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. Two prisons are hidden in the center of the main building.
LocationPingfang, Harbin, Heilongjiang, Manchukuo (now China)
Coordinates45°36′30″N 126°37′55″E / 45.60833°N 126.63194°E / 45.60833; 126.63194
Date1936–1945
Attack type
Weapons
  • Biological weapons
  • Chemical weapons
  • Explosives
DeathsEstimated 3,000[1] to 300,000[2]
  • 400,000 or higher from biological warfare
  • Over 3,000 from inside experiments from each unit (not including branches, 1940–1945 only)[3]: 20 
  • At least 10,000 prisoners died[4]
  • 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[3]: 198  and the Ishii Unit,[5] 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. It killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people. 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". 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. Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived. In the final moments of the Second World War, all prisoners were killed to conceal evidence.

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.

Both the Soviet Union and 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. [6] Those captured by the US military were secretly given immunity,[7] The United States helped cover up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1] The US had co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own warfare program (resembling Operation Paperclip), so did the Soviet Union in building their bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from the Unit in Manchuria.[8][6][9]

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.[10][11]

  1. ^ a b Kristof, Nicholas D. (17 March 1995). "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. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference trialmaterials was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference histpersp was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "CIA Special Collection ISHII, SHIRO_0005" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 August 2020. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
  6. ^ a b Harris, S.H. (2002) Factories of Death. Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-up, revised ed. Routledge, New York.
  7. ^ Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p. 109.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Alibek was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Brody, Howard; Leonard, Sarah E.; Nie, Jing-Bao; Weindling, Paul (2014). "United States Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II: National Security and Wartime Exigency". Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 23 (2): 220–230. doi:10.1017/S0963180113000753. ISSN 0963-1801. PMC 4487829. PMID 24534743.
  10. ^ "Ruling recognizes Unit 731 used germ warfare in China". The Japan Times. 28 August 2002. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  11. ^ "Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese". the Guardian. 28 August 2002. Retrieved 3 January 2023.


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