The Horrors of Unit 731

Summary

This video script delves into the atrocities committed by Unit 731, a covert Japanese biological and chemical warfare research unit during WWII. It highlights the unit's inhumane experiments on thousands of prisoners, including frostbite endurance, vivisections without anesthesia, and exposure to deadly pathogens. The script also discusses the unit's failed attempts to weaponize diseases and the U.S.'s controversial decision to grant immunity to its physicians in exchange for research findings.

Takeaways

• 🔬 Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, conducting inhumane experiments on prisoners.
• 🌍 The unit was based in China and conducted experiments on approximately 3,000 individuals, including men, women, and children from various nations.
• 💉 Experiments included testing the effects of extreme cold, with victims' limbs being frozen off to study frostbite treatment.
• 🔪 Vivisection was performed on live prisoners without anesthesia to observe the effects of diseases and injuries on the human body.
• 🦠 Pathogens like cholera and anthrax were tested on communities in China to induce disease outbreaks, with some success leading to plans for attacks on the U.S.
• 🔫 Weapons testing involved tying prisoners to stakes and subjecting them to gunfire and grenades to analyze the damage inflicted.
• 💥 The pressure chamber experiment led to prisoners' eyes popping out and eventual death due to extreme pressure.
• 🌀 Some prisoners were spun at high speeds to test the effects of centrifugal forces on the human body.
• 🩺 Forced surgeries were performed on prisoners to train Japanese surgeons, often resulting in the patient's death post-operation.
• 🤰 Female prisoners were forcibly made pregnant to study the transmission of diseases to the child and the impact on reproductive organs.
• 📜 The existence of Unit 731 was largely unknown until Japan released information from its national archives in 2018, confirming the horrific acts committed.

Q & A

What was the primary purpose of Unit 731 during World War II?

Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, conducting experiments on prisoners with the aim of developing deadly weapons.

Where was the base of Unit 731 located, and who were the subjects of their experiments?

The base of Unit 731 was located in China, where around 3,000 men, women, and children were tested on. Most were Chinese, but some were from Allied Nations, the Soviet Union, Korea, and Mongolia.

What kind of experiments were conducted to understand human endurance to cold?

Experiments involved taking human test subjects outside during harsh winters until their limbs froze off, to study how best to treat frostbite. Guards would throw water on them until frostbite occurred, and then doctors would attempt to unfreeze the limbs using various methods.

How did Unit 731's doctors conduct vivisections on prisoners?

Doctors would operate on live prisoners without anesthesia to observe the effects of diseases before the body began decomposing. These subjects, referred to as 'marutas' or logs, were deliberately infected with diseases for the doctors to study.

What was the objective behind testing pathogens like cholera or anthrax at Unit 731?

The objective was to see how these pathogens would affect people if exposed, with the aim of causing disease outbreaks. This included both internal testing within the camp and field testing by dropping pathogens on small communities in China.

What was the purpose of the pressure chamber and spinning experiments at Unit 731?

The pressure chamber was used to test how much pressure a human could withstand before death, while the spinning experiments aimed to study the effects of centrifugal forces on the human body by spinning prisoners to death.

How did Unit 731 test the effectiveness of their weapons on prisoners?

Prisoners were tied to a spot and subjected to various weapons tests, including being shot at and having grenades thrown at them. The bodies were then analyzed to understand the damage caused by the weapons.

What was the rationale behind the forced pregnancy experiments at Unit 731?

Female prisoners were forced to become pregnant to study whether diseases could be passed to the child and to understand the damage a disease might cause to a woman's reproductive organs during pregnancy.

What was the outcome of the Japanese attempts to spread pathogens to the United States?

The Japanese sent about 200 balloon bombs carrying pathogens to the U.S., but these largely failed, resulting in only seven reported deaths.

How did the United States respond to the findings of Unit 731 after the war?

The U.S. granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for sharing their findings, as they did not want the Soviets to gain access to the research.

What is known about the long-term impact and recognition of Unit 731's activities?

For a long time, the activities of Unit 731 were not widely discussed. However, in 2018, Japan released information from its national archives relating to the unit, and testimonies from survivors and workers have provided further insights into its atrocities.

Outlines

00:00

🔬 The Horror of Unit 731

This paragraph delves into the atrocities committed by Unit 731, a biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. It discusses the unit's experiments on prisoners, including men, women, and children, from various nations, with the aim of developing deadly weapons. The unit's operations, funded by the Japanese government, involved testing the human body's endurance to extreme conditions, such as frostbite, and vivisection without anesthesia. The paragraph also touches on the broader context of war crimes during the Second World War, including references to Nazi war crimes.

05:01

🌐 Wartime Experiments and Their Aftermath

The second paragraph continues the narrative of Unit 731, focusing on the diverse and horrific experiments conducted there. It describes how the unit tested pathogens like cholera and anthrax on communities in China, aiming to cause disease outbreaks, and the failed attempts to spread these pathogens in the United States. The paragraph also covers the testing of weapons and toxic gases on prisoners, the use of pressure chambers and centrifugal forces to study the effects on the human body, and the medical experiments involving surgeries and forced pregnancies. It concludes with the revelation of previously suppressed information about Unit 731 and the implications of the U.S. granting immunity to its physicians in exchange for research findings, highlighting the moral complexities of the post-war period.

Keywords

💡Unit 731

Unit 731 refers to a covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. It was involved in horrific medical experimentation on prisoners, aiming to develop deadly weapons. The unit is central to the video's theme of war atrocities, as it exemplifies the dark side of human experimentation and warfare tactics.

💡Biological warfare

Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or organisms as weapons to cause disease or death in humans, animals, or plants. In the context of the video, Unit 731 conducted experiments with pathogens like cholera and anthrax to understand their effects on human populations, which is a key aspect of the video's exploration of the inhumane practices during war.

💡Vivisection

Vivisection is the practice of performing experimental surgical procedures on living animals or humans, especially without anesthesia. The video describes how Unit 731 used this cruel method to study the effects of diseases, showcasing the extreme inhumanity of the medical experiments conducted during the war.

💡Marutas

Marutas, meaning 'logs' in Japanese, was the term used by Unit 731 to refer to the prisoners who were subjected to vivisections. This term humanizes the victims and highlights the dehumanizing practices of the unit, which is a significant element of the video's narrative on the horrors of war.

💡Cold experiments

Cold experiments were conducted by Unit 731 to understand the human body's endurance to extreme cold. The video mentions how prisoners were exposed to freezing conditions to study frostbite and methods of treatment, illustrating the unit's inhumane approach to research.

💡Pathogens

Pathogens are disease-causing microorganisms. The video discusses how Unit 731 tested pathogens on prisoners and even in field tests on communities in China, aiming to cause disease outbreaks. This concept is crucial to understanding the unit's attempts to weaponize disease.

💡Balloon bombs

Balloon bombs were a method proposed by Unit 731 to spread pathogens to the United States. Although the video notes that this plan largely failed, it highlights the unit's ambition and the lengths they were willing to go to in their pursuit of biological warfare.

💡Weapons testing

Weapons testing in the video refers to the brutal experiments conducted by Unit 731 to evaluate the effectiveness of various weapons and toxic gases on human subjects. This concept is integral to the video's depiction of the unit's disregard for human life in the name of military advancement.

💡Pressure chamber

A pressure chamber is a device used to subject individuals to extreme changes in pressure. The video describes its use in Unit 731 to test the limits of human survival under high pressure, further emphasizing the unit's inhumane experimentation methods.

💡Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. The video recounts how Unit 731 infected prisoners with syphilis to study its effects, including during forced pregnancies, showcasing the unit's extreme and unethical medical practices.

💡Forced pregnancy

Forced pregnancy was a method used by Unit 731 to study the transmission of diseases to unborn children and the impact on women's reproductive organs. The video mentions this as part of the unit's cruel and inhumane experimentation, highlighting the depths of depravity reached during the war.

Highlights

Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII.

Around 3,000 men, women, and children were experimented on at the base in China.

Experiments aimed to develop deadly weapons and understand human body endurance.

Cold endurance tests involved freezing limbs to study frostbite treatment.

Vivisection was performed on live prisoners to observe disease effects.

Pathogens like cholera and anthrax were tested for their impact on populations.

Field testing of pathogens involved dropping them on communities to induce disease outbreaks.

Japanese considered using balloon bombs carrying pathogens against the U.S.

Prisoners were subjected to weapon testing to gauge damage inflicted by firearms and grenades.

Pressure chamber experiments simulated extreme conditions leading to prisoners' deaths.

Prisoners were spun to death to test the effects of centrifugal forces.

Surgeons practiced operations on live subjects, often leading to their deaths.

Syphilis was artificially induced in prisoners to study its progression and effects.

Forced pregnancies were conducted to understand disease transmission to offspring.

Japan's national archives released information on Unit 731, supplementing testimonial evidence.

The U.S. granted immunity to Unit 731 physicians in exchange for their research findings.

A former Unit 731 worker expressed a desire not to reflect on the atrocities committed.

The discussion raises questions about the potential for similar atrocities in the future and human capacity for cruelty.

Transcripts

Today we’re going to talk about the darker aspects of war.

Yes, war is dark enough in itself, but as you’ll know from some of our other shows

many despicable things happen in war behind what we might call closed doors.

We only need to look at the Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on people

that make your stomach churn.

We might also look at the Nazi ‘Death Marches”, the massacres, the genocides, the torture

of prisoners and prisoners literally being worked to death.

These things all happened during the Second World War, as did biological warfare and the

testing of deadly agents on those captured by certain militaries.

But today we’ll focus on just one matter of total depravity during that war, in this

episode of the Infographics Show, The Horror of Unit 731.

Unit 731 was the brainchild of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

It was a biological and chemical warfare research unit that conducted experiments on prisoners

with the aim of developing deadly weapons.

It’s written that at its base in China – remember the Japanese were at war with China – around

3,000 men, women, and children were tested on.

Most of these we are told were Chinese, but some of them were from the Allied Nations,

the Soviet Union, Korea and Mongolia.

The unit lasted until the end of the war in 1945 and it’s written that it had ample

funding from the Japanese government.

Ok, so this unit was developing dastardly weapons and it needed to test those weapons

on people first.

But other tests were also done, related to trying to understand what the human body could

endure.

That way the Japanese military might better understand what its own soldiers could go

through.

The Cold One of the things many soldiers had to put

up with during the war was cold, and cold did kill a lot of people.

At Unit 731 they wanted to understand just how cold someone could get and still survive.

The website Unit731.org tells us, “Some human test subjects were taken outside during

the harsh winter until their limbs froze off for the doctors to experiment how best to

treat frostbite.”

The New York Times, which had testimonies from people who had seen the horrors of this

unit, wrote that these people would be taken outside and guards would throw water on them

until they saw the victim had frostbite.

Sometimes, wrote the newspaper, the guard would hit the arm of the prisoner with a stick

and if he heard something like a wood-against-wood sound he knew the arm was totally frozen.

What happened next is the doctors would use various methods to try and unfreeze the arm

or other body part.

Sometimes the prisoner would be left alone to unfreeze, sometimes warm water would be

thrown on him or her and sometimes much warmer water.

The Japanese doctors, according to The Times, concluded that water over 100 degrees fahrenheit

but never more than 122 degrees fahrenheit worked the best.

Vivisection The Japanese military also wanted to know

how best to treat disease and injuries, but we are told that to do this they would often

use live prisoners to operate on.

It’s said that some of these prisoners would be deliberately given a disease, and then

the doctors would open up the body of the patient without any kind of anesthesia.

They wanted to look at the effects of the disease before the body began decomposing,

and that’s why they kept the subjects alive.

These people were called marutas, or logs.

The New York Times, with testimony from a former surgeon, said they just wanted to know

what had happened inside.

That man told the Times, “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.”

Testing Pathogens One of the major experiments at Unit 731 was

to test how certain pathogens, including cholera or anthrax, would affect a number of people

if they were exposed to the pathogens.

They didn’t just do this inside the camp, but also did what they called field testing.

This was done by dropping the pathogens on small communities in China.

They wanted to see if they could cause an outbreak of disease.

We are told some of these experiments were successful, so the Japanese then had the idea

to carry these pathogens to the United States in what were called balloon bombs.

It’s written that the Japanese did send about 200 balloons to the U.S. but these failed

for the most part, only leading to the death of seven people.

They also had a plan to drop plague-infected fleas on San Diego by using Kamikaze pilots.

Testing Weapons The Japanese also wanted to test weapons that

they could use on the battlefield, and this included regular weapons but also toxic gases.

To do this prisoners would be taken out to a field and tied to a spot with a stake.

The soldiers would then start testing, which sometimes just meant shooting guns at the

target, and other times throwing grenades at certain distances to see how effective

they were.

The bodies of the victims would then be analyzed so the Japanese knew exactly what damage their

weapons could do.

We are told that in one experiment gas was fired at the tied-up prisoners, but the wind

changed direction and it sent the Japanese soldiers running.

It’s also said that the soldiers would occasionally test their flamethrowers on the prisoners.

The pressure chamber and spinning While Japanese people who had worked in the

camp later recalled how many parts of prisoners could be seen in jars all over the camp, it’s

not always known how those people died.

Perhaps one of the worst deaths was the pressure chamber.

We are told that prisoners would be placed inside a pressure chamber, sometimes alongside

another prisoner, and the pressure would be turned up until basically the prisoners’

eyes popped and they eventually died.

If that wasn’t horrific enough, other prisoners would be literally spun to death so that the

military could test centrifugal forces.

Operations The Japanese also wanted to have better surgeons,

and those surgeons needed subjects to work on.

One report found tells us how one subject was given an appendectomy.

After that, his arm was removed and after that he received a tracheotomy.

This all took about 90 minutes and when the doctors were done, they just killed that patient.

The man who did these surgeries was at the time a student doctor.

He told the media that he’d had no idea what to expect when he was told he was going

to China to practice surgeries.

Spreading syphilis This is the testimony from a worker at Unit

731: “Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started

forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other.”

It’s said that if the pair refused, they would be shot.

At other times children were infected with the disease.

The reason this happened was so those infected prisoners could be vivisected at various stages

of the disease and the doctors at the camp could better understand how it affected a

person’s organs during that stage of infection.

Forced pregnancy It’s said that female prisoners would be

made pregnant by force so that the doctors could understand if disease was passed to

the child.

They also wanted to know what damage a disease may have caused to the woman’s reproductive

organs during pregnancy.

It’s said the guards would just take women and do this, even to those already injured

from other experiments.

While many children were thought to have been born on the camp, it’s said that none survived.

One former soldier said this sometime later, “Of course there were experiments on children.

But probably their fathers were spies.”

For a long time this unit was not talked about, but The Guardian reported in 2018 that Japan

released lots of information from its national archives relating to Unit 731.

Prior to this, much of what we knew was only based on testimonies.

No one has denied what we have talked about today did not happen, but there are more reports

that tell us smaller experiments also happened.

These included people being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, being injected with the

blood from animals, being injected with sea water and also being burned alive.

It’s said during the war the Americans knew about the camp and after they granted immunity

to the physicians of Unit 731 if they shared all their findings with the U.S. military

as some of those findings might be useful and the U.S. didn’t want the Soviets getting

hold of the research.

We will leave you with a comment made by a former Unit 731 worker when he was contacted

some years later.

“I don't want to think about Unit 731.

Fifty years have passed since the war.

Please let me remain silent.”

Do you think anything like this could happen again?

How do you think people could do to this other human beings?

Tell us in the comments.

Also, be sure to check out our other video Could You Survive the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.

See you next time.