Unit 731. Hal Gold

       Foreword

      The Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army—popularly known by its codename “Manchurian Unit No. 731” or simply “Unit 731”—was a secret biological weapons research and development unit maintained by the Imperial Japanese Army in the outskirts of Harbin in Japanese-controlled Manchuria, northeastern China, for the duration of World War II in Asia and the Pacific. It has gained international notoriety in recent decades as research revealed the shocking details of Unit 731’s core wartime activity: the use of thousands of human guinea pigs for medical experimentation. The vast majority of these human subjects are believed to have been Chinese nationals taken prisoner over the course of the Second Sino-Japanese war that originated in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931, and that grew to full-blown warfare in July 1937. Men, women, and children of other nationalities were also used for experiments, and babies born to women in Unit 731’s custody apparently were not spared either.

      The publication of a new edition of Hal Gold’s Japan’s Infamous Unit 731 is both welcome and timely as it offers readers a fresh opportunity to learn about Unit 731 in an accessible way. The first half of the book gives a succinct narrative history of Unit 731 and its legacy in a highly readable language. The second half contains a selection of firsthand accounts of medical experimentation as related by the former members of Unit 731 during “Unit 731 Exhibitions,” which were organized by Japanese citizens and local governments, and which were shown at 61 separate locations in Japan between July 1993 and December 1994. As a whole, these two parts help readers develop a concise yet textured understanding of the history of Unit 731 and allow them to participate in the ongoing dialogue about the relevance of Unit 731 to the world today.

      This book outlines medical experimentation that was conducted by Unit 731, heinous acts including injecting human subjects with pathogens; monitoring the progress of diseases by drawing blood samples from and conducting vivisection on live individuals; exposing human subjects to infected insects in an open-air testing field; infecting a healthy individual with venereal disease by way of forced sexual intercourse with a carrier of venereal disease; causing frostbite on limbs by exposing them to water and cold air in a sub-zero temperature environment; and collecting human specimens—organs, body parts, and even entire bodies of human subjects—which were subsequently kept at Unit 731’s lab and the army medical facilities in Tokyo. None of the subjects in Unit 731’s custody survived the war, as they either died during experiments or were killed en masse as part of the Japanese cover-up effort at the war’s end. Some of the biological weapons thus developed, meanwhile, were put to use during the Japanese military campaigns against China. The Imperial Japanese Army also set up other medical units in Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Singapore, so that biological weapons research and development could be carried forth in the broader region of Asia and the Pacific under Japanese military control.

      While launching counter-offensives against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the last war years, the Allied powers repeatedly issued joint declarations regarding their intention to bring to justice the Axis war criminals. One might expect, under those circumstances, that the members of Unit 731 would have been among the first for the Allied authorities to name as war criminals and to put on trial. But that, in fact, was not the case. Unit 731 rather became a pawn of cold-war politics as the U.S. government prioritized racing against the Soviet Union in securing the biological weapons’ knowledge that Unit 731 had amassed and, to that end, shielding from war crimes prosecution the medical unit’s former members, including its chief, Surgeon General Ishii Shiro. The Soviet authorities, for their part, had their own share of interests in gaining access to Unit 731’s secretive information, but they appeared also focused on using it as a propaganda tool to be deployed against the United States. Having failed in getting the inter-Allied prosecuting agency at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE, 1946–48) to incorporate the evidence of Unit 731 in the case against major Japanese war criminals, the Soviet government set up a special military tribunal at Khabarovsk in December 1949 to hold a joint trial of 12 former Japanese army officers on criminal charges relating to Unit 731’s wartime activities. It went on to publish the official record of the trial in multiple languages (including in Japanese), and put pressure on the United States and other Allied countries to proceed with a trial of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito (1901–89; r. 1926–89), based on the Khabarovsk Trial’s findings. No formal inter-Allied deliberation concerning the possible trial of Hirohito ensued, however, since the U.S. government snubbed the Soviet initiative as a publicity stunt, and the Soviet government eventually let the matter drop. In this manner, the Allied Powers allowed certain known war criminals to escape prosecution despite their stated policy at the outset to mete out stern punishment to war criminals, thereby sending

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