666...21H. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1992.tb38021.x. PMID 1297279.
  6. ^ "Human Experimentation at Unit 731". Pacific Atrocities Education. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  7. ^ Hill, Amelia (2 March 2003). "The day the earth died". The Observer.
  8. ^ "Ruling recognizes Unit 731 used germ warfare in China". The Japan Times. 28 August 2002. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  9. ^ "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese". the Guardian. 28 August 2002. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  10. ^ Harris, Sheldon H. (1999). Factories of death: Japanese biological warfare 1932 - 45 and the American cover-up (Reprint ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 229–230. ISBN 978-0-415-13206-0.
  11. ^ Alibek, Ken (1999). Biohazard: the chilling true story of the largest covert biological weapons program in the world, told from the inside by the man who ran it. New York: Random House. pp. 36–37. ISBN 978-0-375-50231-6.
  12. ^ Leitenberg, Milton (January 2001). "Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century: A Review and Analysis". Critical Reviews in Microbiology. 27 (4): 270. doi:10.1080/20014091096774. ISSN 1040-841X. PMID 11791799.
  13. ^ Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p. 109.
  14. ^ Guillemin, Jeanne (2017). Hidden atrocities: Japanese germ warfare and American obstruction of justice at the Tokyo Trial. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Warren I. Cohen books on American-East Asian relations. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-18352-9.
  15. ^ Tatlow, Didi Kirsten (21 October 2015). "A New Look at Japan's Wartime Atrocities and a U.S. Cover-Up". Sinosphere Blog. Retrieved 1 April 2025.
  16. ^ Leitenberg, Milton (January 2001). "Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century: A Review and Analysis". Critical Reviews in Microbiology. 27 (4): 270. doi:10.1080/20014091096774. ISSN 1040-841X. PMID 11791799.
  17. ^ Harris, Sheldon H. (1999). Factories of death: Japanese biological warfare 1932 - 45 and the American cover-up (Reprint ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 209, 222–223. ISBN 978-0-415-13206-0.


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