Unit 731, US's Illegal Bioweapons Testing and Covid - Part 1

Illegal Bioweapons Testing within the US and The War Crimes That Were Kept Secret

Disclaimer

If you are unfamiliar with this part of history, I need to put a disclaimer here. This is some of the darkest and sickest stuff you will ever read. What happened at Unit 731 was atrocious. The Japanese violated the sanctity of human life, broke the Nuremberg codes in the vilest ways, broke all conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war (POW’s), and threw any sense of morality and humanity right out the window.

I will be speaking about this in the broadest of terms, the links I provide will not be. To be clear, the Japanese committed some of the most heinous war crimes you could possibly imagine. To date, there has never been an international trial regarding these war crimes. These were no prosecutions on the world stage. American politicians quietly made it all go away in exchange for the research that was done.

Russia later tried some of these criminals during the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials and published transcripts of these trials in multiple languages. If it weren't for their efforts and the efforts of several citizen journalists, this part of history would never have been known.

Khabarovsk War Crime Trials

Click, dig and research for the truth at your own expense. Let's begin.

Unit 731's History

Unit 731 (also known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army) was formed sometime in the mid-1930's in what was Japanese occupied China. China and Japan were currently at war with the Second Sino-Japanese War. This morphed into World War II. Or maybe it was just absorbed into the conflict. Who knows.

What is clear is that General Shiro Ishii was the man in charge of Unit 731. It's purpose was to test, produce, and store biological weapons. And Japan didn't really care about the two international treaties that existed at the time that prevented them from doing this. Instead of animal testing, the citizens of Japan occupied China and other POWs became the test subjects.

General Shiro Ishii

In 1932, General Shiro Ishii, chief medical officer of the Japanese Army, had taken command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory for the Imperial Japanese Army. A secret research group named the Togo Unit was formed for various chemical and biological experimentation in Machuria, China.

Zhongma Fortress was built in Beiyinhe, China. This started the medical experimentation on prisoners during the World Wars. It was later destroyed and operations were moved to Pingfang in Manchuria, China.

Zhongma Fortress

In 1936, by Japanese Imperial Decree, operations were expanded and was integrated into the Kwantung Army. It was called the Epidemic Prevention Department. Two units, the Ishii Unit and the Wakamatsu Unit, were created. Collectively, they were known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Knawtang Army, also known as Unit 731.

Known Facilities

These are the locations that we know about. There may be more. All of these were located in Japanese occupied China with the exception of Shinjuku District Medical School and Research Facility.

Tokyo, Japan - Shinjuku District Medical School and Research Facility was located here. Doctors and students would visit and staff the other facilities.

Unit 731- This group of facilities which was located in Pingfang, China which also had branches or satellite facilities located in Linkou (Branch 162), Mudanjiang, Hailin (Branch 643), Sunwu (Branch 673), Toan, and Hailar (Branch 543).

Unit 8604 - This was located in Canton which experimented on food and water deprivation, water-borne typhus, and bubonic plague vectors (i.e. plague infested rats).

Unit 100 - This facility was located in Mokotan, Manchukuo.

Unit Ei 1644 - This satellite facility was located in Nanking.

Mukden POW Camp - This was located 350 miles from Pingfang in Mukden. POWs were experimented on with infectious diseases disguised as harmless vaccines.

Mukden POW Camp

The Experiments

Human test subjects were called maruta, or logs, in reference to one of the buildings being named a lumber mill. These people included everyone from criminals, political prisoners, people arrested for suspicious activities, and prisoners of war (POW’s). They were young and old. Experimentation didn't discriminate against age, gender or even pregnancy. Additionally, field tests were conducted on the Chinese civilian population surrounding these facilities.

Biological warfare research included:

• Bubonic plague

• Anthrax

• Smallpox

• Cholera

• Typhoid

• Epidemic hemorrhagic fever

• Syphilis

• Scarlet fever

• Meningitis

• Typhus

• And dozens of other pathogens to be used against humans, crops, and animals

Experiments on humans included:

• Dismemberment

• Amputations

• Effects of blood loss

• Vivisections

• Practice surgery

• Organ removal

• Lethal injections

• Injections involving animal blood, air bubbles, and seawater

• Study of venereal diseases

• The effects of extreme temperatures on the human body

• The limitations of the human body, including g-force thresholds, high pressure, and radiation

• Weapons testing which included grenades, flamethrowers, and plague-spreading bombs

• Biological warfare and bioweapons testing

Unit 731 Test Subjects

Please note that anesthesia was not given to the human test subjects as the Japanese felt that this could skew research results. If you should go read or watch videos on the testimonies given by the Japanese doctors, their own accounts of events will confirm this.

“The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn’t struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that’s when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.” - Unit 731 Japan’s Biological Warfare Project

Author's Note: There were many more experiments that were conducted that I am unaware of. However, I am unable to continue down this rabbit hole. I could not watch anymore. There are just some things I really don't want to watch or read about. So let's move on. Shall we?

I am not trying to diminish the horrors of what these people experienced. What I have stated is true. What I have stated doesn't do these victims justice. It is worse than you or I could possibly imagine.

The Surrender

August 1945. The Russians invaded Manchukuo and Mengjiang. General Ishii ordered the destruction of Unit 731's test facilities. Potassium cyanide was issued to the staff before they fled to Japan. This was to be used should they be caught. The remaining skeleton crew set out to destroy all the evidence. No human test subject survived Unit 731. All were killed. Their bodies were burned. Buildings were bombed. Even specimen jars were emptied and their contents buried. All participants were threatened to take this to their grave.

The Ruins of Unit 731

In 1945 Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers. General Douglas MacArthur was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and in charge of rebuilding Japan while under Allied occupation.

Estimates of casualties were anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 victims at the facilities itself and between 500,000 to 1.2 million during field tests and other experiments. However, the true death toll will never be known.

The Cover Up

Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders was in charge of investigating biological warfare activity in Japan. After threatening to hand the Japanese over to Russia, he was given a transcript regarding the experiments going on in connection with Unit 731. He took that information to MacArthur.

MacArthur, under Roosevelt's orders, struck a deal with the Japanese informants - immunity and 250,000 yen in exchange for the research that was conducted.

"MacArthur kept Ishii and Ishii's network secret from the prosecutors. The prosecutors of the war crimes tribunal didn't know of Ishii," Port said. "So MacArthur could take advantage of his knowledge." Fort Detrick and COVID-19: Why do the Chinese want an investigation?

MacArthur wanted to keep the research from Unit 731 a secret. He did not want other Allied countries to have access to it.

What Happened To The Research?

Well, it ended up at Fort Detrick in Maryland where the US Army headed the US Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, the same guy who investigated the allegations, ended up being in charge.

In 1942, President Roosevelt signed into action the first biological warfare program; backed by the National Academy of Sciences, the initiative sought to develop biological weapons and explore vulnerability of the U.S. to such attacks. A government body — the War Research Service (WRS) — was created to oversee these activities, and George W Merck (of the Merck Pharmaceutical Company) was appointed to leadership. At his team’s directive, Fort Detrick, the United States’ biological warfare 'headquarters,' was constructed in the small town of of Frederick, Maryland. The facility then embarked on top secret plan to stage open-air “biological warfare tests” using the unsuspecting American public.
How the US Government Tested Biological Warfare On America

Researchers at Fort Detrick

The United States biological defense program began as a small defensive effort that paralleled the country's offensive biological weapons development and production program, active between 1943 and 1969.
Military Wiki: United Stated Biological Defense Program

Richard Drayton, a Cambridge University history lecturer, claimed that Ishii later went to Maryland to advise on bioweapons.
Wikipedia: Ishi War Crime Immunity

What Other "Coincidences" Happened At This Time?

Well, the Communicable Disease Center (CDC), which would later become the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opened its doors on July 1, 1946. But here's a picture from 1945.

1945 Picture of researchers from the CDC. But they began in 1946.

The World Health Organization (WHO) opened its doors on April 7, 1948.

It would be hilarious if I could add the National Institute of Health into this equation. But I can't. They had their beginnings in the late 1700s and early 1800s. However, they did gain bureau status on November 11, 1943 and the Research Grants Office was opened in 1946. So there is that.

Operation Paperclip

At the end of the war, the US launched an Operation to bring German scientists, among others, here to the US. These scientists and researchers would be protected from  being charged with war crimes in exchange for researching special projects for the government. Fort Detrick was one such place that some these scientists ended up. The operation was called Operation Paperclip.

Jeffrey Alan Lockwood wrote in 2009 that the biological warfare program at Ft. Detrick began to research the use of insects as disease vectors going back to World War II and also employed German and Japanese scientists after the war who had experimented on human subjects among POWs and concentration camp inmates.
Wikipedia: Fort Detrick

From 1945 to 1955 under Project Paperclip and its successors, the U.S. government recruited over 1,600 German and Austrian scientists and engineers in a variety of fields such as aircraft design, missile technology and biological warfare. Among the specialists in the latter field who ended up working in the U.S. were Walter Schreiber, Erich Traub and Kurt Blome, who had been involved with medical experiments on concentration camp inmates to test biological warfare agents. Since Britain, France and the Soviet Union were also engaged in recruiting these scientists, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) wished to deny their services to other powers, and therefore altered or concealed the records of their Nazi past and involvement in war crimes.
Wikipedia: Operation Paperclip - Post Year Wars