Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities

Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics

Jing Bao Nie, Nanyan Guo, Mark Selden, Arthur Kleinman, Jing Bao Nie, Nanyan Guo, Mark Selden, Arthur Kleinman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136952593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Ética en medicina

Prior to and during the Second World War, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare throughout China and elsewhere. In these "factories of death, " including the now-infamous Unit 731, Japanese doctors and scientists conducted large numbers of vivisections and experiments on human beings, mostly Chinese nationals. However, as a result of complex historical factors including an American cover-up of the atrocities, Japanese denials, and inadequate responses from successive Chinese governments, justice has never been fully served. This volume brings together the contributions of a group of scholars from different countries and various academic disciplines. It examines Japan's wartime medical atrocities and their postwar aftermath from a comparative perspective and inquires into perennial issues of historical memory, science, politics, society and ethics elicited by these rebarbative events. The volume's central ethical claim is that the failure to bring justice to bear on the systematic abuse of medical research by Japanese military medical personnel more than six decades ago has had a profoundly retarding influence on the development and practice of medical and social ethics in all of East Asia. The book also includes an extensive annotated bibliography selected from relevant publications in Japanese, Chinese and English.

Part I
Japan’s medical war crimes and post-war trials

1
Un it 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s biological warfare program

Tsuneishi Keiichi, translated by John Junkerman

The Ishii Network

Unit 731 was the common name of a secret unit of Japan’s Manchuria-based Kwantung Army whose official name was the Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department. The leader of the unit was Ishii Shiro (1892–1959), who held the rank of lieutenant general at the end of World War II. The unit epitomized the extensive organization for the development of biological weapons within the Imperial Army, which was referred to, beginning in the late 1930s, as the Ishii Network.

The Network itself was based at the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, established in 1932 at the Japanese Army Military Medical School in Tokyo. Unit 731 was the first of several secret, detached units created as extensions of the research lab; the units served as field laboratories and test sites for developing biological weapons, culminating in the experimental use of biological weapons on Chinese cities. The trial use of these weapons on urban populations was a direct violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlawed the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. It was also understood by those involved that the use of human subjects in laboratory and test site experiments was inhumane. This was why it was deemed necessary to establish Unit 731 and the other secret units.

Lt. General Ishii Shiro

The Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory was created under the initiative of Ishii Shiro after he returned from two years of field study of American and European research facilities. It was set up, with the approval of top-level army authorities, as a facility to develop biological weapons. It is said that Ishii first became convinced of the need to develop biological weapons with the signing of the Geneva Protocol in 1925.

The biological weapons Ishii sought to develop had humans as their target, and Unit 731 was established with this goal in mind. In order to produce biological weapons as quickly as possible, Ishii considered it essential to have a human experimentation site at the disposal of his research laboratory. Japan had occupied northeastern China, and in 1932, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established. Within this “safe zone,” Ishii set up what was called the Togo Unit, based in the village of Beiyinhe, about 100 kilometers south of Harbin. Human experimentation began there in the fall of 1933. The Togo Unit was a secret unit under the vicechief of staff of the Kwantung Army. It was set up to determine whether it was possible to conduct human experiments in northeastern China and, if it was possible, whether the experiments would produce useful results. The launching of this feasibility study reflects the deliberate nature of Ishii as the organizer of the research. All of those involved in this research and development were military doctors, but they all used false names. At this stage, the scale of the project involved about ten doctors, along with a staff of about 100.

The inauguration of Unit 731

Unit 731 was officially established in 1936. Its establishment is reflected in a memo dated April 23, 1936, entitled “Opinion Regarding the Reinforcement of Military Forces in Manchuria,” from the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army to the vice-minister of the Ministry of War (contained in the Ministry of War Journal for the army in Manchuria, Rikuman Mitsu-dainikki). Under the heading “Establishment and Expansion of the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention Department,” the memo states that the department will be “newly established” in 1936, and “one part of the department will be expanded in fiscal 1938.” This is the oldest official document concerning Unit 731 that has been found to date.

In addition to inaugurating Unit 731, this memo also laid the foundation for establishing two other units. It called for the establishment of an additional biological weapons development unit, independent of Ishii’s unit, which was called the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 100), and for preparations to set up a chemical weapons development unit called the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department (later referred to as Manchuria Unit 516).

Several months later, the memo’s recommendations were approved by Emperor Hirohito, the two units were established, and preparations began for creating the Testing Department. The Ministry of War Journal for May 21, 1936, recorded this development under the heading “Imperial Hearing on Military Force Improvement Consequent upon Budget Approval.” The journal noted, “Units concerned with epidemic prevention: One unit each is established for epidemic prevention among humans and horses.”

Having been officially established, Unit 731 moved its facilities from Beiyinhe to a newly established laboratory at a hospital in Harbin. This laboratory served as a front-line headquarters while the unit’s permanent facilities were being built in Pingfan, outside of the city of Harbin. These facilities were completed and capable of conducting research in the fall of 1939, after the hostilities at Nomonhan (on the border between Manchuria and Mongolia) had ended.

With the construction of the Pingfan facilities, the primary research staff changed in composition from the military doctors of the Togo Unit to privatesector medical researchers affiliated with universities and other institutions. The first group to be posted to the unit was a team of eight assistant professors and instructors from Kyoto Imperial University in the spring of 1938. The group consisted of two bacteriologists, three pathologists, two physiologists, and one researcher specializing in experiments using animals. Within a year, a second group had arrived at the facility, and the research staff had expanded considerably. The prominence of researchers in pathology and physiology in the development of biological weapons reflected the need for specialized judgment in assessing the results of human experimentation.

With the expansion of the war front throughout China after 1937, sister units affiliated with Unit 731 were established in major Chinese cities. These units were also called Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Departments. Then Unit 1855 was established in Beijing on February 9, 1938; Unit 1644 in Nanjing on April 18, 1939; and Unit 8604 in Guangzhou on April 8, 1939. Later, after Japan occupied Singapore, a similar unit (Unit 9420) was established there on March 26, 1942. These affiliates comprised the scope of the Ishii network through the end of the war. As of the end of 1939 (that is, before the establishment of the Singapore unit), the network had a total staff of 10,045, of which 4,898 were assigned to the core units in Tokyo and Pingfan.

Human experimentation

Human experimentation took place at all the units of the Ishii network, but it was conducted systematically by Unit 731 and Unit 1644. Of these two, there are extant reports from a U.S. Army survey of human experimentation by Unit 731, so the general outline of its program is known.

Table 1.1 was compiled from two sources: a report to U.S. occupation authorities dated December 12, 1947 by Edwin Hill and Joseph Victor, concerning human experimentation by Unit 731 and related facilities; and a list of specimens brought back to Japan by a Unit 731 pathologist in July 1943. Aside from Ishii and another unit leader, Kitano Masaji, the names of individual researchers do not appear; they are identified as military personnel: (M), primarily military doctors, (C), civilian technicians conducting research within the military, and (PT), part-time researchers working outside of the military.

The number of specimens reflects the number of subjects who died as a result of human experimentation as of July 1943. Consequently, the total number of victims of human experimentation at the time of Japan’s surrender two years later would be higher than these figures. The figures also do not include victims of germ bomb tests at the Anda field test site or from other experiments.

Technicians who were civilian employees of the army were treated as officers. The status of civilian employees ranged from infantry class to general class, but technicians were treated as lieutenants and above. Ranking below the technicians were operators, clerks, and staff. For the most part, the Ishii Network took on university researchers as technicians. The part-time researchers were part-time employees of the Military Medical School Epidemic Prevention Research

Table 1.1 The number of specimens in human experimentation by July 1943

Laboratory; they were professors at Tokyo and Kyoto imperial universities who were contracted to perform research in their own laboratories. In short, a large number of civilian researchers were mobilized.

Biological warfare trials

For the most part, the use of the biological weapons developed by the Ishii Network amounted to field trials. The first of these trials took place during the Nomonhan Incident in 1939. In August, toward the end of the hostilities, pathogens that cause gastrointestinal disease were placed in the Holsten River, a tributary of the Halha River that the Soviet Army used as its source of water. It is not clear how many Soviet soldiers suffered from this attack, but it is thought that casualties were not widespread. This was because the typhoid bacillus and the other pathogens that were used lose their infectivity when placed in water. This fact was known to Ishii’s group. It is thought that they nonetheless carried out the attack because they wanted to conduct a field test of biological weapons in became infected when he spilled liquid from a drum filled with contaminated water while dumping it into the river. He died of typhoid fever at an army hospital in Hailar.

During the following year, 1940, larger-scale field trials were conducted in central China, using biological weapons dropped from airplanes. The pathogens were cultivated by Unit 731 and shipped to Unit 1644 in Nanjing, which served as the forward base for the attacks through 1942. During the first two years, these attacks were carried out in cities along the Yangzi River. Of these, the large-scale attack on the city of Ningbo on October 27, 1940 is well documented and has also been thoroughly investigated by the Chinese.

The attack took place at 7 a.m. from heavy bombers flying a low-altitude run at 200 meters. The bombers dropped fleas, grain, and strips of cotton on the streets in the center of the city. The fleas were infected with the plague. They had ingested blood from plague-infected rats and were called “plague fleas.” The plague bacteria were not dissipated directly, as it was considered more effective to infect the carrier fleas and release them, in order to target a specific area with a focused attack. It was also expected that the bacteria would live longer in the bodies of the fleas. The fleas were drop...