On June 17, 1925, the most powerful countries on the earth decided that it didn't want its advancement jeopardized by a madman. They signed the Geneva Protocol. An agreement that outlawed governments to produce and use biological and chemical weapons. After that signing, Japan was so impressed with the fact that a weapon could be so dangerous that it should be banned from war, they immediately stepped up their research.
The man behind the unimaginable barbarity inside UNIT 731 was Dr. Shiro Ishii. Ishii was a very respectable student in the department of Medicine at Kyoto University. Upon graduating, he was immediately sent to the Japanese Imperial Army. After being sent back from the US and Europe to study biological weapons, he came back to Japan. Japan had recently conjured Manchuria. Now Ishii had a place for his experiments.
UNIT 731 was located in a building in Manchuria that was supposedly used for "water purification and epidemic prevention." The prisoners in the lab were called "marutas" or logs.
Inside 731 were tests for radiation, though it's principle testing was determining a humans reaction to several diseases such as malaria, cancer, and even the Bubonic plague. Disease tests were not the extent of the "doctors"research in 731, they often performed vivisection without anesthesia and tested the frostbite tolerance levels on infants. In one case, a Japanese doctor vivisected an unanaesthetised pregnant women whom he himself had impregnated. In another case they took eight healthy POWs and took them apart piece by piece: first a lung, then a bit of liver, then part of a brain, until the men finally died.
The main focus of unit 731 was not inhumane surgery, though it seemed, but large-scale biological warfare. Ishii was interested in inflicting a disease upon his enemy while having his army immune to the weapons. Often times he sent insects (fleas) into Chinese villages infected with diseases. Most oftenly, the disease was the Bubonic plague. His madness was not restricted to the orient. On December '44, 200 balloon bombs were sent using prevailing air currents from Japan to the western US. Seven people in Montana and Oregon died.
So right about now I'll bet you are wondering "where the hell is the conspiracy?" Here ya go. After the war ended in August 1945, Ishii was declared dead at a mock funeral. Later Gen. Douglas MacAurthur radioed Washington, recommending that UNIT 731 Doctors be granted Immunity for their papers.
It was heavily rumored that the 731 Scientists were granted immunity and given labs in the US to continue their work for the United States. The Government did its best to cover the truth.
No UNIT 731 scientist was put on trial for war crimes.
For those of you going "yeah, well that was a long time ago." what the
hell do you think Gulf War syndrome is, huh?
by Zane Jones [email protected]
copyright (c) TRUSTNO1 magizine 1997