Unit 731

I read a novel a while ago (can’t remember the name) and it mentioned Unit 731, a division of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War that committed horrendous and barbaric expiraments on captured civilians (usually Chinese) and soldiers. Live autopsies, germ warfare, infanticide were just some of the atrocities alleged. I searched the History Channel’s site thinking that if anyone would have info about this unit, it would be what my father-in-law calls “the World War II channel”. All they offered was a DVD about it, but no articles.
Wikipedia offered a little more. Supposedly a lot of the atrocities were swept under the rug and ignored after the war.
Has anyone heard about Unit 731? We hear tons of stuff about the Nazis and the horrors of the concentration camps as well as the evils of Dr. Mangele but I have never seen anything on TV about it. Can anyone give me more info or resources?

I should have specified, I am looking for documentaries, tV reports, etc. My son was fascinated by the war in the Pacific and wanted more info. I found tons of DVDs about the battles but nothing about Unit 731. He mentioned the apparent disparity of information between the Nazi atrocities and what we could find on the unit. If you can suggest any DVDs I would appreciate it. Thanks again.

I’m guessing the book you read was The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. If it was, great choice :smiley:

As for Unit 731, the Wikipedia article has plenty of references at the bottom that you could check out for more (distressing) information. AFAIK, there is very little video footage from the Japanese side at all for the whole of WWII, so your kid might have to actually read a book :wink:

I don’t know of any DVDs, but Hal Gold’s Unit 731: Testimony is a horrific read.

In-depth footage may be hard to find as most documentation was destroyed, there were no survivors from among the prisoners, and the Japanese government seems to have developed amnesia regarding everything that happened before August 6, 1945.

There is a notorious Chinese film about Unit 731 called “Men Behind the Sun”.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the suggestions. And yes, it was Wind Up Bird . I’ll pass the suggestions along. I just wish the History Channel or PBS would do something about it. It seems like we continue to talk about the Nazi’s but have ignored the atrocities in the Pacific.

Japan was a significant strategic asset for the US in the Pacific (and conveniently near the Soviet Union); this, combined with Allied atrocities against Japanese (nominally) civilian populations resulted in a certain, shall we say, flexibility with regard to Japanese war crimes in East Asia that was not present in the European Theater. FWIW, internally the Germans have long had a blind spot regarding the domestic activity during years 1933-1945; however, in this case, the more influential Western nations ensured that this would not be so conveniently ignored on the international stage.

As for the atrocities that occured in Stalin’s Great Purges, the Cultural Revolution of Communist China, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Turkish massacre in Armenia, systematic execution of the Basque in Franco’s Spain, et cetera. Sweeping atrocities under the rug is more the norm than the exception.

Stranger

The holocaust in Germany was very unusual in that there was documentary evidence, filmed evidence of the liberation of some of the camps (altrough Stalin apparently tried to keep some of that secret for his own paranoid resons) and a lot of eye witness testimony. That’s one of the main reasons we see endless documentaries on that particular genocide and not the others.

Some very good points. Believe me; I’m not dismissing the other pogroms and genocidal events of the past century. I was just confused about the disparity of coverage on two similar atrocities committed by Axis members during the war. Everyone knows about the war crime tribunals in Nuremburg but most people don’t have a clue about what happened on the other side of the world. I’ve seen the films of Goring and Hess on trial, I even watched “Judgment at Nuremburg”. I just think there should be a little equal time here. To this day, Japan is unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions before and during the war. Don’t sweep it under the rug and pretend like it didn’t happen. Am I out of line? Is that unrealistic?

For example?

The atomic bomb(s), perhaps? Deadly to those near the blast site, torture for those further out who were not lucky enough to die outright. Those weapons were both targeted against the Japanese civilian population, or at least not exclusively targeted at military ones.

If we are going to begin considering the civilian deaths as an “atrocity” then every military leader since Napoleon is guilty. War is hell. War is lousy. We attempt to target military or important industrial objectives (such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki) but there will be civilian casualties simply as a matter of where they are located. If the enemy entrenches themselves in an urban area (much as the Iraqi insurgents and Hezbollah have done), innocent people will die as a result.
Fat Man and Little Boy were devastating. Their destructive ability was unimaginable to people. However, so was the firebombing of Dresden. The difference was one bomb versus thousands.
I think you are out of line to compare Harry Truman, General Groves and Colonel Tibbets to the butchers who performed vivisections and biological weapons tests on captured civilians and soldiers. President Truman was the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America. He gave orders that were followed by his military chain of command to bring about the unconditional surrender of an enemy that had displayed a level of treachery that showed that they must be brought to their knees, not appeased or dealt with. There was no reasoning with them or making concessions or finding common ground. They had to be stopped and stopped hard.
The monsters in Unit 731 and the concentration camps almost reveled in the sadistic expiraments they performed. The Japanese referred to the victims as cordwood and sliced them to pieces with swords, restacking the pieces and then doing it again until there was nothing left. They tossed babies onto their bayonets and then flipped the corpse to another bayonet. They removed limbs and attached them onto the opposite side of the body.
Do not compare those evil creatures to the military leaders who brought the war to an end before it became necessary to have a full scale invasion.

Far from it. Specious! The vast majority of the US population believed then and for a long time afterward that atomic bombs ended the war ASAP (thereby effectively saving an order of magnitude more Japanese civilians’ lives than they took had the Allies had to invade the Japanese home island) and thus saved a BUNCH of their kids’ (soldiers/sailors/marines, etc.) lives.

I’m not disputing that the Japanese themselves may consider it an attrocity as do more and more anti-nuke peeps and revisionists, but never has enough of the US population considered their dropping an attrocity to have influenced foreign policy to be more “flexible” toward Japan. If I’m wrong, give me a credible cite. :dubious:

The systematic incindiary destruction of cities, many with little or no concentrated industrial activity. Even General Curtis ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay acknowledged afterward that had the Allied forces lost the war, he and his staff would have been legitimately prosecuted as war criminals. The impressive results of the firebombing of Kobe resulted in a shift of Allied (US) bombing strategy from targeting industrial concentrations and military assets (which by 1945 were becoming increasingly depleated) to the “total war” philosophy of strategic bombing of civilian populations. The firebombing of Tokyo resulted in the deaths of around 100,000 people, virtually all civilians, and had essentially no impact upon Japan’s (by that time very limited) ability to wage war.

The use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just icing (and [post=6687370]may have been influenced by factors other than strictly strategic military objectives[/post]). Whether the actions were or were not justified in the context of WWII and as a staging act to counter the post-war expansion of the Soviet Union, the deaths of more than a million civilians by such appalling means qualifies as an atrocity, and one that America would rather not address either domestically or internationally. Similarly, the Allied bombing campaigns in Europe, notably highlighted in the firebombing of Dresden (a city with no military or industrial value whatsoever) was marginalized for years.

Stranger

What Stranger on a Train said. Trying to dismiss US actions because a) you are an American and proud of it and b) because “war is hell” and so we should feel fine about deliberately targeting civilians and subjecting them to incineration and radiation poisoning, is being disingenuous.

But the debate has been done before, and better than I could. Besides, it’s GQ. I was simply pointing out and example of what you were asking about, not looking for a fight.

Fair enough. We’ll agree to disagree. No hard feelings, OK?

But you’re still wrong. :stuck_out_tongue: